Russian Roulette and Pascal’s Wager
| July 2, 2009 | Posted by idnet.com.au under Atheism |
According to Allen McNeil the Gallup poll results for American scientists are:
Young-Earth Creationist = 5%
Guided Evolution = 40%
“Naturalistic” Evolution = 55%
For members of the National Academy of Sciences*, the results are:
Young-Earth Creationist = 3%
Guided Evolution = 14%
“Naturalistic” Evolution = 83%
*data from the Cornell Evolution Project, http://www.cornellevolutionproject.org
So here’s how I read it. One in six of the most accomplished living scientists believe in a living God responsible for the creation of mankind.
Pascal compares the risks of belief and disbelief:
1) If I disbelieve in God and I’m wrong, I lose everything.
2) If I disbelieve in God and I’m right, I gain nothing.
3) If I believe in God and I’m wrong, I lose nothing.
4) If I believe in God and I’m right, I gain everything.
The only rational position to take is #4 where you have everything to gain and nothing to lose. That is Pascal’s Wager.
Now if we take our odds of God being real from the greatest living scientists we find the odds of God being real are 1 in 6 (17%). So this is essentially like playing Russian Roulette with a 6-shot revolver with one bullet in it. If you pull the trigger and nothing happens you gain nothing but if you pull the trigger and the gun fires you lose your life. Why play that game? Even if the odds were a thousand or a million to one against getting a bullet in the head why play?
Dave Scott
235 Responses to Russian Roulette and Pascal’s Wager
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Vivid:
No, I’m not.
Yes, it would be nice to have time to keep up on all of the threads on this site. If latecomers aren’t welcome in this discussion, just let me know and I’ll bow out.
I didn’t mean equivocation in the sense of a deliberate trickery. There was no charge of deceit — sorry for the ambiguity.
No. It was to remind you of Mark’s usage of the word “nothing” so you could avoid unintentional equivocation if you express the alleged contradiction in the form “A and NOT A”.
The proof I referred to in #217 is as follows:
- Nothing is better than eternal happiness.
- A ham sandwich is better than nothing.
- Therefore, a ham sandwich is better than eternal happiness.
I trust you see the equivocation in that syllogism.
So the question is: Can you state your contradiction in the form “A and NOT A” without committing a similar fallacy (unintentionally, of course)?
Did somebody mention God hardening Pharaoh’s heart?
It does say that—at least 19 times just in the book of Exodus—it’s as though the king of Egypt didn’t have it in him to carry through on what he determined to do. The opposite seems to be true of the king of Assyria (Isaiah 10:7),
No mention of God hardening his heart—just (verse 12),
It’s as though even then there was tyranny in the East—as when it says of the final fall of Babylon (Isaiah 14:16-17),
In the West, however, there was technological advancement, vast trade and wealth, and so the word to the prince of Tyre was (Ezekiel 28:2-5),
On the subject of Pharaoh’s hardness of heart, it occurred to me that the Jews, who have meditated on the book of Exodus for thousands of years, should be able to provide an interesting perspective on this vexing theological conundrum.
And I was right. While browsing the Web, I came across an interesting response by Rabbi Naftali Silberberg to the question, Did Pharaoh have the ability to release the Israelites? The answer given is so thought-provoking that it deserves to be quoted in full:
Did Pharaoh have the ability to release the Israelites?
by Rabbi Naftali Silberberg
Free Choice is the essential component which justifies the notion of reward and punishment. It would be inappropriate to punish a robot for performing an immoral act which it was programmed to do. Nor would one reward a stove for cooking a sumptuous meal, or a bee for producing delicious honey. Humans, on the other hand, are rewarded and punished for their actions because they choose to do good or evil. This is why the story of Moses and Pharaoh has always puzzled Jewish philosophers: How could Pharaoh be punished for refusing to comply with G-d’s demands, if G-d Himself “hardened his heart”? To borrow a line from our Patriarch Abraham: “Will the Judge of the entire earth not perform justice?!”
Many interesting answers are given to explain this seeming injustice. Nachmanides offers an answer which is as profound as it is astoundingly simple. Nachmanides argues that had G-d refrained from hardening Pharaoh’s heart, he would have then been deprived of the ability to make a coherent and true choice. Indeed, the plagues would have compelled him to let the Israelites go — an option he most certainly would not have chosen in the absence of G-d’s strong hand.
