I have found this argument compelling, especially the portion about assigning a probability to the truth of Christian belief. Even if we have arguments that seem to demonstrate why it is that radically smart people believe a religion without recourse to there being good arguments for the religion, we haven’t explained why these people instead think there are good arguments. Sure, you don’t think they’re good arguments, but they do, and they’re rational agents as well.
You could say, “well they’re not rational agents, that was the criticism in the first place,” but we have the same problem that they do think they themselves are rational agents. What level do we have to approach that allows you to make a claim about how your methods for constructing probabilities trump theirs? The highest level is just, “you’re both human,” which makes valid the point that to some extent you should listen to the opinions of others. The next level “you’re both intelligent humans aimed at the production of true beliefs” is far stronger, and true in this case.
Where the Wager breaks down for me is that much more is required to demonstrate that if Christianity is true, God sends those who fail to produce Christian belief to Hell. Of course, this could be subject to the argument that many smart people also believe this corollary, but it remains true that it is an additional jump, and that many fewer Christians take it than who are simply Christians.
What takes the cake for me is asking what a good God would value. It’s a coy response for the atheist to say that a good God would understand the reasons one has for being an atheist, and that it’s his fault that the evidence doesn’t get there. The form of this argument works for me, with a nuance: Nobody is honest, and nobody deserves, as far as I can tell, any more or less pain in eternity for something so complex as forming the right belief about something so complicated. God must be able to uncrack the free will enigma and decide what’s truly important about people’s actions, and somehow it doesn’t seem that the relevant morality-stuff perfectly is perfectly predicted by religious affiliation. This doesn’t suggest that God might not have other good reasons to send people to Hell, but it seems hard to tease those out of yourself to a sufficient extent to start worrying beyond worrying about how much good you want to do in general. If God punishes for people not being good enough, the standard) method of reducing free will to remarkably low levels makes it hard to see what morality-stuff looks like. Whether or not it exists, you have the ability to change your actions by becoming more honest, more loving, and hence possibly more likely to be affiliated with the correct religion. But it seems horrible for God to make it a part of the game for you to be worrying about whether or not you go to Hell for reasons other than honesty or love. Worry about honesty and love, and don’t worry about where that leads.
In short, maybe Hell is one outcome of the decision game of life. But very likely God wrote it so that one’s acceptance of Pascal’s wager has no impact on the outcome. Sure, maybe one’s acceptance of Christianity does, but there’s nothing you can do about it, and if God is good, then this is also good.
People are not rational agents, and people do not believe in religions on the basis of “good arguments.” Most people are the same religion as their parents.
As often noted, most nonreligious parents have nonreligious children as well. Does that mean that people do not disbelieve religions on the basis of good arguments?
Your comment is subject to the same criticism we’re discussing. If any given issue has been raised, then some smart religious person is aware of it and believes anyway.
I think most people do not disbelieve religions on the basis of good arguments either. I’m most likely atheist because my parents are. The point is that you can’t treat majority beliefs as the aggregate beliefs of groups of rational agents. It doesn’t matter if for any random “good argument” some believer or nonbeliever has heard it and not been swayed, you should not expect the majority of people’s beliefs on things that do not directly impinge on their lives to be very reliable correlated with things other than the beliefs of those around them.
The above musings do not hinge on the ratio of people in a group believing things for the right reasons, only that some portion of them are.
Your consideration helps us assign probabilities for complex beliefs, but it doesn’t help us improve them. Upon discovering that your beliefs correlate with those of your parents, you can introduce uncertainty in your current assignments, but you go about improving them by thinking about good arguments. And only good arguments.
The thrust of the original comment here is that discovering which arguments are good is not straightforward. You can only go so deep into the threads of argumentation until you start scraping on your own bias and incapacities. Your logic is not magic, and neither are intuitions nor other’s beliefs. But all of them are heuristics that you can account when assigning probabilities. The very fact that others exist who are capable of digging as deep into the logic and being as skeptical of their intuitions, and who believe differently than you, is evidence that their opinion is correct. It matters little if every person of that opinion is as such, only that the best do. Because those are the only people you’re paying attention to.
