In the recent Candide episode we saw how Voltaire satirized Leibniz’s solution to the Problem of Evil. The Problem of Evil is still a popular topic in contemporary philosophy of religion. One twist on the traditional problem of evil comes from philosopher and theologian, Marilyn McCord Adams, who suggests that for Christians the principal problem of evil is the compatibility of God and hell (especially if hell is understood as a place where people suffer forever).
While this question may be particularly pointed for Christians or adherents of other faiths which teach the existence of both an all-loving, all-powerful being and the existence of a place of eternal punishment, a careful examination of the logical compatibility of God and hell can be used more generally as a way of addressing questions about the nature of love, justice, and the human condition. From St. Augustine’s City of God to Jonathan Edward’s Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, many influential thinkers have claimed not only that the existence of God and the existence of hell are compatible but that they rationally go hand in hand. This view has, unsurprisingly, been rejected by many religious and nonreligious individuals alike. Adams, for example, rejects that God and eternal punishment are compatible and instead holds to the doctrine of universal salvation—the view that eventually everybody will be reconciled to God and forgiven of any past wrongs done.
The topic of universal salvation has also made an impact on literature. Particularly within the last two hundred years there have been several powerful literary expressions of this conviction that if a truly all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing creator exists, then universal salvation will obtain in the end. Several prominent examples are George MacDonald’s Lilith, A Romance
Recently this question has also moved into the genre of popular nonfiction, starting with Rob Bell’s Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived
“A reoccurring question in response to Bell is the Pascalian-style question of “what if you’re wrong?” What if there is some kind of eternal punishment out there that we need to avoid? For those that see hell as a live possibility, it does seem like a pretty big gamble to assume its non-existence.”
Please – really? Not this silly old argument again. The Christian, for example, asks me “what if you’re wrong?” as if I should pretend to believe just in case I’m going to burn in eternal hellfire if God exists. Firstly, is God that stupid that he can’t tell the difference between me actually believing and me pretending to believe based on Pascal’s logic? Secondly, I could just as easily ask the Christian “well what if you’re wrong?”. If it turns out that the real god is Allah we’ll both be burning in hell for eternity. There is no gamble in assuming the non-existence of something you find implausible in the vanishingly small probabilistic sense. To do otherwise would be completely disingenuous and, I would think, shouldn’t really pull the wool over the eyes of an infinitely intelligent deity.
Also, why on earth would someone who sees hell as a live possibility assume its non-existence? That just wouldn’t happen – sample size zero. It would be like me assuming there is a live possibility that there is life elsewhere in the universe but assuming that other life doesn’t exist.
I think you are misinterpreting The Great Divorce, but yes, eternal punishment is a hard issue for many people. What’s interesting to me is that it’s not only not hard, but actually necessary for others. IOW it seems to be more an issue of personality than of logic or philosophy.
Russell, I totally sympathize with your resistance to the Pascalian line. The majority of people (both the religious and non-religious alike) are with you on this one and I think with good reason. But to be fair to those utilizing Pascalian-style arguments, I don’t think they are under the delusion that they could trick God by “pretending” to believe. I imagine most of them would be more apt to go with the response Pascal gave which was more or less “fake it ‘til you make it.” Here what really matters are one’s genuine intentions (to believe). The idea is that these genuine intentions/desires to believe are the best way to get at real belief. I am not suggesting that you should be satisfied with this new response, but it is very different from one’s aim being to deceive God.
On your second point I think you are exactly right. Pascal’s wager very much strikes me as a false dichotomy as well, for precisely the reasons you’ve given. Especially in our increasingly globalized world it has become untenable to use Pascal’s Wager to draw any religious conclusions. But to be fair to those I have referenced as giving Pascalian-style responses to Bell, the Pascalian point represents only a part of their larger responses (and considering I’ve not read all of any of their responses I won’t comment further on them).
I disagree with your conclusion that no one would seek to dismiss something that they currently consider a live possibility. Perhaps the key to our disagreement is that you contextualize your response to a single point in time, but I was speaking about something that would occur across time. It is very much a part of human nature to try to push away beliefs and ideas that are unpleasant (take for example wishful thinking or self-deception). It seems true that people do not (typically) instantaneously suppress beliefs, but often we are able to seek out the kind of people or information that help us to, over time, rationalize away a belief that something is a live possibility.
