Pascal's Wager Not Debunked (#4): Answering the Top 5 Objections
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- Опубліковано 21 жов 2024
- In this video, I answer what I think are the top 5 objections to Pascal's Wager.
1) You can't force yourself to believe in God
2) Pascal's reasoning leads to absurdities
3) Pascal's Wager is immoral
4) The cost of commitment is just too high
5) Pascal's Wager ignores other gods/religions
Please watch the whole video and comment below if you have another objection to Pascal's Wager that you would like me to address.
Michael Rota covers additional objections in his book "Taking Pascal's Wager" so definitely purchase a copy for more.
www.amazon.com...
This series is awesome. I don't know how I've slept on it this long.
I am glad I came upon this. As an Agnostic Atheist I have been looking forward to defenses of Pascal’s Wager. This is also some of the most theologically unsound statements I have seen. Salvation does not require belief. As per your faith you will be staring at the gates of hell if you just live your life as per your god and not believe in him
Lol, I love that they have an "updated" version of the wager because the first one sucked so bad. It doesn't even apply to all atheists anymore. Heck, I feel like it doesn't apply to most atheists, since many that are 50/50 on the fence call themselves agnostic, instead. And you're right, these were disappointing defenses, but they usually are. It feels like it all boils down to: "You can't make yourself believe? Try harder" and "Full atheists are too hard, let's target agnostics" and "Hey, let's use emotion instead of logic, you wanna feel good and not scared, right?"
Oh, I was waiting for him to get to the Many Gods Objection. He compared it to only Naturalism and Islam when there are thousands of religions. There are so many areas of science and history that prove the Bible stories wrong. There was no ark, there was no Exodus. Then when you study the history of the religion itself, you can see it being constructed by man, and how and why it formed and gained popularity. It makes it much less likely than other religions I haven't looked into, but I'm sure if I did, I'd find the same improbabilities.
@@cocobutter3175Atheists use many updated arguments
I don't think you understand Pascal. Check out the Wikipedia article: Pascal's Wager. He recognized that some people can't believe. He thought that the god would be pleased if they went through the motions of piety. I don't think he addressed the other big issue. Which god? There are mutually exclusive versions. There is I am the way, the truth, and the life.. No one comes to the father except through me. Vs the Muslim idea that it is beneath the god for him to have a child with a human woman.
As a fellow believer in JC, can someone commit to God without belief? Salvation is Believing loyalty. Rational choice to live a hollow (non believing) “Christian lifestyle” is not a Spiritual birth. It’s like wearing a parachute because the pilot says it will make your flight more comfortable.
A variant of objection 5 is that if a god or gods exists he/she/it/they may not want us to believe in him/her/it/they, and so may give an infinite punishment to theists, and an infinite reward to atheists.
Some One you are correct. That is a possibility. But the same strategy applies to it. You must ask, what is the likelihood of that option (a god who infinitely rewards atheists and infinitely punishes theists)? And then ask what is the likelihood of the opposite alternative (a god who infinitely rewards theists and infinitely punishes atheists)? Then pick the option with the greater likelihood. Likelihood’s will be based on available evidence. In this playlist I’m arguing that when the available evidence is carefully looked at, Christian theism (on balance) has greater likelihood than its rivals.
If you think Pascal's Wager is valid and sound, you should worship an evil god because an evil god is more likely to punish you harshly for not believing in him while a good god is more likely to forgive/redeem you.
Thoughts?
He doesn’t have any thoughts could you really expect a person who believes in virgin birth to have some thoughts lmao
@@Jonathan-jk7of Komodo dragons give to virgin births.
You can say that person who was an unbeliever had baggage and probably would was not Holy. Also, doesn't mean God can't show himself at the end of your life and say belief in me.
The "selfish" part is confusing to me. Would it not be comparable to saying, "if someone eats food, that's selfish" ? Love your channel, God bless you.
Frank Christian well said. Thanks! God bless you! Our savior lives!
@@TheAnalyticChristian Amen Praise Jesus
Hmm, so around 4:15 it says the updated version is only intended for someone who thinks there at least a 50% chance of Christianity being true.
But if someone can be convinced there’s a 50% of Christianity being true, at this point couldn’t we rely on common sense rather than having to work through decision theory?
It seems like the updated wager can work in some cases on less than 50% certainty (e.g. you think taking the Wager gives a better outcome in both cases), but shouldn’t the lowest necessary probability (whatever it is) be used when arguing against the absurdities objection?
I'm going to give you some help . The reason you do not get that the many gods destroys the wager is that you are convinced that the wager is right as it points at Christianity and you think that is right. The wager is aimed at atheists, we do not accept that there is evidence of a deity therefore there is no quality of a deity that we think is correct. We have no reason to think Yahweh more likely than Hanuman.
