I'm sure this has been discussed before, but in another thread somebody asked about Pascal's Wager and its flaws (as I see it).
Blaise Pascal was a mathematician living a few centuries ago and apparently he was really motivated to believe in a higher power but was having some trouble doing so. So he invented a "wager" that he thought made sense. It doesn't.
I'll paraphrase his famous wager and then give four flaws in it as they pop into my mind. There are more than these four.
Pascal's Wager:
1. Either God exists or God does not exist.
2. If God exists and you worship him, you go to Heaven.
3. If God exists and you fail to worhip him. you go to Hell.
4. If God does not exist, you lose nothing by worshiping him and gain nothing for not worshiping him.
Flaw Number One: False Dichotomy
The first flaw in this logic should be blatantly obvious to Muslims here, and other non-christian theists. Pascal was talking about the Christian God. He didn't seem to realize his false dichotomy. There could be a God and he could be one of the hundreds that you have not chosen to worship.
Many religious texts, including the bible, have themes of God forbidding the worship of false Gods/Idols, an themes of punishing those who do so. If you picked the wrong God, it is plausible that you will be punished MORE than somebody who picked no God.
Flaw Number Two: Directing Belief
The wager assumes that one can flick belief in God off and on like a light switch.
But belief doesn't work like that. Many atheists I know have tried to believe, earnestly. They come from religious families and felt comfortable with their belief in God and the relationship they perceived that they had with Christ before they lost it. But then logic and reason just got in the way and thy slipped away from the clutches of religious dogma.
And to the outsider, such as myself, who never believed, belief in God is alien. I may as well try to believe in Santa. No matter how hard I may try, it just won't work.
Belief is not as easy to direct as Pascal's Wager suggests.
Flaw Number Three: Believing for the Wrong Reasons
If your belief in God is based only on something as shallow as reward/punishment and not on true belief, love of the Lord, all that warm happy stuff, all that righteous stuff religious folks go on about (I'm an atheist so I don't pretend to understand it), isn't something wrong with this picture?
Flaw Number Four: You Do So Lose By Believing!
If there is no God, you lose nothing by believing and following his directives, so Pascal claims. This is just not so.
Religion is a system of rules and not all of them are beneficial absent the existence of the deity. Sure, it tells you to have some morals which you'd have anyway, but also adds oddities and seemingly arbitrary constraints on your behaviour. It also causes you to waste time on prayer (it is a waste if their turns out to be no God) which could be spent more productively.
The multitde of negatives religious belief brings with it could fill a large book, an its not one I'm looking to write here, as I'm sure it would offend many here (and its not the topic of this thread). My point here is that it is not so clear as Pascal believes it to be that you "lose nothing by believing if there is no God".
Last edited by Pygoscelis; 02-11-2007 at 05:55 AM.
Yes. I appologize for getting derailed. I never responded to your post. So I will now.
format_quote Originally Posted by steve
I've come to believe that to some extend this is not a matter of "mental capabilities" but more like a matter of willingness. From the moment I started to be "willing" to believe I found the answers to my pertinent questions who kept me from believing rather quickly.
Sounds to me like faith. The ability to believe in something despite a lack of any evidence or reason to believe otherwise. Some people are able to do this more than others. Just like some people are able to get into TV shows more than others and suspend disbelief even in the outrageous ones. An ability not without merit, but not one that we all posess equally.
But what do these people do with such questions? Do they try to look for an answer or do they just accept the question is un-answerable and allow it to inhibit their mind?
I would say it depends on the person and I would say most people do a bit of both. And I suppose it depends on how badly they want to know or need to believe a particular viewpoint. And it depends on how easily they are convinced/misled.
Also interesting is that according to Islam, believing or disbelieving gives no guarantee.
But the disbelieving or failing to believe does give a guarantee, correct?
To even make that previous challenge a bit more exciting. Not only do I believe that each rule has a practical benefit next to it's spiritual benefit. I also believe those practical benefits exceed any negative effects that could come from that same rule.
