Well I know people who went there for football matches and couldn’t praise the hospitality in the basement parties enough, but Iranians have told me rather more… salacious and frankly decadent stories!
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and in a spectacular “special place in hell” kinda way, I’d imagine, depending on the relationship of the chosen flavor to the one that turned out to be true (or at least the one that got your soul in the swap meet)
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He explicitly said that it was still cool to call him Prince, though.
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Yeah over time I came to realize I had a lot more in common with similar minded religious people than I did with say, the average libertarian atheist guy.
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I don’t think he actually wanted to be called that, as far as I can tell he wanted to be able to release his music without being under a restrictive contract to Warner Music. The symbol was just a legal fiction.
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It seemed weird to me at the time, but sticking it to a record company is something I can actually get behind, especially one that purports to own your name.
“Warner Bros took the name, trademarked it, and used it as the main marketing took to promote all of the music I wrote,” Prince once said in a press release. “The company owns the name Prince and all related music marketed under Prince. I became merely a pawn used to produce more money for Warner Bros.”
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Since Heaven is already defined as infinite pleasure, then no, your logic won’t work. And since this particular infinity isn’t defined, we might as well assume one that can’t be exceeded. Same would hold true for all posited heavens.
So if the benefit is all the same, then you could start arguing on the cost side. Which god-belief is the lowest cost you are willing to wager on? Could it be one with cost as low as Atheism (or so close as to be negligible)? Then you’d be choosing between hypothetical benefit vs no benefit with the same cost.
I’m just spitballing. I seriously doubt anyone, theist or atheist, makes a decision that is only based on logic. But it’s still interesting to play with the logic.
There’s another paradox worth exploring here too.
Let’s say you have two people who live equally virtuous and philanthropic lives; one an atheist, the other a believer.
When they die, can it not be argued that if heaven does exist, surely the atheist is more deserving of a place? After all, their actions were truly driven by selflessness, whereas the believer’s were driven at least in part by self-interest.
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But since nearly all religions insist they alone are the one true path (Buddhism seems to have an ‘out’ here) the wager is like walking up to a roulette wheel and placing all your chips on one number, if you guess right you gain everything, and if you guess wrong you suffer for all eternity. A very shitty wager.
I hope in Sinead’s case religion is more about finding some kind of stability and peace in her life than being dogmatic and preachy.
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Make a list of gods and go through them one at a time. You either say no to all of them or say yes to one and stop.
I think that shows the paucity of infinity. “Infinite” rewards could just be all the Vegimite you can eat. So I’d say that you can improve on infinity by choosing the best infinity. Is it the one where you get 72 virgins (or raisins)? The one where you get your own planet? The one where your loved ones won’t be there because they didn’t bet on the right god? So many to choose from.
Granted, my “argument” won’t hold up to formal math or logic…
And I think you are right about reason not really being the fundamental calculus in choosing religion, rather I think reason is more of a post hoc thing.
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That particular wager is only a projected winner if a majority of the selected gods’ preferences lean toward social generosity and collective responsibility…
(but yes, I share your befuddlement that people don’t generally find being excellent to each other to be the best bet, generally speaking)
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I’m just sad because having followed her story since I was a child and having the experiences I do with mental illness, I doubt the happiness she’s talking about will last that long… and it’s going to keep sucking while people laugh at her. It’s just a sad story… I love her voice and as I was once a young girl with a sad life who sang, I guess I’ve always felt a kinship.
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No, I mean literally a loophole for traveling among infidels.
Huh? Pascal’s Wager is about getting into Heaven. Unless you’re Elijah, you don’t get to do that without dying. If at the point of death, you have made the wrong choice, you don’t get a do-over. You’re dead.
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I would counter her arguement by saying any intelligent human’s study ends with atheism as the natural conclusion, which makes all scriptures worthless archaic anachronisms.
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They never do (threads on religion). I don’t know what it is about discussions on religion that make so many otherwise thoughtful and nuanced folks around here ignore that nuance…
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But it so much easier just to mock her choices! /s
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I’m not talking about one at a time with lives. I’m talking about figuratively getting a piece of paper and writing down a list, then going through the list.
1 Zeus - nope
2 Odin - nope
and so on until you hit upon one you will wager on. Or run through the entire list and wager on “none of the above.”
Heck, use any system you want to pick one. Darts for all I care.
I think Julia Sweeney’s story of her religious journey is much more uplifting one than Shuhada Davitt’s. Sweeney’s is told with good humor in Letting Go of God and she doesn’t come off as being literally preachy the way Magda Davitt does. Sweeney attempted to reconnect with her religion, found it wanting and looked for one that made sense, eventually coming to the conclusion that none of them do.
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