h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I see the wager this way - (By the way, the whole notion of a 'wager' should be discounted if were talking about religion)

GOD EXISTS
I believe in God - God Exists - He lets me in to heaven for my virtues -Large upside
I don't believe in God - But have only thought of myself - God Exists - I go to Hell - Large downside
I don't believe in God - but have been considerate, kind, sharing, made myself happy by making others happy and having a wide range of experiences and have had good reasons not to believe in Him - God lets me in to heaven - small upside

GOD DOES NOT EXIST
I believe in God - God doesn't exist - I have wasted some of my life, but (assuming I am a moderate believer) I have been kind, have tried to make myself happy by making others happy, but have been misguided in my beliefs and tried to convert others - small downside
I don't believe in God - But have only thought of myself - I have satiated my immediate pleasures by carelessness of others and as I die, no-one cares for me - A sad downside
I don't believe in God - but have been considerate, kind, sharing, made myself happy by making others happy and having a wide range of experiences and have had good reasons not to believe in Him - God does not exist - I have led a happy life and helped others, so others care for me - Large upside

That is why the answer to a happy afterlife is an ethical, open minded agnostic - Thinks God's existence is unlikely, but remains open to the possibility.

Yogabikers wager

Does Santa Exist? What's the upside? What's the downside?

What about the tooth fairy?

How about Neptune?

Maybe it is wise to heap wealth and unquestioned adoration and trust in the yogabiker just in case?

Are there possibly negative consequences to buying into an incorrect understanding of "What makes what happen".

One other observation. The existance of god and the nature of god are seperate questions. Even if it were discovered that god or gods existed it would be likely that it would differ from someones conception. Who said god was good? Some people did. Others have disagreed.



YB

YB, I couldn't agree more.

"Pascal's wager" as the name would suggest, is simply an argument for self-interested people to join Christianity, and is aimed at, rather contradictorily, to the greed of people.

The distinction between the existence of God and nature of God is a very good one - and one that I find is rarely brought into questions in discussions about Pascal's wager. I think (being an Agnostic) that God could exist, but not necessarily in the way many people see him. Often, I think, if God existed, that all the threats from his followers that "You'll go to hell if you don't believe in him" is one of the poorest arguments for supproting a religion I have ever heard. It purports God as some sort of dictator who has ultimate power - so if God existed and he did send me to hell because I didn't believe in him, I wouldn't mind because I would not want to bow down to that sort of tyranny.

It's like those people that say "The end is near" it maybe, so what are you saying - now I should go to church? This evokes fear and submissiveness, and if God is really like that, then I want no part of it.

You have put an improved version of Pascal's wager. As I understand it that went

I believe, wrongly: small loss
I believe, rightly: large gain
I disbelieve, wrongly: large loss
I disbelieve, rightly: small gain

If the evidence were 50-50 then the right choice is to believe.

But . . . the evidence is awfully fraught with contradictions, to say the least.

William James http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/james.html gave a better version, which I roughly interpret as

I believe man is free, so I act as a free agent, so I am free.
I believe the universe is coherent, so I act as part of a coherent universe, so I make the universe more coherent.

Interesting.

YB

Belief of being free or living in a logical and coherent universe does not change the reality of the universe or the fact that humans are not free, while it may seem, and therefore be true for you, it may not be possibly true.

But anyway, I think that to base your belief of God on potential kickbacks you could get in your afterlife is a misunderstanding about the God you are serving if in fact He does exist. It is far better to believe in God due to logic rather than due to selfishness. God is a question about your view on the nature of reality rather than a question of choice. For example, I don't belive the computer screen in front of me just because it would be bad for it not to be in front of me and good if it weren't, I just believe it's there because I can sense it and it appears to react on my touch.

Thing is, Nick, ethical arguments are not very open to logical treatment.

You give an argument for benign agnosticism in post 1, but it is no more convincing logically than the Pascal or James arguments.

The strongest statement of what I mean was made by Wittgenstein A1024156 when he asserted that not only can ethical propositions not be proved, they cannot be made at all. Moral things cannot be said, only shown.

Of course if the above is seen as an ethical proposition, it is nonsense by its own rule; Wittgenstein was aware of this and merely offered it as a signpost, or a groan, or whatever.

