Supernatural Discussion

amazes me too but i'm just a talking bunny who's easily amazed

It amazes me, too. I think the universe is more amazing and gorgeous without it.

I entirely understand asking this question: "How is it that there is something rather than there being nothing (i.e., rather than there not being anything)?" And I suspect that that question is one that we just can't answer.

But "God did it" is a terrible answer to it.

for a topic that's beyond you you sure stick with it, don't you :)

So beautifully said........

(#146) I entirely understand asking this question: "How is it that there is something rather than there being nothing (i.e., rather than there not being anything)?" And I suspect that that question is one that we just can't answer.

But "God did it" is a terrible answer to it.

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Why ?....since you just said "that question is one that we just can't answer" ? What makes you so sure that the SN didn't do it then ? If you don't have idea zero who did ? See how useless your logic is ? See why I question everything you say ? You're glitching MW....glitching really bad here hon.  

Your oak tree belief that Mom Nature is your gawd exclusively disallows you from any belief in the SN. IOW's, you're kicked outta the treehouse. You're not a part of our Secret Club. Now, I'd letchu back in if you said the magic password but I'm afraid it would be too self-humiliating to pass over your lips !

So IOW's, we're not lowering the rope 'cuz you're the one out on a limb ! 

And something else. Don't give me that "I'm a nontheist" debris. You're too old for that nonsense. I will not be extending that politicompromise to you. If I felt you deserved it ?....then that'd be different.

And since you so boldly challenged Blaise ?....then let's see you dissect the frog of Pascal's Wager. And let me remind you who you are about to rebut there Kermie.

I would luv to see you two debate. I'm comfortable in saying that he'd....well, send you off like....

So, give it your best there hotshot. And this better be extra good 'cuz he's not here to defend himself.

All right, first, Pascal's wager.

Remember what Pascal's wager says. It says this: If you believe that God exists, then if he does, your reward is infinite (eternal bliss), while if he doesn't, your penalty is only finite (a bit of time spent going to church, praying, in Bible study, and so on). On the other hand, if you don't believe that God exists, then if he does, your penalty is infinite (eternal torment, or at least denial of eternal bliss), while if he doesn't, your reward is only finite (a bit of time spent going to church, praying, in Bible study, and so on). As long as the probability of God's existence is nonzero--as long as it isn't just *impossible* for God to exist--an expected value calculation then shows that the expected value of belief is positively infinite but that the expected value of nonbelief is negatively infinite. Therefore, the rational thing to do is to believe that God exists. (And, Pascal thinks, you should do everything you can to cultivate your own belief in God.)

The first thing to notice is that this is not an argument for God's actual existence, but is instead an argument for the rationality of belief and the irrationality of nonbelief, whether God actually exists or not, given that we do not actually know whether or not God exists but see his existence as possible. (That is not a flaw in the argument; I'm just pointing it out.)

The second thing to notice is that it depends on God's being conceived in a certain way: if you believe he exists, he provides you an infinite reward, but if you don't believe he exists, he provides you an infinite punishment (or at least does not provide you an infinite reward). But what if that is not the only possible kind of God? There is a version of God called "the professor's God" who rewards rationality and punishes irrationality. The professor's God wants your belief only if you think you have good reason to think that he exists; he wants your nonbelief if you do not think you have good reason to think that he exists. (Perhaps the professor's God is pleased when you use the gift of rationality he gave you, but is displeased when you deliberately ignore it. He gave you this gift--now use it!) If the God that would exist, were God to exist at all, was the professor's God, then the logic of Pascal's wager would work the other way: in the absence of independent reason to think that God existed, the two infinitudes would switch places, and it would become rational *not* to believe that God existed. Thus, Pascal's wager depends crucially on the type of God you think of as possibly existent--and I see no reason to find the existence of a God who rewarded belief and punished nonbelief more likely than the existence of a God who rewarded rationality and punished irrationality. That's the first flaw with the argument.