“… I don’t think they are under the delusion that they could trick God by “pretending” to believe. I imagine most of them would be more apt to go with the response Pascal gave which was more or less “fake it ‘til you make it.” Here what really matters are one’s genuine intentions (to believe). The idea is that these genuine intentions/desires to believe are the best way to get at real belief. ”
Hi Mark,
Ignoring the arguably disingenuous nature of the exercise, I don’t think people can really force themselves to believe something. At best this “fake it ’til you make it” technique is an exercise in self-deception. At worst they are literally pretending to be believe something they don’t. It’s also cart-before-the-horse thinking. “I WANT to believe so I WILL believe.” That’s as far removed from what you assert to be “… the best way to get at real belief” as I can imagine.
Cheers.
Many people would agree with you, Russell, that people can’t force themselves to believe something. You seem here to be advocating a rejection of “direct doxastic voluntarism.” However, many others would advocate a method of “indirect doxastic voluntarism” in which we, over time, are able to influence what we naturally believe based on what we are exposed to and involved in. If this topic at all interests you there is an Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on it (http://www.iep.utm.edu/doxa-vol/). Also, please note that I, personally, at no point in this discussion “assert” that a “fake it ‘til you make it” strategy is the best way to get at real belief. I merely offer this as a more reasonable (and charitable) interpretation of those proposing Pascalian-style worries than suggesting that these individuals believe they can deceive God.
“Many people would agree with you, Russell, that people can’t force themselves to believe something. You seem here to be advocating a rejection of “direct doxastic voluntarism.” However, many others would advocate a method of “indirect doxastic voluntarism” in which we, over time, are able to influence what we naturally believe based on what we are exposed to and involved in. If this topic at all interests you there is an Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on it (http://www.iep.utm.edu/doxa-vol/). Also, please note that I, personally, at no point in this discussion “assert” that a “fake it ‘til you make it” strategy is the best way to get at real belief. I merely offer this as a more reasonable (and charitable) interpretation of those proposing Pascalian-style worries than suggesting that these individuals believe they can deceive God.”
Thanks for the link Mark. I’m certainly in the Bernard Williams camp on direct doxastic voluntarism. It seems pretty obvious to me that anything else is a contrivance, even if the person ends up believing it.
Also, believing something doesn’t make it true and people’s desire to believe doesn’t get them any closer to the truth, just closer to where they want to be. I wish I lived in a universe where there was a giant invisible Cane Toad overseeing our daily travails but, even if I surrounded myself with similarly minded people and ended up believing it, that says nothing about the existence of the cane toad. Now, for “Cane Toad”, insert “God”.
Apologies for suggesting that it was you making the assertion regarding “fake it ’til you make it”. To be honest I actually don’t think that most people who take the Pascal route do believe that they can deceive God because I don’t think they believe there is a God, otherwise they wouldn’t need to take the Pascal route in the first place. It’s just that they want to believe so why not pretend and see what happens? I would say that it begins for most people as being, however well intended, disingenuous but that some would end up (via self-deception) believing it. There’s no way of knowing, of course, but I would say there would be as many people who profess to believe and don’t as there are people who believe.
You raise what I consider to be a very relevant, and important, point by calling to our attention that the pragmatic/practical justification Pascal provides gives us no good theoretical reason to believe in God. Nor, of course, is this the point of the argument. However, if one’s goal in forming beliefs and/or doing philosophy is to get at the truth (and I can think of no better goal), this argument is lacking in the sense that it doesn’t give us reason to believe that beliefs formed on such a wager would help achieve that worthwhile end. In fact, a worry one could reasonably have is that allowing pragmatic situations this kind of sway in belief formation will lead to one possessing less truth!
The question of what percentage of those who profess to believe in God actually believe in God is another very interesting question. It is one which I do not feel comfortable on conjecturing about much. But, I do think it is an interesting question on many levels (e.g., sociologically, psychologically, historically, etc.).
Crowhill, I’m assuming in suggesting that I am misinterpreting The Great Divorce, you are referring to the fact that nothing about Lewis’ story guarantees that everyone will end up in heaven (and in fact seems to indicate the opposite at points). To this point, I certainly concede. And I further concede that this goes against the simplest explanation of universalism. However, it is the fact that in The Great Divorce it never ceases to be possible that any individual leave hell and enter heaven and that the power forever remains with the individual to choose where he or she resides that has made this one of the texts that universalists throughout the twentieth century have championed. However, it has been a very long time since I read the novel, so if there are other points that you think require clarification, I would welcome what you have to say.
