A Refutation of Pascal's Wager

[fiat_knox]

Pascal's Wager is supposedly a claim laid by some people that, towards the end of his life, Blaise Pascal converted to Christianity, and applied spurious logic thus:

Either God exists or he doesn't. Now you can choose to believe that he exists or that he does not.

Assuming that God exists, and you believe in him, you will go to Heaven when you die. Assuming that God exists and you do not believe in him, you will go to Hell when you die. So by believing in God, you are hedging your bets.

Something like that. This spurious logic does not address the question of what happens if you believe in God and God does not exist; or what if you did not believe in God, and God's non-existence vindicated this position.

Hence my refutation of the argument posited above.

Just follow the logic through. Assertions come first, followed by conditional statements. As a result of the conditions in the statements being proven one way or the other, some of the assertions may be made false or irrelevant.

1. We (human beings) exist.
2. God exists.
3. God does not exist.
4. Humans die.
5. God created us as an act of Divine Will.
6. We came into being through some impersonal agency intrinsic to the universe.
7. The afterlife exists as a place of joy, and it lasts forever.
8. Hell exists as a place of suffering, and it lasts forever.
9. After we die, our conscious beings go to the afterlife and experience joy forever.
10. After we die, our conscious beings go to Hell and suffer forever.
11. After we die, our conscious beings cease and life is extinct. Our bodies decay and the matter of which our bodies are made returns to various geological cycles, until the Sun dies and the Earth itself becomes extinct.
12. God will send your conscious being to the afterlife as an act of Divine Will.
13. God will send your conscious being to Hell as an act of Divine Will.

14. 12 and 13 are mutually exclusive: if 12 is true, then 13 is false. If 13 is true, then 12 is false.
15. Only through believing in 2 without proof, by being grateful to God for the gift of life, and by accepting the Church as your intercessor and accepting the life’s purpose the Church assigns you (namely your obligation to worship and pay the Church money throughout your life), will 12 be true; otherwise, 13 will be true.
16. The Church holds the key to the Divine Will.

17. 2 and 3 are mutually exclusive: if 2 is true, then 3 is false; if 3 is true, then 2 is false.
18. 5 is true if and only if 2 is true.
19. 6 is true if 3 is true.
20. 5 and 6 are mutually exclusive and dependent; and one or the other is true depending upon whether 2 or 3 are true respectively.
21. 7, 8, 9 and 10 are true if and only if 2 is true.
22. 12 through 16 are relevant (and true) if and only if 2 is true.

23. 1 is true whether or not 5 is true or 6 is true.
24. 4 is true whether or not 5 is true or 6 is true.
25. 1 and 4 are true whether or not 2 or 3 are true.
26. 1 and 4 are true whether or not 6 and 11 are true.
27. 11 is true if 3, 4 and 6 are true.
28. If 11 is true, then 2 is irrelevant.
29. If 2 is irrelevant, then 5, 7 through 10 and 12 through 16 are not only false, but irrelevant.

30. Proof of 4 and 11 can be found in any mortuary, cemetery and battlefield.
31. Therefore 2 is false, and all assertions dependent upon 2 are either false or irrelevant.

QED.

Please. Poke holes in my logic. Unlike some religions, my words are up for debate.

ETA: Edited to correct the numbering of the items.

ETA: Finally located that damned book I have been hunting down to confirm the thing. It is, in fact, Pascal's Wager. Now corrected throughout this post.

But the logic still stands, until a better mind than mine can come up with something better. Or at least more interesting.

Comments

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, but where did the '2 is false' actually come from? I've read through, and I agree with everything up until that, rather overbearing statement. You have proven that 2 is irrelevant multiple times, but none of those statements say 'if x is true/false, then 2 is false' so you haven't done anything to prove 2 untrue.

Secondly, this is not a refutation of Laplace's Wager. He is still correct in that if you choose to believe in God and there is a God, you will go to Heaven, and since you have proven the existence of God is irrelevant, that means that your belief in the non-existence of God is also irrelevant, and if it's irrelevant, that means that it's more logical to hold belief in the existence of God, since that gives you a statistically higher chance of entering Heaven, if it does exist.

(Besides, psychological studies have shown that being religious and believing in an afterlife makes people happier and likely to live longer, so scientifically speaking, a belief in God is more rational than a belief in no God, even if you would be coming at it from an extremely cynical POV!)

[cdave]

Working backwards.

34 depends on 33
33 asserts 4 and depends 11 being true, hence on 30
30 depends on 3, 4 and 6
but 33 asserts 4 is true
also, by 21 if 4 is true 6 is true
therefore
30 depends only on 3
but 19 asserts that 3 and 2 are mutually exclusive.
30 depends on 2 being false
33 depends on 2 being false
34 depends on 2 being false

Which is what 34 is stating.

Looks like circular reasoning from here.

Re: "spurious logic"
It makes sense to me.

Belief + God = Heaven
No Belief + God = Hell
Belief + No God = No Afterlife
No Belief + No God = No Afterlife

Given that you cannot control the existence or otherwise of God, your only choices are to believe or not.

Belief = Heaven or No Afterlife
No Belief = Hell or No Afterlife

[mayphoenix.livejournal.com]

Whenever someone says, "You don't believe in God? You're going to HELL!" I respond, "Only someone who BELIEVES in God can go to a place CREATED by God. Because I don't believe in God, how can I go to a place I don't believe exists?" After all, how could you drive a car if no one invented the wheel?

I don't know why but I find it sad that someone would convert to Christianity on their death bed, especially after years of speaking out against the Church or religion in general. It's almost as if he negated everything he ever preached, because in the 11th hour he doubted himself. And that's the kicker, isn't it? Religion and Faith are two very separate creatures. Everyone has faith in SOMEthing, whether it's himself or an image of some supreme being. Religion is man-made, along with all the rituals and rules that come with the individual club.

Bottom line, there's no guarantees, no promises, no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow if you're a good boy and brush your teeth every day. You can get on a plane tomorrow and it can crash into a building. Did GOD just punish you for doing something wrong? Because you MUST have done something bad to die so horribly! Yeah, right. It's all BULLSHIT. Just a tool to keep people paranoid, afraid. To control the masses.

And I'm sorry, but I have a problem with a Church that tells people they can't practice birth control so the country gets overpopulated and kids are starving to death in the streets...and yet, ONE FUCKING RUBY from that pointy hat on the leader's head could buy enough food to feed HUNDREDS of nations.

As the icon says, BELIEVE IN YOURSELF. Nothing else is certain outside of your own existence because the universe is constantly changing. People make unpredictable choices that change the world in a myriad of ways every day and eventually affect everyone else (the ripples in the pond) which causes everyone to react and adjust accordingly. But you never know what's going to happen or how you'll be affected until it reaches you and YOU have to make a decision. That's just how it works.