But what if getting caught is very unlikely? Well, we can show that to a true agnostic at least, the probability of getting caught would be at least 0.5, because if we assume total ignorance, the probability that God and/or an afterlife exist would be a uniform distribution, as suggested by the Principle of Indifference and the Principle of Maximum Entropy.
Isn’t this just the original Pascal’s Wager fallacy?
If you don’t know anything (true agnosticism), the probability of most proposition isn’t 50%, because there are many mutually exclusive propositions. A universal agnostic prior gives any proposition as complex as “there’s a God who punishes adultery in an afterlife” a vanishingly tiny probability not worth even raising to the level of conscious notice. Also, each proposition tends to be balanced by an opposite proposition: that there is a God who rewards adultery in an afterlife.
I will admit that it does sound a lot like the Pascal’s Wager fallacy, but I do think there is a slight difference. Pascal’s Wager makes a very specific proposition, while the proposition I am making is actually very general.
See, it’s not that a God needs exist that punishes the adultery. The only requirement is that there is either a God that knows everything and would therefore be able to to tell the partner that the adultery occurred (doesn’t matter if this God rewards, punishes, or is indifferent), or an afterlife in which people exist after death and are able to observe the world and tell the partner that the adultery occurred. Basically there just has to exist some way for the partner to find out after death that the adultery occurred. This doesn’t have to be a God AND afterlife. Note that I said AND/OR rather than AND. The manner in which the adultery is discovered doesn’t really matter. Pascal’s Wager on the other hand depends on a very specific God and a very specific set of propositions being true.
That each proposition tends to be balanced by an opposite proposition to me, actually supports the notion that everything evens out to around 50%, assuming that each of these propositions is conditionally independent. At least, that’s my understanding. I will admit that I am not a master of Probability theory, and that you could be quite right. That is sort of why in the next paragraph after this one I assume an atheistic view and look at the consequences of that.
Isn’t this just the original Pascal’s Wager fallacy?
If you don’t know anything (true agnosticism), the probability of most proposition isn’t 50%, because there are many mutually exclusive propositions. A universal agnostic prior gives any proposition as complex as “there’s a God who punishes adultery in an afterlife” a vanishingly tiny probability not worth even raising to the level of conscious notice. Also, each proposition tends to be balanced by an opposite proposition: that there is a God who rewards adultery in an afterlife.
I will admit that it does sound a lot like the Pascal’s Wager fallacy, but I do think there is a slight difference. Pascal’s Wager makes a very specific proposition, while the proposition I am making is actually very general.
See, it’s not that a God needs exist that punishes the adultery. The only requirement is that there is either a God that knows everything and would therefore be able to to tell the partner that the adultery occurred (doesn’t matter if this God rewards, punishes, or is indifferent), or an afterlife in which people exist after death and are able to observe the world and tell the partner that the adultery occurred. Basically there just has to exist some way for the partner to find out after death that the adultery occurred. This doesn’t have to be a God AND afterlife. Note that I said AND/OR rather than AND. The manner in which the adultery is discovered doesn’t really matter. Pascal’s Wager on the other hand depends on a very specific God and a very specific set of propositions being true.
That each proposition tends to be balanced by an opposite proposition to me, actually supports the notion that everything evens out to around 50%, assuming that each of these propositions is conditionally independent. At least, that’s my understanding. I will admit that I am not a master of Probability theory, and that you could be quite right. That is sort of why in the next paragraph after this one I assume an atheistic view and look at the consequences of that.