I too find it interesting that this question of the compatibility of God and hell strikes only some people as problematic. It is an interesting question of psychology or personality theory as to why this is so. However, I would be hesitant to go so far as to suggest that it is more an issue of personality than of logic or philosophy. Most philosophers of religion would agree that the matter is not purely logical either (i.e., it is not a matter of the concepts God and hell or God and evil entailing a logical contradiction). Most of the main proponents of arguments from evil favor “evidential arguments from evil” which utilize empirical, inductive and/or abductive methods.
Philosopher and theologian, Marilyn McCord Adams, “suggests that for Christians the principal problem of evil is the compatibility of God and hell”.
It seems to me that this is a problem only for Christians, theologians, or those who take the basic premise seriously. For those who do not hold to literalistic conceptions of God and hell, the compatibility problem will seem quite fake and even silly. For those outside the faith, this isn’t a compatibility problem involving any realities but rather a result of theological incoherence. In other words, the incompatible factors in this problem are both theological posits.
The traditional problem of evil asks if we can reconcile actual suffering and cruelty in the world with the central theological posit, namely God as loving and all-powerful. The problem of evil thus raises a skeptical point against theist’s central doctrine. The problem of hell, on the other hand, pits one theological posit against the other so that the skeptical point about real world evil is sort of pushed aside. Now both factors are completely inside the theological framework and the actual human world enters into the issue at no point. That’s what I mean by saying it’ll seem quite fake and silly – unless you’re already inside that faith or otherwise accept those theological posits.
Going even further, I think one could make a case that hell was invented by theologians in order to threaten and frighten people into accepting their theology. Edwards painting a picture wherein we sinners are all dangling by a thread over the pits of hell. Would it be fair to characterize this powerful imagery as outrageously manipulative? I think so. Under basic ethical principles, any contract signed under such duress would be considered null and void.
David, I think that you have identified perfectly the range of thinkers for which Adam’s particular concern poses a worry. I think that you are also right in pointing out that it is significant that one of the premises in a traditional argument from evil is empirical (e.g. “Evil exists”, “Horrendous suffering occurs frequently”, etc) and that claims of the existence of God and hell are both non-empirical claims (or at least the vast majority of people would agree that these claims are non-empirical).
One other distinction that might be worth pointing to: traditional arguments from evil are frequently used to argue that God (in the classical sense of an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good creator) does not exist. But the theist who tries to address a seeming incompatibility between God and hell is not trying to craft an argument against the existence of God but is instead dealing with a wide range of variables—various theological commitments, conscience, ethical theory and commitments and views on the role of scripture and religious tradition in reaching beliefs. I see Adam’s work as trying to bring all of these commitments into the best equilibrium she can—and for her that equilibrium involves embracing a view of God that makes eternal damnation impossible.
It is true that this question will not have the same salience for one who lacks these theological commitments, and perhaps, for you, that means this question is of no import. I think that, putting the question of God’s existence temporarily aside, there are still useful questions here about human nature and the nature of goodness to be addressed—but I by no means am interesting in insisting that this feeling of relevance should be generalized to all thinkers.
I also agree with you that there is something “outrageously manipulative” in using fear tactics to try to convert people to a particular religion. However, having no way to know what Edward’s intentions were I withhold judgment on whether or not he was trying to manipulate others or actually looking out for the good of others by trying to prevent them from going to a place of torment he firmly believed existed. (Perhaps he was doing both?).
If the good has no relation to empirical fact then what use does it actually play in your theory? I do not believe that many people will agree with you it is some how obvious we can not observe evil occurring frequently in the world, and I do not mean this in any kind of banal utilitarian ethical sense. The way in which you attempt to set aside the ethical register of thought as conceivably existing alongside the real but in a separate dimension entirely in order to make some room for it out of an apparent liberal adherence to cultural sensitivity is only infantilizing to those who believe it is real regardless of its irreconcilable association with theology as you have proposed.
Ryan, I’m so glad you shared your comment because I think a miscommunication has occurred, and it would have been unfortunate for you to go away thinking I was dismissing views of ethical realism which ground their independence on something other than the divine.
The premises which I claim are non-empirical are the following: “God exists” and “Hell exists.” And I made the caveat I did to allow someone room to challenge that. I by no means meant to say that premises about good and evil are non-empirical. In fact, I intended to convey the opposite. It seems to me a premise like “Evil exists” is empirical. We know its true because we experience evil in the world.