The "many gods" argument does not just mean adding in Islam and saying well it's the same/similar deity really so all fine.
You have to include ALL deities as Atheists see them as all having the same probability and we are talking about a probability wager hear not your belief. The number of boxes on your chart grow at least to the square of the number of deities (plus atheists and other variations) on the list. Your first two gave 4 boxes three gave 9 boxes. A thousand deities we could name from history would give a million boxes. From the fact that you trim your beard we know that you are not a biblical realist. So you are pragmatic in how you interpret the Bible. Yours is one of the many versions of Christianity. As there are numerous groups of Christians who claim that other groups are not Christian we can probably give many many lines just to Christianity. The boxes would have a huge variety of different contents. After you include the historical gods what about those that Mankind has not named or thought of yet? A Deity worshiped on another planet could have made the universe just for them and we are a byproduct, what does that deity think of Christianity? What do you put in that box. Now as a Christian you might think that is silly but from my view point you claim a deity that sends bears to kill children is loving. We are not arguing about evidence we are looking at the wager as a reason for picking some version of Christianity over any other position.
Kali is a deity she is evil what does she think of Christians?. Satan is a deity for some people maybe not you but is for others. It could be that the Satan -Christian box had the content Satan will judge others buy their deeds but all Christians are punished forever. Now if Satan turns out to be the correct guess it is better to have been an Atheist than a Christian. It does not matter if you think you can get rid of Satan on some ground there are many many other gods known and unknown that could be fitted into this and similar combinations that say Atheist is better in that instance than Christianity. The wager fails as there are just too many permutations to consider.
You can not even try worshiping all of them as "ONLY ME" is a common thread with the monotheists.
So with all those possible outcomes why would anybody guess at one branch of Christianity and pretend to believe it? It come back to evidence as always if you want me to believe in Christianity then prove it is correct.
@K A If you had read my comment you would have found the third sentence.
"The wager is aimed at atheists, we do not accept that there is evidence of a deity therefore..."
Why are you asking an atheist to prove a deity?
Objection 1’s response;
Case and point, I feel like this argument is less about agnostic people and more about defacto and pure atheists. Sure, atheists can pray and ask for god to reveal himself, and sure, they can do several things that would be within their own capabilities, but this doesn’t mean they’ll actually believe, and if they don’t believe, even when they tried to, they still go to hell.
This can be applied to more people, such as ignostics (people who think the terms such as “god” are meaningless) and apathiests (people who don’t care if god exists or what comes after). And since many agnostics are apathiests, this response is valid to people who are up in the air about the issue, but not to people that are grounded in a different belief, don’t care or don’t think the terms are meaningful.
Essentially, yes, it’s about someone who believes at least there’s an at least 50% chance Christianity is true, but there are many people who fall outside this barrier, and thus this updated wager isn’t convincing to many people.
As an agnostic apathiest who isn’t going to assign probabilities to anything, this argument doesn’t make a difference to me.
The second response to an objection is somewhat valid. Since the updated wager has Christianity at at least 50%, I see the logic.
Objection 3’s response;
I agree. I never thought that the wager was immoral. However, this doesn’t validate or invalidate the wager itself, especially when you think there is a less than 50% chance that Christianity is true.
However, I disagree with version three’s objection, but since this is due to my personal experience I do not have actual evidence so I’ll let it stand :)
Objection 4’s response;
I feel like when you evaluate consequences, you may disagree with deeply religious people that are in your own circumstances and say they’re ignorant for facing consequences or not want to make that jump yourself. And what about the people in major and catastrophic circumstances? This objection still applies.
But what about when there’s major and not catastrophic consequences and you apply the reasoning to wager? Well, I’d say that, and this is just my opinion, forcing people to give up a lot of what they have just so they can believe in god is immoral. That no moral god would actually do this. I just don’t see it. If god was really all loving he wouldn’t require people to face major consequences.
This is also circumstantial. Maybe your friend wouldn’t want you to burden yourself, or maybe the person you’re asking is too scared to make that commitment.
Also, this is an analogy. It’s imperfect. I get where you’re coming from though.
It also depends on the person’s preexisting moral philosophy.
Catastrophic consequences? The same reasoning applies to previously; god wouldn’t force people to make that choice and would give them a pass, but let’s entertain this situation.
Say if I believe, I die. Fear of death is the root of all fear. Quite literally, it’s why humans have fears and all fears are connected to it in some way. If you’re afraid of public speaking, that can be tied to rejection. If you’re afraid of rejection, that can be tied to isolation. Isolation is one of our 8 innate fears, all of which connect to death.