We will have to agree to disagree on that. And to me it isn't each individual rule so much as the collected whole. There is a gstalt to it. But again, that's a bit off topic and I'd rather not get into the many reasons I find belief deplorable, for that would likely get me banned here
So then you aknowledge that there is a nature component in human behaviour? Yet you maintain that punishment/reward is still the only dymanic? Can't you see the contradiction? Re read the posts above.
There in no contradiction. People will do good because God created us with a natural inclination to do good. However, you understand of what is good and what is not is not purely based only on your natural inclination, it is also influenced by our environment and upbringing. Though we all wish to do good, we differ as to what is good and what is not.
For example, an atheist might believe there is nothing wrong with a little alcohol here and there, but a Muslim recognises that any amount of alcohol is evil. The atheist thinks that way because of his environment and upbringing, and the Muslims thinks that way because he derives his morals from Islam, not from those around him.
Punishment and reward do come in to it as well. You might consider giving charity to be doing a good deed just for the sake of it, because it is a good deed in and of itself, and personal gain has nothing to do with it, right? But that is not true, there is punishment/reward. The reward is that you are satisfying the natural inclination in yourself, knowing that you have done something good for someone who is needy. That makes you happy, and there is the reward right there, the effect that the act has on your feelings.
On the other hand, being stingy and not giving in charity might make a person feel like a jerk, because he has the natural inclination to do good, that feeling of good is a punishment and is based on the persons natural inclination to do good, the person then recognises that he should give in charity to make the feeling of guilt go away and replace it with the happiness of knowing he helped someone.
If people only behave to seek reward and avoid punishment then there can be no nature, or Fitrah as you say. The sole dynamic would be selfish gratification, no nature involved, no being good for the sake of goodness, etc.
I'm sure he did not mean that it is only one or the other. Give him the benefit of the doubt, he isn't the blood hungry monster you guys are making him out to be.
Do you or do you not behave just to seek rewards from your God? I think that you avoid this part of the posts above because you do not truly behave only to seek reward and avoid punishment but stating so would unravel your posts above.
It is perfection of character to seek reward from God alone, and not from others. Meaning, you do not act only to be seen by others, or to satisfy yourself.
An example of giving in charity purely for the sake of God:
1. You know that God loves charity, and love nothing more than pleasing God.
2. You know that God loves selflessness, and so you strive to be selfless, because you love to please God, knowing that what ever God loves is pure goodness.
3. You see a poor person and because of what you know about God's attitude towards charity, and the fitrah that he has placed in you (i.e. you naturally feel sorry for them), you wish to give them charity, with the following intentions:
a. to please God
b. this secondary intention is like a subset of intention 'a', you want to help the poor because of the natural inclination that God has places in you. In other words, acting to please God does not mean that you don't care about the poor and helping them.
4. Knowing that you are acting only to please God, so you give the charity in secret so that even the person who receives the money doesn't know who gave it to him, and the persons left hand doesn't know what his hand has given. In other words, you want no thanks or reward from the poor themselves, you want your reward from God.
Again, I hope this isn't the ONLY reason you behave kindly towards others.
It isn't, but it is the best reason. Acting good towards others just because we are programmed to act that way doesn't mean much.
I'd just have to find somebody to convince you that Allah wants X and you'd do X no matter how terrible X was.
You would be more evil than him to lie about God to someone who trusts in God, not to mention that the person would have to be very ignorant to believe an atheists that God wants him to do X, and a person who is that devoted to God can not be as ignorant as that.
Sounds to me like faith. The ability to believe in something despite a lack of any evidence or reason to believe otherwise. Some people are able to do this more than others.
That is not true, Islam, the Quran in specific, challenges to mankind to think and to use their reasoning.
So many times you came across verses in the Quran along the lines of:
What is the matter with you, how do you judge?
Or: there are signs for people who think...
and the people of Hell will say:
And they will say: "Had we but listened or used our intelligence, we would not have been among the dwellers of the blazing Fire!"