Hopefully with this in mind you can see that I was not trying to be dismissive of ethical realism in either naturalist or non-naturalist forms. I think there is a lot of wonderful philosophical work being doing by ethical realists philosophers who are not theists, and I think that there are many individuals who have lived exemplary ethical lives without grounding their ethical reasoning or motivation on God. Also, please note that I also have tired to construct this entire conversation devoid of making any theological commitments myself.
Sorry for the miscommunication. However I am not here looking to protect the dignity of the ethical realist, which they (we) have a lot of work to do in order to achieve in this time of well-justified cynicism. I’m just critical of a common notion about the good that it is strictly a personal subjective affirmation. This may actually be related to Russell’s problem above about thinking a belief in God in bad conscience. By this conception believing in God, whatever being that is affirmed by this thought regardless of its conceivably faulty premises, in a very naive sense at least creates the reality wherein we have an affirmative belief about God, and moreover this is exactly the form of thinking anything at all.
In the same way Heaven and Hell are only that what we think about them, and yet Hell can be weirdly subsumed by Heaven as ultimate affirmation, there is only Hell insomuch as it is also some how being affirmed.
Since The Great Divorce is an allegory it is hard to try to draw straight line comparisons between elements in the story and what Lewis regards as real.
Also, there is the possibility that the story does not refer to heaven and hell, but heaven and purgatory.
I don’t intend to propose a definite answer. I’m just pointing out that it does not necessarily imply a belief in universalism.
I think you are absolutely right, Crowhill. Not only is it tough to make conjectures about the beliefs of the author when analyzing fiction, but Lewis’ preface to the novel provides good reason to impose a pretty big buffer between his views on the matter and what he has written in the novel. That being said, it is probably the most frequently cited piece of fiction in making cases for universalism, and I would have hated to have not at least given it a passing mention.
Thanks for your additional thoughts, Ryan. I would agree with you that one should have concerns about a notion of goodness that is understood as “strictly a personal subjective affirmation.” Does the work of particular philosophers or theories cause this worry for you, or is more generic?
If the idea of a super-subjectivist kind of morality has you worried, perhaps you would find Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s work on the question of morally disagreement with psychopaths interesting. I suggest this as an interesting springboard topic just because it seems like if someone adopted the kind of ethical theory you suggest some are prone to adopt, they’d be out of luck when it came to providing good reasons to disagree with psychopaths on moral issues! (I hope that my comments are at least partially mapping onto your worry). Anyway, if you are interested, here is a link to an interview Sinnott-Armstrong gave on the topic: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/philosopherszone/the-moral-judgment-of-psychopaths/2926530
And I agree with you as well there is something troubling about forming beliefs “in bad conscience.” I think this is a big part of why so many non-Christians (and a good amount of sincere Christians as well)do not like Pascal’s wager.
Pascal’s argument is valid with a modification. One has to replace the infinities with an arbitrarily large quantity. Then the argument is valid.
To be fair to Pascal, Mathematicians and Philosophers had not managed to understand infinity in the 17th century – it was to cause significant disputes in the 19th and 20th centuries. This lack of understanding of infinity even brought Calculus into question.
So to dismiss Pascal’s argument indicates that (a) one has not read it; or (b) one does not understand it; or (c) one can not see a valid argument when it is presented.
In fact, when the adjustment to Pascal’s Wager is made, then it is a standard problem in Game Theory that I would expect even High School students to understand.
Hi Bear,
Maybe you should properly lay your cards on the table and present your encapsulated version of the argument for everyone to see. As it stands it’s just a whole lot of hand-waving and talk of infinity, with no clarity.
I have to say you seem pretty dismissive and condescending in (a), (b) and (c). Another possibility (d) is that one has read it, does understand it, is perfectly capable of seeing valid arguments when they are presented with them and yet still thinks Pascal’s Wager is nonsense.
It’s also perplexing that you seem to be defending Pascal’s Wager so vehemently (paragraph 3) when you feel obliged to make a modification to it (paragraph 1) in order for it to (allegedly) work.
I think I understand mathematical infinity pretty well so I’d be very interested to see how you can improve on Pascal’s argument by using just a finite number for the value of eternal happiness. If you can do so I may have to go back to High School to brush up on Game Theory. Wow, you must have gone to a great High School! Did you do any complex integration over an annulus there as well?
There is also the issue of the underlying assumptions but we needn’t even go there yet.
