From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Sat Dec 05 1998 - 18:22:16 MST
Pascal's wager is restated to argue a different point:
> One: if you do not believe in christian god there are two
> possibilities, if christian god exists you will go in hell,
> if it doesn't nothing happen. Two: if you do believe in god,
> and it doesn't exist, then there is no consequence, but if
> it does (finally) exist, then JackpoT!!! you go in heaven.
Poster contends that the fallacy is lack of probabilities,
but it is actually quite a bit simpler and more obvious than
that: the premises of the argument are simply false. There
/is/ a cost to belief, and there /is/ a benefit to non-belief,
and both the costs and benefits of both choices must be
evaluated to make a rational choice.
Indeed, I personally think that it is not possible for a
person who honestly believes in God to be a moral person or
lead an effective, worthwhile life, so the cost of belief
is very high--the sacrifice of this life for the false hope
in the next.
The same logical fallacy is often used to argue for cryonics.
(replace "belief" with "cryo-contract", "heaven" with
"survival", and "hell" with "death"). The fallacy is the
same: there /is/ a measurabe cost to cryonics (in hard cash)
and possible benefits to abstention (though these are more
speculative: perhaps the money you save will be invested in
better immortality technologies). On balance, I think
cryonics is the right choice to make (it is for me), but not
because of such weak arguments.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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