To stay with the thread, and answer your post, Wittgenstein put belief in God in the ethical domain. He regarded it not as a question of fact but as a way of seeing the world. That changes no facts *in* the world; only your attitude to everything.

Despite having a great influence in modern theology, Wittgenstein did not regard hmself as a believer.

I regard it as an unanswerable question, "do you believe?" since by Wittgenstein and Berkeley's acute insights I am persuaded that we have no way of knowing our own motivation. As I posted yesterday in "some ideas".

If god doesn't exist then a lot of pompous people are acting pretty foolish. Don't you agree. Every argument that draws it's authority from god is really back up by nothing.

Belief in god: Be guided by a fantasy and/or spokesmen for a fantasy

Unbelief/agnosticism: Be guided by continued learning and experience

If god does exist he has sure gone through a lot of trouble to make it look as if he doesn't. What is that all about?



YB

Perhaps, but there are a lot of pompless people involved too.

You can say a lot about religion, but it still appears that it's not about nothing (to put it minimally).

"What is ethical cannot be said, only shown" - This, as you know is a paraphrase of the guide entry of Witttgenstein. The only trouble I have with that is how we know whether something is ethically right or wrong if it cannot be argued - it sounds like ethincs are subjective, which brings you to dangerous water - was Wittgenstein saying, Recumbentman (Or do you believe, for that matter) that ethics in fact do not exist,in both an idealistic world and a materialistic world(hich you entioned in passing in "Some ideas" but did not state what you meant or your position on that)?

YB, I think that's quite a harsh way of looking at religion. There are many reasons people believe in, say, Christianity - They believe Jesus existed and perfomed many miracles that are not physically possible, as well as sitings of the virgin Mary at Lourdes, quite apart from the actual ideals of the religion, and I think we are looking at the believers too simplistically and judging them too harshly - whether the Bible is true or not, it gives us some good stories about individuals and their journeys through life.
Religion inspires people to help others, get different perspectives, and make beautiful music and paintings. Those that believe in religion are not necessarily ignorant and blind to the world, they have just had different experiences in their lives. This also means that atheism and agnosticism are necessarily more ethical and better, either - people who believe in them can be narrow-minded as well. It should be noted that within any community, there will be people with different degreees of education, and different reasons for their belief. It is the reasons for believing that need to be ethical, not the religion itself.
Though I myself am an agnostic, I believe that we can learn something from each religion, and we must see religion not as slavehood for non-existant beings, but also as deeply cultural and historical.

I also think Recumbentman's take on religion as "a way of looking at life" is a very good attitude to take to religion.

I hope you take no criticism personally, and live an enlightened life - "Consider everything" as I say.

Nick_Em

Nick, you're young and interested in philosophy -- that's great! Read Wittgenstein's Tractatus. It's very short and very dense; don't be put off when you get lost in the middle; even Wittgenstein when he was asked "What does this part mean?" could only answer "Did I write that??"

Skip along to the end where the ethical observations come in. You will see that far from being subjective (in the sense of "personal taste"), ethics are for Wittgenstein just one part of "the mystical", about which nothing can be sensibly said, but which remains inescapable and is the only important thing in life.

It's true that Wittgenstein reviewed his early philosophy in later life and decided that much of what he said in the Tractatus (written in his twenties) was unsupported; but it remains a great logical and ethical statement of the twentieth century, whose implications are still being taken in.

Where can I find it?

http://www.kfs.org/~jonathan/witt/tlph.html has the complete text of Wittgenstein's Tractatus with prefaces and comments.

It is written in a kind of decimal system, like hypertext before computers were invented. There are seven main propositions, and each (except the last) has sub-statements numbered 1.1, 1.11, 1.12 etc. This makes it ideal for publishing on the net.

It is also published in the original English translation (Ogden, 1922) by Routledge (paperback, reprinted 2002). There is a later translation but it is less elegant and was not, as this one was, endorsed by Wittgenstein. It amounts to 79 pages in English, with the German original facing each page.

Bon voyage!

Golly. A misprint in 1.11: "The world is determined by the facts, and by these begin all the facts" should read "The world is determined by the facts, and by these *being* all the facts."

Hope there aren't more.