The infinities need to be removed in order to perform the calculations. That is why the argument needs to be modified. However, once this is done the argument is valid, and you then need to argue about the content of the propositions. Most people who object to Pascal’s argument make claims that it is not valid: which is just wrong.
And yes, I did learn integral calculus at high school (not that it is relevant), but so did everyone with whom I went to school and university.
I was introduced to game theory in high school with the prisoner’s dilemma. Then we were introduced to zero sum games, game strategies and why the house always wins.
“The infinities need to be removed in order to perform the calculations. That is why the argument needs to be modified. However, once this is done the argument is valid, and you then need to argue about the content of the propositions. Most people who object to Pascal’s argument make claims that it is not valid: which is just wrong.”
I’d be only too happy to argue about the content of the propositions but I think you’re failing to recognize my previous point, which is that Pascal’s argument itself is not valid, otherwise you wouldn’t need to modify it. So, literally speaking, people who claim that Pascal’s argument is not valid are correct. If they made the same claim about your modified version maybe what you’re saying would hold some weight. Mind you, until such time as you spell out your modified version it doesn’t hold any weight.
What, precisely, is your version of the argument? It’s hard to take what you’re saying seriously until you say what it is and explain why the infinities need to be removed. Until then it’s just smoke and mirrors.
“I was introduced to game theory in high school with the prisoner’s dilemma. Then we were introduced to zero sum games, game strategies and why the house always wins.”
Not necessarily at Blackjack.
It is very straightforward.
Let R the reward for living a good life and set:
p = probability that God exists
h = enjoyment of forbidden pleasures (a finite bounded quantity)
Choose
R: R >> (1 – p)*h*10^100
(note – the symbol >> means much greater)
Then this is a straightforward game theoretic decision. The reason that infinity can not be used is that it will make the quantities undefined.
Bear, I agree with you that the basic idea behind Pascal’s wager can be formulated in such a way that it is valid. But, as you seem well-aware, in philosophy and logic validity indicates only that the argument has the right kind of form. An argument can be a valid argument and still be a bad argument. Two such ways are either it being unsound (i.e. having a false premise) or it having a conclusion deficient for the greater purposes of the argument giver. To be fair to all those who have expressed concern about Pascal’s Wager in response to my post, I think it is this final worry that they have expressed.
The dominant concern in this discussion here seems to be why a conclusion along the lines of “You have a pragmatic reason, motivated by self-interest, to believe in God” should lead one to accept the proposition “God exists.” If you’re a fan of the wager, I think the right place to engage with people who have this worry is on the practical/pragmatic level and not on the level of the validity of the argument.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Pascal’s wager handles all this very nicely http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/. It may be worth going and checking out if you’re interested in some of the things philosophers are saying about the wager.
Mark,
agree with you on this, particularly about the argument. There is a great expression among computer scientists: garbage in, garbage out (GIGO). The same is true for arguments – if the premises are false, a valid argument is no guarantee of a correct conclusion – or a guarantee of a false conclusion either.
I think the concern about the final step misunderstands what Pascal meant by faith. Faith for Pascal is not an inner sense or feeling (as it is considered by many in the Anglophone world), but it was the intellectual assent to particular propositions, in this case the proposition that God exists. So there is no “faking it” as such.
The interesting thing about Pascal is that he also put considerable importance on the affective (or emotional) part of human nature, and its part in faith. His famous saying “Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point; on le sait en mille choses” is part of a consideration of the existence of God.
Pascal was much deeper thinker and Philosopher than many people credit (including the comments here from Queensland).
Pascal was a brilliant and thoughtful thinker, and I think that you are right that many people can be far too quickly dismissive of him (as many people are with most of history’s great thinkers unfortunately).
The original poster seems to think that Lewis’ novella “The Great Divorce” advocates universal salvation. In fact it does the opposite – the characters come from Hell and are given the chance of salvation, and all reject it. This is Lewis’ underlying point – like all orthodox Christians he does not believe in Universal Salvation.
Any discussion on Hell is hampered by the emotional content of the common understanding of Hell. This is either a comical description from the lower rings of Dante’s “Inferno” or from a painting by Hieronymus Bosch. These are certainly extreme and very graphic – but most people miss the point of these works of art. In Dante’s “Comedy”, there are significant discussions of Philosophy and Ethics, as well as politics. It is a very complex work – even more complex than Vergil’s “Aeneid”. Bosch was also making similar observations and statements.