I have found this argument compelling, especially the portion about assigning a probability to the truth of Christian belief. Even if we have arguments that seem to demonstrate why it is that radically smart people believe a religion without recourse to there being good arguments for the religion, we haven’t explained why these people instead think there are good arguments. Sure, you don’t think they’re good arguments, but they do, and they’re rational agents as well.
You could say, “well they’re not rational agents, that was the criticism in the first place,” but we have the same problem that they do think they themselves are rational agents. What level do we have to approach that allows you to make a claim about how your methods for constructing probabilities trump theirs? The highest level is just, “you’re both human,” which makes valid the point that to some extent you should listen to the opinions of others. The next level “you’re both intelligent humans aimed at the production of true beliefs” is far stronger, and true in this case.
Where the Wager breaks down for me is that much more is required to demonstrate that if Christianity is true, God sends those who fail to produce Christian belief to Hell. Of course, this could be subject to the argument that many smart people also believe this corollary, but it remains true that it is an additional jump, and that many fewer Christians take it than who are simply Christians.
What takes the cake for me is asking what a good God would value. It’s a coy response for the atheist to say that a good God would understand the reasons one has for being an atheist, and that it’s his fault that the evidence doesn’t get there. The form of this argument works for me, with a nuance: Nobody is honest, and nobody deserves, as far as I can tell, any more or less pain in eternity for something so complex as forming the right belief about something so complicated. God must be able to uncrack the free will enigma and decide what’s truly important about people’s actions, and somehow it doesn’t seem that the relevant morality-stuff perfectly is perfectly predicted by religious affiliation. This doesn’t suggest that God might not have other good reasons to send people to Hell, but it seems hard to tease those out of yourself to a sufficient extent to start worrying beyond worrying about how much good you want to do in general. If God punishes for people not being good enough, the standard) method of reducing free will to remarkably low levels makes it hard to see what morality-stuff looks like. Whether or not it exists, you have the ability to change your actions by becoming more honest, more loving, and hence possibly more likely to be affiliated with the correct religion. But it seems horrible for God to make it a part of the game for you to be worrying about whether or not you go to Hell for reasons other than honesty or love. Worry about honesty and love, and don’t worry about where that leads.
In short, maybe Hell is one outcome of the decision game of life. But very likely God wrote it so that one’s acceptance of Pascal’s wager has no impact on the outcome. Sure, maybe one’s acceptance of Christianity does, but there’s nothing you can do about it, and if God is good, then this is also good.
People are not rational agents, and people do not believe in religions on the basis of “good arguments.” Most people are the same religion as their parents.
As often noted, most nonreligious parents have nonreligious children as well. Does that mean that people do not disbelieve religions on the basis of good arguments?
Your comment is subject to the same criticism we’re discussing. If any given issue has been raised, then some smart religious person is aware of it and believes anyway.
I think most people do not disbelieve religions on the basis of good arguments either. I’m most likely atheist because my parents are. The point is that you can’t treat majority beliefs as the aggregate beliefs of groups of rational agents. It doesn’t matter if for any random “good argument” some believer or nonbeliever has heard it and not been swayed, you should not expect the majority of people’s beliefs on things that do not directly impinge on their lives to be very reliable correlated with things other than the beliefs of those around them.
The above musings do not hinge on the ratio of people in a group believing things for the right reasons, only that some portion of them are.
Your consideration helps us assign probabilities for complex beliefs, but it doesn’t help us improve them. Upon discovering that your beliefs correlate with those of your parents, you can introduce uncertainty in your current assignments, but you go about improving them by thinking about good arguments. And only good arguments.
The thrust of the original comment here is that discovering which arguments are good is not straightforward. You can only go so deep into the threads of argumentation until you start scraping on your own bias and incapacities. Your logic is not magic, and neither are intuitions nor other’s beliefs. But all of them are heuristics that you can account when assigning probabilities. The very fact that others exist who are capable of digging as deep into the logic and being as skeptical of their intuitions, and who believe differently than you, is evidence that their opinion is correct. It matters little if every person of that opinion is as such, only that the best do. Because those are the only people you’re paying attention to.