Pharaoh’s freeing the Israelites after their G-d had ravaged his land with frogs, lice, wild beasts, pestilence, etc., can be compared to handing over one’s wallet to an armed mugger — neither is an act of free “choice.”
Since the scale was so heavily weighted towards Pharaoh’s sending the Jews out – after all, what would any normal sovereign choose to do when his country is slowly and systematically being destroyed – G-d steeled Pharaoh’s resolve, causing that the plagues shouldn’t interfere with his decision-making process, and allowing him to continue expressing his true desire. G-d hardened his heart so that he would have the strength and ability to freely choose his course of action – and he freely chose to retain the Israelites as slaves. Thus Pharaoh rightfully earned divine retribution for his shameful behavior.
The extent to which G-d went to ensure the integrity of Pharaoh’s free choice is nothing short of incredible. And the intended moral is equally compelling and uplifting.
If the benevolent and all-merciful Creator manipulated Pharaoh’s psyche and cognitive abilities to guarantee his ability to choose evil, certainly He does anything necessary to ensure our ability to choose good!
It is very popular to blame a plethora of external factors for one’s shortcomings. But the Torah teaches us that even the most awesome and devastating circumstances don’t affect a person’s G-d-given of freedom of choice.
We must never become discouraged. No matter what is written in the pages of our private history books, no matter our current personal situation, we always have the moral strength to choose the proper path.
(End of the Rabbi’s response.)
———————————-
So there you have it. You may agree or disagree with what the Rabbi wrote, but if you still find it implausible, then ask yourself this: if the Jews (to whom the Bible was originally given) originally believed in a God who predestined people to commit evil acts, then how did they later come to believe so strongly in free will? And why is there no surviving Jewish tradition of a theological controversy concerning the question of whether God predestined people to sin, as we would expect if the Jews changed their mind on the issue? And why are there no surviving Jewish predestinationists? The notion of predestination is wholly alien to the Jewish faith.
Historically speaking, I think it is much more plausible to assume that the verses in Exodus about God hardening Pharaoh’s heart originally meant something other than what they appear to mean (on a naive reading), than to assume that Exodus was written by a predestinationist.
If you’re going to try to interpret a difficult Biblical text, it makes sense to ask how Jewish and Christian believers have interpreted it in times past. Think about it.
RE 220:
Rob,
“Yes, it would be nice to have time to keep up on all of the threads on this site. If latecomers aren’t welcome in this discussion, just let me know and I’ll bow out.”
Rob I am a poker player. I play for fun and of course I want to win. About 15 mintes before seeing your post I was in a hand with two other players. I had pocket fives. The player in seat two raises, seat three calls and I call. The flop comes AJ5 giving me a set. Seat two makes a big bet, seat three doubles it, I push all in with my set. Seat two goes all in and so does seat three.Huge pot!!
The turn is a Jack giving me a full house. The river is another JACK!! Seat two shows pocket queens, seat thre beats me with 4 of a kind with runner runner jacks. Im steaming although I know thats just poker and if you play enough you are eventually going to see your sets beat by full houses, your full houses beat by four of a kind, and your quads beaten by straight flushes. Still I was internally steaming.
Right after that I saw your post and took out my anger on you. You did nothing wrong I was a jerk in my reply to you. I apologize.
Vivid
Re 222:
Vj,
This “vexing theological conundrum” is explained by Paul in the ninth chapter of Romans.
Vivid, absolutely no offense taken. Losing with a great hand and a big pot can get anyone’s goat.
“You weren’t by any chance using illegal substances when you wrote it?”
Well Mark I did promise you I would try real hard to imagine six impossible things before breakfast so I have been spending some time with the Queen in Wonderland.
MF: The remainder of your first argument rests on this fallacy.
To say X does not exist is the same as saying X has no existence. If X has non existence it is nothing and the X stands for nothing. Since a non existence is no thing i.e. nothing and X stands for nothing, to say nothing exists is no different than saying X does not exist.
This is fairly priceless. So to say nothing exists is no different from saying the King of France does not exist? As it happens there is no King of France – so nothing exists!
I am glad you brought up the King of France because a really weird thing happened to me when I got home from work. I was on my computer and then all of a sudden Napoleon and his horse popped into existence right there in my living room. What a mess the horse made but I mean it ,WOW, poof, Napoleon and his horse “just happening” in my living room. Can you believe it?