However, what is not done is to discuss the nature of Hell.
Bourgeois Theologians have recoiled in horror at the traditional images because it offends their sensibilities and advocated universal salvation. Thus, Hell is removed.
Once Hell is removed from the question, and universal salvation is given, then Pascal’s Wager turns into a game with no point – you will win no matter what.
Bear, as far as I know it is an open historical question what exactly Lewis’ view on the topic was. So I think you and I would both be on shaky evidential ground in claiming outright what Lewis’ position was on the issue (that being said, if you know of someplace in the Lewis literature that you believe points clearly to Lewis’ position on the matter I’d be very interested in checking it out).
You are right to point to evidence that would indicate that Lewis was not a universalist—although he certainly seems willing to embrace a non-traditional view of hell. I, personally, think it is telling that George MacDonald, who Lewis held in very high esteem, was certainly a universalist and wrote fiction promoting that end. But, point conceded, it would not be fair to hold Lewis aloft as an unabashed advocate of universalism (although his work has been cited/used by many a universalist).
I think you’re spot on in pointing out how universalism, if it were true, would mess up Pascal’s wager, but of course, what someone advocating Pascal’s wager has the ability to point out is that no one knows whether or not universalism is true.
I think you are being far too hasty in claiming that “all orthodox Christians” do “not believe in Universal Salvation.” I think this would be a very hard claim to defend, unless of course you are making a lack of belief in universal salvation a necessary criterion for Christian orthodoxy. I would then acknowledge, that by your stipulative definition, this would trivially follow, but there would be many, many theologians and Christians who would reject this requirement for orthodoxy. And of course such a stipulative condition would cause your claim to rest on a circular argument. If there’s more motivating this claim for you, I’d be interested in hearing what it is.
Mark,
my claim is not difficult to defend – yes, to be an Orthodox Christian one has to accept the Gospels and to take what Jesus says in the Gospels seriously, and to accept the canons (the formal statements of the Christian faith) and creeds of the first 7 Oecumenical Councils: 1st Nicaea (325), 1st Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431), Chalcedon (451), 2nd Constantinople (553), 3rd Constantinople (680-681), and 2nd Nicaea (787).
In the Gospels, Jesus talks about Hell, and speak of people being in Hell. He also spoke of those cast out into the darkness, where the fire does not go out and the worm does not die.
So yes, one of the signs that one is no longer an orthodox Christian is believing in universal salvation. You can argue whether Christian orthodoxy is correct or not, but that what it believes.
I am also curious why an Atheist would be interested in redefining Christian orthodoxy.
Bear, I appreciate you spelling this out more. Here are a few worries I have based on your elaboration.
First, you could be read as claiming the following: if one takes the Gospels and what Jesus said seriously, then one will not believe in universal salvation. I do not think this is true. Someone can take the Gospels and what Jesus said seriously, but can deny that the scripture is inerrant or hold to a particular exegetical school of thought that would allow them to take these things seriously as a a Christian universalist. So if that is what you are saying, I disagree.
Second, I think there will be orthodox Christian sects who will resist your emphasis on the creeds.
Third, does it seem reasonable to you that Christian orthodoxy could have a fuzzy boundary? Your standards for orthodoxy are quite high. I think many Christians are going to say that people that satisfy a significantly smaller portion of your criteria are still orthodox. Perhaps this is, in part, because orthodoxy comes on a continuum.
Finally, let it be noted that I did say the task would be easier if you stipulated that belief in universal salvation was sufficient for one to be unorthodox, and this is what you’ve done. I guess I want my previous points to be read as reasons why I think that’s an unfair stipulation.
Also, in your comment “I am also curious why an Atheist would be interested in redefining Christian orthodoxy” are you asking this as a generic question or are you assuming I am an atheist? If the latter, I’m not sure how you’ve reached a conclusion on my theological views considering I’ve not shared them.
The description given of Christian orthodoxy is fairly standard. I would like to engage you in a further discussion of this, but this a Philosophy blog, and a discussion about the minutiae of Christian doctrine is a bit off topic.
My questions about Atheists wanting to redefine orthodoxies of particular belief systems, be it Christian, Buddhist, Mormon, Islam &c., demanding those within the belief system to accept certain propositions internal the belief system. For example, telling very conservative Evangelical Christians or Buddhists that they must accept and not condemn sodomy, and they must accept what greater society thinks about these things.
This is not an abstract concern, I have seen this regularly.
