greenmystic wrote:Hi, guys! I'm currently studying Philosophy of Religion, and my professor has assigned us a reading on Blaise Pascal's
The Wager. I need your help and insight for this matter. There are lots of phrases that I cannot comprehend fully well while reading the article. Let us start with this one.
"And thus, when one is forced to play, he must renounce reason to preserve his life, rather than risk it for infinite gain, as likely to happen as the loss of nothingness."
I do not really get the point of the quoted statement above. Can anybody shed some light on this one? Thank you.
It would require more context than simply this statement to interpret. As to the gist of Pascal's Wager, on the other hand, this was understood by most to state that considering knowledge in general as incomplete about the world, even IF some may have rational means to question religion, then he suggests that since the threat of the posited claims within a given religion (Christianity of his environment in the day) asserts punishment or reward in an afterlife is dependent upon ones acts in life, we should act
as if the claims are true [a gamble or wager] just in case it IS true because the consequences would be worse for not doing so.
The logic is as follows:
Some authority asserts consequences for disobedience.
This 'authority' is popularly established in the environment as 'true' even if this is merely a political expedient with respect to nature.
You can choose to question this authority but risk the consequences by doing so OR you can choose to not question it by gambling they are true in ACT but at least avoid the potential consequences should you be wrong.
Since the apparent threat of disobedience or non-compliance has apparently worse consequences while the act of complying (according to Pascal) are at least practical in present reality, then he proposes we accept the present authority at least by complying outwardly [a pretense, gamble, or placement of
faith].
Its fault to me is that while this may seem to be appealing in some grander picture of reality if only to be cautious, for the unlucky ones who get victimized by such authorities regardless of truth, they will be 'sacrificed' with respect to the whole but NOT to those who actually get sacrificed. In a sense, it is not sincere 'sacrifice' as those who play along are merely allowing others to be forced to accept themselves as objects of sacrifice for something they may not even believe in.
As an example of how this plays out in modern society, take Dr Phil's belief that in the special case of children, if or where one even remotely suggests abuse, we should default to posit their claim as authoritatively 'true' by default and place the onus on the accuse to have to prove they are innocent rather than the traditional "innocent until proven guilty" ideology which many of us believe. In other words, Dr Phil is arguing the same as Pascal here in that he presumes for the sake of even one possible case of abuse that might seep through the cracks, we should default to trust what we interpret upon a child as abuse because the alternative is presumed to be worse: that children will continue to be abused in an even greater way.
I hate this line of thinking. It is similar with those who support the death penalty even IF many or even most MAY actually be innocent. It is actually ignorantly derived from their own internal belief (religiously derived) that in the end, God will 'fix' the errors. It imposes an assumption upon us all that we ALL actually DO believe in certain fundamental natural moral justice to Nature itself in some way. But it is begging and actually does not even risk those who believe it. That is, they aren't actually 'sacrificing' anything of themselves but imposing that others should regardless.
See my theory on "Sacrifice" overview for what I think was initially intrinsic in ancient societies to officially demonstrate trust between two parties.
http://www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic.p ... ce#p449679
In the case of religious people demanding all of us to gamble, the 'gamble' is not actually about their own to sacrifice but to others. It makes it insincere because they aren't willing to comply with the same standards of sacrifice to demonstrate their own trustworthiness as per my argument on "Sacrifice".