The second flaw with the argument is that it doesn't discriminate among different versions of God, even supposing that an actual God would reward belief and punish nonbelief. If you thought Pascal's argument had force, should you rush out to your nearest Southern Baptist church--or should you head for the nearest mosque? If there are two versions of God each of whom rewards belief but punishes nonbelief, how do you know which one to believe in in order to be rewarded and not punished? (This is known as the "which God" problem or as the "which Hell" problem.) Lacking any independent reason to think that one version of belief-rewarding, nonbelief-punishing God is the one that *could* exist but that no other version could even possibly exist, the "which Hell" problem renders Pascal's argument worthless. It's supposed to tell you that it's rational to go out and believe in God--but if you don't know *which* God to go out and believe in, the argument doesn't tell you much.

The third flaw in the argument is that its structure is one that we do not normally take seriously, so that to use it in the special case of God-belief would amount to a form of special pleading. Let me illustrate.

Suppose I told you that there were telepathic aliens out in space who were planning to destroy the Earth in a week. But, if you were to imagine the aliens and to say in your heart, "I submit to you," they would not only spare the Earth but they would give you an elixir of immortality (and of eternal youth and good health--again, we do not want to forget the example of Tithonos from Greek mythology). Naturally, if you believe in them, you will submit yourself to them. So, if you believe they exist and they do, your reward will be infinite, while if they don't, your penalty will be finite (you've needlessly submitted your will to them for a week); if you don't believe they exist and they do, your penalty will be infinite, while if they don't, your reward will be only finite (you won't have needlessly submitted your will to them for a week). This argument has *exactly the same structure* as Pascal's wager has.

And yet, I trust, you are not about to submit your will to these supposed telepathic aliens. Why not? Because this is not a form of argument that we normally think has force. (The problem might lie in the infinitudes: expected-value arguments are notoriously problematic when they involve infinitudes.) We recognize that simply imagining something that will do X but not Y if you believe in it but that will do Y instead of X if you don't believe in it, where X is desirable but Y is undesirable, is not good reason to believe that that something exists--even if X is infinitely desirable and Y is infinitely undesirable. You need reason to think that the something actually exists before you believe that it does. We all know that for any imagined entity other than God (like, say, telepathic aliens); to pretend that the argument nevertheless had force in God's case would therefore constitute a form of special pleading.

Thus, the argument has no force.

Christians who have already decided which God could possibly exist, while dismissing the possibility that some other God could possibly exist, and who take seriously the possibility that their version of God could possibly exist while not taking seriously the possibility of telepathic aliens (assigning telepathic aliens' existence a probability zero [since even the tiniest nonzero probability is sufficient for the expected-value argument of Pascal's wager]), can use the argument after the fact--after they've already become believers--but they should not think that the argument will have force against anyone else.

But, you see, my not being able to answer a question does not mean that just any old answer somebody makes up is the right one. Just making up the idea of a supernatural being who magically conjures up something from nothing and whose own existence is not explained (except, sometimes, by saying that that being necessarily exists, which has the flaw that (a) the idea of necessary existence is in itself dubious and (b) we have no reason to think any supernatural being at all would necessarily exist) does not give us a good explanation of how it is that there is something rather than nothing. There are lots of bad explanations of it, and that's one of them.

Not knowing the right explanation doesn't make just any old answer you might make up the right one, or even a halfway likely one. And as long as you have no idea what the right explanation is, you should simply not believe any explanation.

Pascal's Wager is an amusing joke, nothing more.

MW is taking Blaise Pascal's writings pretty serious here....as I have. And my guess would be that BP was in full earnest when he wrote it....given his reputation/credentials & all.

So, 4u2 call it a joke would actually make you one, nothing more. 

Your reasoning (such as it is) makes me sad. So be it.

Pascal's wager has been known for a long time to fail. I can't help it if you are unwilling to accept that or incapable of understanding that.

I notice that you don't address the actual reasoning involved.

I can only assume Pascal was high when came up with it. I guess he was... Blaise-ing?

What's frustrating is that we have people who seem not even to care about why it doesn't suffice to show that belief is preferable to nonbelief.

You've missed again MW....but that was to be expected.

