Atheist Response to Pascal's Wager
Pascal offered this wager to all atheists for a reason to become theist:
Belief/Wager That God Exists:
If God exists: Gain all
If God does not exist: Status quo (nothing)
Belief/Wager Against God:
If God exists: Misery
If God does not exist: Status quo (nothing)
You can essentially see the argument best here. As an analogy:
You can bet on two flips of the coin. There are two sets of wagers:
Bet for Heads:
If Heads: Win $1k
If Tails: Nothing
Bet for Tails:
If heads: Lose $1k
If tails: Nothing
From the above, you can best see which seems intuitively best. It seems to be a strong argument. In fact, many people base their entire beliefs just on this logic.
Atheist Response/Wager
Premises:
+ Believing in certain Gods takes away personal meaning to ones life. Likely, if you do believe in the above, that statement will startle you and you immediately want to jump in response to it. Here is why:
- If you believe in a monotheistic God, you believe that everything has been planned out for you, life has been pre-arranged, an entity knows everything about you, etc.
- Essentially, you relinquish personal responsibility - your credibility for all your actions.
Quintessentials:
+ If you believe in God, you will live a life to fulfill expectations of that God. Of course, this severely depends on your definition of God. Considering that the above wager works from a God that would punish you for eternity if you did not believe in him, I will respond with that God in mind.
+ All you can be certain of if this moment and what you are right now. If belief in a God were factual, we would not be able to debate about this. Let us work from the standpoint of what we can see and function with.
+ If we work from the above, then a meaningful life would be one that utilizes fundamental and functionally viewable beliefs.
- Example 1: If I believe in gravity, I will not jump off a cliff.
- Example 2: If I believe in God, I will do my best to abide by their doctrine.
This would likely include worship, etc.
With these premises in mind, consider this alternate wager:
Belief/Wager God Exists:
God Exists: Gain all
God Does Not Exist: Wasted Personal Life
Belief/Wager God Does Not Exist:
God Exists: Misery
God Does Not Exist: Fulfilling Life.
Confident Atheist Wager
This may also apply to fundamentalist Atheists (ie. those that fervently deny any proof of a God. They believe God does not exist whatsoever).
Many Atheists are very confident that God does not exist and feel no worry about misery. To demonstrate to Theists how an Atheist views this wager on a more personal level, consider this matrix:
Belief/Wager God Exists:
God Exists: God does not exist, so this would not be a considered wager.
God Does not Exist: Wasted Personal Life
Belief/Wager GOd Does not Exist:
God Exists: Not a concern; that type of God simply does not exist.
God Does not Exist: Fulfilling Personal Life.
The above is not an argument so much as an illustration of how Atheists tend to think of the manner. It truly comes out looking like this:
Live An Independent Life:
Atheist
Live A Dependent Life:
Theist
(Keep in mind before responding that this is in response to the type of God that would punish [misery] for not believing in it, as proposed in the initial argument by Pascal. Other definitions of God are open to discussion, but not entirely relevant.)
What do you think..?
References:
+ Pascal's Wager. (2004) Stanford University. Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/
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