[67:10]
The Quran also challenges mankind to produce another book like it- if it were based on pure faith why would there be any such need for the challenge?
You might not like to use the words the word 'proof' or 'evidence', but you can not deny that there are SIGNS.
.Though we all wish to do good, we differ as to what is good and what is not.
To a certain degree, yes. We certainly will differ on social taboos, like nudity, alcohol consumption, the F word, etc. But we're not likely to differ on fundamental principles of morality, like murder, theft, rape, etc.
The atheist thinks that way because of his environment and upbringing, and the Muslims thinks that way because he derives his morals from Islam, not from those around him.
You fail to aknowledge that Islam *is* typically his environment and upbringing. The two are no different. One just gets injected with religious social forces while the other gets secular social forces.
Punishment and reward do come in to it as well.
Certainly they do. BUt they are not the whole of it. Far from it.
You might consider giving charity to be doing a good deed just for the sake of it, because it is a good deed in and of itself, and personal gain has nothing to do with it, right? But that is not true, there is punishment/reward. The reward is that you are satisfying the natural inclination in yourself, knowing that you have done something good for someone who is needy.
This is the whole "there is no such thing as altruism" argument. What about when I do things because it is the right thing to do even though I don't particularly feel good or proud about it? This happens too.
I'm sure he did not mean that it is only one or the other. Give him the benefit of the doubt, he isn't the blood hungry monster you guys are making him out to be.
Go back and read the last page or so of this thread. I have been trying, very hard, to give him that benefit of the doubt, and he simply hasn't been taking it.
It is perfection of character to seek reward from God alone, and not from others. Meaning, you do not act only to be seen by others, or to satisfy yourself.
It is not perfection of character to seek reward at all.
You strive to be selfless to gain reward from God? That is contradictory. You aren't being selfless if you want a reward.
Acting good towards others just because we are programmed to act that way doesn't mean much.
Why do you speak of what it "means"? Good is done. Isn't that what truly matters? When you place your God ahead of what is Good (by which I mean socially constructive) that is when I start to worry about your potential actions and effect on any sector of society we may share.
You would be more evil than him to lie about God to someone who trusts in God
That is irrelevant to my point. His posts make him sound like a slave to God with no independent sense of morality. If this was so, then he would just have to be convinced by somebody that Allah wanted him to do X and he'd do it. No matter how horrible X was. And that is scary. That sounds to me like how terrorists may justify their actions.
not to mention that the person would have to be very ignorant to believe an atheists that God wants him to do X
Well yes sure. But what if it is an Imam saying it? What if it fits with scripture, given the right interpretation?
That is not true, Islam, the Quran in specific, challenges to mankind to think and to use their reasoning.
You've taken this out of context and run off on a tangent here. I was responding to steve's post.
You might not like to use the words the word 'proof' or 'evidence', but you can not deny that there are SIGNS.
We've covered this numerous times before. These "SIGNS" are impressive only to those who already believe and those who are easily impressed. Trumble had a thread going on this a while back. After dozens of pages of posts, it went nowhere.
Sounds to me like faith. The ability to believe in something despite a lack of any evidence or reason to believe otherwise.
Yes in teh end believing always comes down to faith. But what I was trying to say is that; where some people claim the following:
1. There is an unanswered question.
2. The question brings doubt to my belief
3. Therefor I am not capable to believe.
I often suspect the following:
1. I'm not willing to believe.
2. That unwillingness stops me from investigating religion enough to find answers.
(note, there are two different ways to investigate, you can investigate something with bias and determination to find flaws, or you can genuinly investigate and indulge the paradigm long enough to see it all adds up).
3. Therefor I am incapable of believing
But the disbelieving or failing to believe does give a guarantee, correct?
That depend, is the disbelieve out of ignorance? Out of incapability? Out of unwillingness? Those are three completely different things. Like I said, each action/decision is judged by its intentions.
We will have to agree to disagree on that. And to me it isn't each individual rule so much as the collected whole. There is a gstalt to it.
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