Our minds cannot comprehend physical infinity....and yes that includes yours. And so you'll keep denying & struggling & trying to use logic on the SN until one day you just may find that it's better to join than to try & win. And if you do ?....then PW will make clear & common sense to you.

And if you don't ?....then you'll stay completely confused about the whole S-T Discontinuum.

It's all kind of a hilarious tragicomedy the atheists are in, don't you think ?....being in a lose-lose paradox & all ?

William James, in his famous essay "The Will to Believe," makes objections to Pascal's wager--one the famous "which Hell" objection (when he suggests the Mahdi's making a similar argument for belief in Islam), another that it seems vile to calculatingly believe in God without actually thinking he exists. I'll quote a bit of his essay (which can be read here: https://www.mnsu.edu/philosophy/THE%20WILL%20TO%20BELIEVE%20.pdf ) here:

In Pascal's Thoughts there is a celebrated passage known in literature as Pascal's wager. In it he tries to force us into Christianity by reasoning as if our concern with truth resembled our concern with the stakes in a game of chance. Translated freely his words are these: You must either believe or not believe that God is--which will you do? Your human reason cannot say. A game is going on between you and the nature of things which at the day of judgment will bring out either heads or tails.

Weigh what your gains and your losses would be if you should stake all you have on heads, or God's existence: if you win in such case, you gain eternal beatitude; if you lose, you lose nothing at all. If there were an infinity of chances, and only one for God in this wager, still you ought to stake your all on God; for though you surely risk a finite loss by this procedure, any finite loss is reasonable, even a  certain one is reasonable, if there is but the possibility of infinite gain. Go, then, and take holy water, and have masses said; belief will come and stupefy your

scruples,-Cela vous fera croire et vous abetira. Why should you not? At bottom,

what have you to lose?

You probably feel that when religious faith expresses itself thus, in the language of the gaming-table, it is put to its last trumps. Surely Pascal's own personal belief in masses and holy water had far other springs; and this celebrated page of his is but an argument for others, a last desperate snatch at a weapon against the hardness of the unbelieving heart. We feel that a faith in masses and holy water adopted willfully after such a mechanical calculation lack the inner soul of faith's reality; and if we were of the Deity, we should probably take pleasure in cutting off believers from their infinite reward. It is evident that unless there be some preexisting tendency to believe in masses and holy water, the option offered to the will by Pascal is not a living option. Certainly no Turk ever took to masses and holy water on its account; and even to us Protestants these seem such foregone impossibilities that Pascal's logic, invoked for them specifically, leaves us unmoved. As well might the Mahdi write to us, saying, " I am the Expected One whom God has created in his effulgence. You shall be infinitely happy if you confess me; otherwise you shall be cut off from the light of the sun. Weigh, then, your infinite gain if I am genuine against your finite sacrifice if I am not! " His logic would be that of Pascal; but he would vainly use it on us, for the hypothesis he offers us is dead. No tendency to act on it exists in us to any degree.

The talk of believing by our volition seems, then, from one point of view, simply silly. From another point of view it is worse tban silly, it is vile. When one turns to the magnificent edifice of the physical sciences, and sees how it was reared; what thousands of disinterested moral lives of men lie buried in its mere foundations; what patience and postponement, what choking down of preference, what submission to the icy laws of outer fact are wrought into its very stones and mortar; how absolutely impersonal it stands in its vast augustness,--then how besotted and contemptible seems every little sentimentalist who comes blowing his voluntary smoke-wreaths, and pretending to decide things from out of his private dream!

All right, there's no point to my continuing here, where an aversion to thinking seems to rule. Untracking.

I suppose to Pascal, Schrödinger's Cat is assumed alive lest he uncover the box assuming it is not, only to get a nasty surprise in the form of a vengeful cat.

Your dilemma is that you cannot comprehend something physical that goes on for infinity. You cannot make sense nor reason of it.

And it's at that point where all your logic breaks down and you end up bewildered. IOW's, you've found dumbness (dumbfounded)........ 

Humbling discovery, isn't it ?

Not understanding is a universe away from incomprehensible.