When does the internal beliefs of a group become public debate? How much can a society demand that a religious group abandon its beliefs and conform to the rest of society?
What if your wrong?
Then let the religion with the scariest Hell win!
This is really an interesting point, and you could also potentially characterize even all merely non-theological pragmatic discourse in terms of avoidance from conceivably coming individual Hellish futures, lest the spectacle come to be in which we have not made the decisions practically constrained by reality.
Well observed. That’s another big problem for adherents of Pascal’s Wager – the unstated premise that their god is THE god, if indeed there is one at all. Those who choose to go with Pascal and believe in the Christian God (let’s assume) because of the supposed probabilistic expectations, will lose big-time when it transpires that Allah is actually THE god. In that case they’ll burn in Hell for eternity just as surely as any atheist will.
The bottom line is that Pascal’s Wager is a childish attempt by a brilliant mathematician to justify his religious belief. It’s just another example that being a genius in one area doesn’t preclude you from being ridiculous in another. Newton, after all, believed thoughout his life that he could turn base metal into gold.
The Vote for Truth:
Those who are Christian and Theists tend to vote for only those who choose Christ and God to be voted into heaven.
Those who are not Christian or Theists tend to vote for only those who choose the Good/Just to be voted into the accepted.
Everyone else gets to be Judged and excluded by the above standards of judgment.
Therefore, those who Judge and thereby exclude others are the opposite of Truthful (either Good, or Believers).
“Mythology may, in a real sense, be defined as other people’s religion. And religion may, in a sense, be understood as a popular misunderstanding of mythology.” — Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor
What would it mean to apply this claim to the Hell of the Christianity? According to Campbell, myths are not false beliefs but rather symbolic truths. They are metaphors and they will be misinterpreted if they are taken as concrete realities or historical facts. To read them literally is to misread them. On this view, Hell is not an actual place but rather a symbol that stands for a psychological state or, if you prefer, a spiritual condition. If hell is viewed mythologically, then we are asked to ponder the meaning of eternal suffering but when it is presented as a divine threat, all we want to find a way to avoid it. Thus religion forestalls the pondering and the meaning is lost. Even worse, it has been replaced by beliefs in wildly implausible realities involving worms, fire and brimstone.
So what the hell are we really talking about here? Lame pun intended.
I think you picked the perfect time to introduce a hell pun into the conversation, David. These could have easily been overdone, but you’re was well-placed.
You raise a lot of interesting question in a small space here. I think there is an interesting sociological question about the formation of religious beliefs here as well as a worthwhile question about the meaning of religious sentiments and religious writings.
From Bear Mathun:
“It is very straightforward.
Let R the reward for living a good life and set:
p = probability that God exists
h = enjoyment of forbidden pleasures (a finite bounded quantity)
Choose
R: R >> (1 – p)*h*10^100
(note – the symbol >> means much greater)
Then this is a straightforward game theoretic decision. The reason that infinity can not be used is that it will make the quantities undefined.”
Hi Bear,
There was no “Reply” button next to your thread so I had to reply using a new one.
This is anything but straightforward. It’s not even presented as an argument. It’s a statement that R is much greater than (1 – p)*h*10^100. Is it? How did you work that out? And you keep saying that infinity can not be used but never explain why not nor precisely which quantities will be undefined. Certainly Pascal didn’t have any problem introducing infinity into the wager. Maybe he had good reason? He was a gifted mathematician after all.
Let me make an attempt at an argument then.
It’s a wager after all, so for the sake of the exercise I’m going to treat it as one and use a dollar as the unit. Let’s say the Christian bets the Atheist $1 that God exists and the Atheist agrees to pay the Christian large finite N (your idea) if he is right. So the profit for the Christian is N-1 if God exists but he loses $1 if not. This is a pretty good deal for the Christian since Pascal has conveniently ignored all gods but his. Pascal’s matrix would be 3 x 3 rather than 2 x 2 if Allah was introduced, in which case the Christian would be burning for eternity in the case that Allah was the true god.
In general the expectation E(x) = (reward * P(reward)) – (risk * P(risk)), where P(x) is the probability of x. Positive expectation means it’s a favourable game, negative means unfavourable and 0 means a zero sum game.
Let’s look at the Christian’s expectation.
Let G = God and P(G) the probability that God exists. Let N-1 be the profit if God exists. The bet is $1.
Then E(G) = ((N-1)*P(G)) – (1*(1-P(G)))
My assertion is that P(G) is an infinitesimally small positive fraction.