Mark this is fairly priceless. If you are correct that for me to say nothing exists is no different than saying the King of France exists, etc, then to say “does not exist” is no different from saying the King of France does not exist, no different than saying the King of France violates LNC. I am demonstrating that for the purposes of the subject matter we are talking about the words are interchangeable. That it is valid for one to use either “does not exist” if that is what they prefer or “nothing” if that is there preference.
MF: “I don’t agree with this step at all. If you change X to refer to “nothing” rather than the particle then the sentence is no longer true.”
Actually I did not change anything. If you follow the progress I started by asking a question about what X was.
Vivid from 215: “What does it mean to say “if X does not exist” ? What is this X that does not exist? X stands for something. What does it stand for? YOU WOULD THINK IT STANDS FOR THE same X that this X is or is not creating. What is this X that exists that the other X is or is not creating? The X stands for the quantum particle you refer to in 187 . “A quantum particle appears without a cause.””
“Now IF the X is a quantum particle it is valid to insert “quantum particle” where we see X.” End 215.
Please note the terms “you would think” and the word if”
But I conclude that X is not the quantum particle based on what you claim the X is
Vivid from 215: “So it is not the quantum particle that is the X in “if X does not exist” According to you the X is nothing.” End 215
In order to correctly define what X stands for one needs to accurately represent what the person says X is. And in # 157 you say
MF: “Nothing creates it (not even itself). It just happens.”
So I did not change anything. If I would have changed what X is it would have been to represent it as the quantum particle. Since it would be improper to say X stands for the quantum particle, since that would be a misrepresentation of what you said we need to insert what you said X stands for
Vivid from 215:“So now we need to insert nothing where before we inserted “quantum particle””
MK: “Does not exist when? It does not exist at one moment and then exists at another. This isn’t a problem.”It is exactly what I have been claiming is possible. I did not say this would violate the LNC”
And I addressed this in #174
MF: It might just not be there one second and there the next second.”
Vivid: Then it is not simultaneous which does not violate the law of non contradiction.
Vivid
I have been following the online debate here about the possibility of something appearing without a cause, and I’d like to make a few comments.
Several contributors have argued that the sudden appearance of a virtual particle without a cause does not violate the law of non-contradiction (hereafter LNC). Even if this were correct, it would not establish that the event in question is possible. As philosophers are well aware, there are many kinds of possibility: logical possibility is the “thinnest” kind there is. Other kinds of possibility include ontological possibility and nomological possibility. Any kind of possibility which makes no attempt to mirror the deep structure of reality is incapable of telling us what can and cannot happen; all it tells us is what we can and cannot imagine.
It has been pointed out above that the appearance of large objects (e.g. a man, or a horse) without a cause does not violate LNC either. Neither does the existence of a winged horse. So I would ask the skeptics: do you think these events are possible?
We also need to keep in mind the limitations of the logical notation we use, when discussing logical possibility. For instance, how do we logical represent the statement “a precedes b,” or for that matter “a causes b”? Sure, we can use relational operators to express these statements mathematically (e.g. Pab or Cab), but unless we know how time and causality actually work, we are just playing with letters. What kind of logic should we use, when talking about time, or causality? We don’t know yet. What does that tell us? It tells us that we don’t yet have a general theory telling us how to think about these subjects. Until we do, the fancy logical notation(s) that philosophers use is a mere fig-leaf covering their embarrassing ignorance.
Some contributors have berated Vivid for stubbornly insisting that an entity which appears without a cause would have to be a self-created entity. Not so, they vehemently protest: an uncaused entity is not the same thing as a self-caused entity. I’ve been thinking long and hard about the point Vivid is making, and I think I’ve got it.
The underlying principle that Vivid is appealing to is this:
If an entity (call it E) begins to exist at time t, then necessarily, there exists some entity at or prior to t which is capable of generating E.
(I wrote “at or prior to” because I don’t want the discussion to get sidetracked around the metaphysical question of whether causes temporally precede their effects or are simultaneous with them.)
In other words, an entity having a beginning in time must be actualizable, or realizable if you will; otherwise it will never be actual.
Thus for Vivid, a self-caused entity would actually be less absurd than an uncaused entity. For at least a self-caused entity would have a generator: itself. That’s absurd, but not as absurd for Vivid as the idea of an entity beginning in time, but having no generator at all. Why?