Let P(G) = 1/(N+1) will suffice in any case.
Then E(G) = (N-1)/(N+1) – N(N+1) = -1/(N+1); a negative expectation.
This is an unfavourable game for the Christian to play, even without introducing Allah or other gods.
So, unless you can be more convincing with your explanations about infinity causing problems, I would say that Pascal chose an infinite reward because it was the only “value” that would work, given that he needed it to work for all possible probabilities for God’s existence. If you don’t use infinity, a suitable choice for P(G) can always be made to make the expectation negative.
The third last paragraph should read:
“Then E(G) = (N-1)/(N+1) – N/(N+1) = -1/(N+1); a negative expectation.”
Reread my argument, I am fixing the reward based on the (non-zero) probability that God exists. In the notation that you present, I set N >> (1 – P(G))*10^100. Thus, it is the P(G) which is fixed, you can arbitrarily change it.
One of the many problems of using infinity as just another number in arithmetic is that it is not just another number. Also, in the sort of manipulations that you are using, it is not uniquely defined.
Pascal was a brilliant 17th century Mathematician, but Mathematicians only started to look at infinity in the 19th century. In fact, it was the source of a major dispute in Mathematics, and contention between Kronecker and Cantor.
Also the “Wager” was not presented as formal argument, so Pascal may have been a little loose in the language.
“Reread my argument, I am fixing the reward based on the (non-zero) probability that God exists. In the notation that you present, I set N >> (1 – P(G))*10^100. Thus, it is the P(G) which is fixed, you can arbitrarily change it.”
I don’t see how you can simply “set” N in such a manner. To convince me you’d have to run through the argument step by step and, at the finish, show that the Expectation is positive. Just saying something is a lot bigger than something else doesn’t make it so. Prove it.
“One of the many problems of using infinity as just another number in arithmetic is that it is not just another number. Also, in the sort of manipulations that you are using, it is not uniquely defined.”
I didn’t use infinity anywhere in my manipulations.
“Pascal was a brilliant 17th century Mathematician, but Mathematicians only started to look at infinity in the 19th century. In fact, it was the source of a major dispute in Mathematics, and contention between Kronecker and Cantor.”
That depends on how you define “look at”. If by that you mean when infinity was placed on a more rigorous footing, fair enough. But many great mathematicians, as far back as Archimedes, played successfully with infinity before the 1800s, even if they weren’t technically justified in doing so, most notably Euler. Cantor, as far as infinity goes, was the man, and Kroneker was kicking and screaming against the weight of evidence mounting against him.
“Also the “Wager” was not presented as formal argument, so Pascal may have been a little loose in the language.”
Fair enough, but I think he knew that only an infinite reward would work. I still don’t see how your finite reward can get you over the line when weighed against diminishing probabilities for the existence of God. Maybe we’ll end up agreeing to disagree, although I’d love to see a more complete step by step argument from you with QED. Be rigorous like Cauchy!
By the way, how do you deal philiosophically with the exclusion of other gods? Does that seem reasonable to you? Won’t you burn in hell if Allah, as far as deities go, is the man?
If you want it technically about infinity, it is simple. You can not multiply by infinity because infinity is not in the field of real numbers (it lacks a multiplicative inverse). Thus, it can not be used here.
Infinity is usually dealt with as a limiting process so, at least informally, you could say that 1/infinity = 0. Certainly the limit as n –> infinity of 1/n = 0, at any rate. It also makes sense to suppose that infinity multiplied by any real number is infinity and also that infinity divided by any real number is infinity. In the former case it seems intuitively obvious. In the latter case it seems pretty plausible when you consider that infinite subsets of infinite sets are themselves infinite of the same order (eg. there are as many even numbers as there are natural numbers). I’m not sure whether there is a consensus on your technical claim about multiplying by infinity but I’d love you to point me in the right direction with some reliable support for that claim.
I confess that I have not read all responses..I was amazed at the first few I read. Nonbelievers and believers alike trip themselves up from the start because they view faith as (1) Just a belief (2) Being without evidence. I do not for one moment think Jesus is saying .. Just believe me way down in your heart. and you are good to go. He is saying .. Trust in Me.. Take a chance on ME. Follow me and see what I can do. Just as Pascal is not requesting that anyone believe without evidence. He is saying open your mind to the possibility. I do not believe in the nonsensical god that blind religion and blind atheism believe in either.