The reason is that Vivid envisages possibility as something active, not passive. Things don’t just happen because there is nothing to prevent them from happening. They happen because there is something that is able to make them happen (i.e. actualize them). Without that something, it is meaningless to describe an event as possible. All we can say is that there is no impediment to the event’s occurring.
The profound metaphysical insight that Vivid is appealing to here is that the notion of actuality is a more fundamental notion than that of possibility. Actuality precedes possibility, in the order of things, and the possible is constrained by the actual.
vjtorley,
I’m not sure if I’m a skeptic in this context or not, but let me try. Suppose we are considering the event of a horse suddenly materializing without cause. I think everyone would agree that this event is either a) incredibly unlikely but possible, or b) impossible. My own answer is “I don’t know”, so I guess I haven’t ruled out position a). How would one prove that b) is correct (if “prove” is the correct word here)?
#227
Vjtorley
This is a valiant effort to shore up vivid’s case. To do so, you have to put a lot of words into his mouth.
I will restrict myself to saying that I was only talking about logical possibility. As you say there are many grades of possibility. If we are talking about something as mind-bogglingly inconceivable as the beginning of the universe then I would not feel confident about making any pronouncements about possibility except logical possibility. In earlier comments there are many examples of things that at one time would have been considered fundamentally impossible at some deep metaphysical level but now turn to be possible (e.g. triangles, the sum of whose angles are less than or more than 180 degrees)
#226
Vivid
I am sorry. I am bored with this. I will let others judge the merits of your argument.
RE 227
Hi Vj,
Interesting post. I disagree with Mark, I don’t think you were trying to make a valiant effort to shore up my case rather you just offered up a different perspective.
VJ: “Thus for Vivid, a self-caused entity would actually be less absurd than an uncaused entity. For at least a self-caused entity would have a generator: itself. That’s absurd, but not as absurd for Vivid as the idea of an entity beginning in time, but having no generator at all. “
Correct, at least there is a magician and a hat.
VJ: “The profound metaphysical insight that Vivid is appealing to here is that the notion of actuality is a more fundamental notion than that of possibility. Actuality precedes possibility, in the order of things, and the possible is constrained by the actual.”
I may be wrong about this but I really do not think that those who accept the possibility of something coming from nothing reflect deeply on what nothing is. Now the perceptive observer should see that the term “ what nothing is” attributes a something to nothing an “is ness” if you will. However that is the only way one can make a statement about nothing, we have to treat it as something to even talk about the concept of nothing. This is why that to try to even conceive of nothing we must think of something. Because nothing at its core is unintelligible we are always making efforts to make it intelligible. The only way to do that is to treat it as something.
Regarding your comments about possibility’s, it is important to always keep in mind that nothing has no possibilities.
Vivid
RE 225
Rob , thanks thats very gracious of you.
Vivid
Mark Frank,
Quantum mechanics cannot be used as an analogy to support the notion that something can exist and not exist at the same time.
We can only observe quantum particles being ‘seen’ and then ‘not being seen’. This in no way suggests QPs are existing and then not existing. Rather it suggests they are moving from one dimension to another and back again.
It is curious you would exclude such a likely scenario from consideration.
‘Out of sight is not out of Mind’.
#233
Quantum mechanics cannot be used as an analogy to support the notion that something can exist and not exist at the same time.
I agree. Luckily I have never suggested that something can exist and not exist at the same time.
The blatant way in which Quantum mechanics defies our concepts of time and space, even though this is in itself a falsification of primary predictions of materialism, has been used by materialists to justify all sorts of quackery trying to get around the overwhelming implications of design being brought forth in science. Such as Barrow and Tipplers “weird” postulation of a “evolved human” creating the universe, Dr. Strauss illustrates in this following video:
Anthropic Principle – God Created The Universe – Michael Strauss PhD.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjn8poWD7tM
Yet the individual quantum events operate well within the overriding transcendent laws and principles of this universe. i.e. though the individual events defy time and space, these events are rigorously subjected to finely tuned transcendent laws which prevent expression of the unlimited probabilistic resource witnessed in quantum mechanics. (Koonins “Many Worlds” explanation for the Cambrian Explosion completely ignores this obvious fact) It seems the materialists is trying to have his cake and eat it too, all the while completely ignoring the necessity of a transcendent Creator to explain the universe in the first place.
In this following video, Dr. Strauss brings some much needed clarity to the role of the “observer” in Quantum Mechanics.
Quantum Mechanics – The Limited Role Of The Observer – Michael Strauss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elg83xUZZBs