In other words, if death, isolation, and pain are at stake, you can’t force someone to make an entirely logical choice. People will tend to fear death more than damnation.
Why? Because damnation is tied to pain. Pain is tied to death. The fear of hell is tied directly to death. Therefor, while some might fear severe consequences less than hell or denial of a relationship with god, others won’t due to how the brain works. Asking people to suppress their basic brain functions to make a choice won’t work a lot of the time.
Objection 5?
Well, the main argument I can value is that this part of Pascal’s wager relies on other things that are subjective. Some will determine Islam. Some will determine not Christianity.
Case and point, other people know a good amount of evidence based on god and are still atheists, or aren’t Christians to begin with.
Anyways, I think objections 1, 4 and 5 are the weakest.
A person will only think there's 50% chance Christianity is true if the only religion that person know is Christianity making it literally impossible for any logical person to think so.
Good job. Especially for the many gods objection. I completely agree.
May I ask what software you used to do the slides and animation?
Yulius Halim keynote and iMovie
@@TheAnalyticChristian thank you, you are doing great work for God. God bless you!
Yulius Halim thank you for watching my videos! I’m glad you see value in it!
@@TheAnalyticChristian I really do, keep up the wonderful work!
Michael Rota's Pascal's wager indeed is a stronger version...
keep going bro!! thanks for the content
The biggest problem with these objections is that you are assuming that there is a 50% chance of the christian god existing. There is NO EVIDENCE for this, and I would go as far as to say that the christian god has a literally 0% chance of existing. In objection 5, you said that the outcomes on the right are all the same, but with a considerable amount of wasted time and the atrocities committed in the name of religion (not just christianity), belief in a god would definitely result in a considerable loss. Also, with the hundreds of religions existing, is it really worth the considerable losses in order to have a ridiculously small chance rather than no chance of going to heaven? Even if you answered yes to the question above, any abrahamic religion is clearly a poor choice, because of their literal impossibility.
I have more objections but no time to write them now, may add them later.
MMCreator check out my response to the other comment you made on my cosmological argument video. Couple of quick thoughts about your comment here. First, there is a difference between there being no evidence for a claim, and there being insufficient evidence for that claim. For example, finding a footprint from a common type of boot at the scene of a crime is evidence that someone with that type of boot did it over others who do not own and have never owned that type of boot, even though that evidence is clearly insufficient in itself to establish that a particular individual did in fact commit that crime. If you want to say there is insufficient evidence for the Christian God, then that is a more defensible claim than the claim that there is no evidence for the Christian God.
You surprise me when you say that there is a 0% chance that the Christian God exists. Philosophers think only logical contradictions should be assigned 0% probability. So I take that to mean that you think there is some kind of logical contradiction in the statement “The Christian God exists” much like saying “a square circle exists” or “a married bachelor exists.” What’s the logical contradiction you see?
Crash Course Apologetics if god were to exist and is, as christianity and Judaism (and I believe Islam although I am not sure) asserts, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, there could be no evil in the world because:
A) If something else is the cause of evil, god is not omnipotent
B) If god doesn’t know if the evil, he is not omniscient
C) If god doesn’t care about evil and lets it continue anyways, he is not omnibenevolent.
Conclusion: An omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being cannot exist, as there is evil in this world.
MMCreator so the logical version of the problem of evil. Atheist philosophers have quit using that version of the problem of evil because the burden of proof on the atheist is too high. He has to show that it is impossible that God have a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil. What’s your justification for premise (A)?
@@TheAnalyticChristian God allows humans to break each of his ten commandments, without stopping them. Meaning that by allowing humans to go against his own moral standards, he is either immoral and not omnibenevolent or not omnipotent, because if he was omnipotent he could stop humans from breaking his own moral code. Even if we were to grant your objection, meaning that abrahamic religions had a non-zero chance of existing, there still is no reliable evidence for their existence.
MMCreator omnipotence does not mean you have the power to do the logically impossible and what you just suggested God do is the logically impossible. It is logically impossible to make someone freely do something like obey him. God can either make humans obey by not making them free, or give them freedom at the risk of them not obeying. So that to me is reason to reject the first premise (A) in your argument so we don’t have reason to think that the statement “the Christian God exists” is logically contradictory so we shouldn’t assign it a probability of zero. Interestingly, Dr. Liz Jackson (who I’ve interviewed 3 times on my channel) offers a version of Pascal’s Wager that works for extremely small probabilities like you might be willing to assign to Christianity. But now I’m curious why you think Christianity has a very small probability?
Awesome. Consider in the future breaking videos like this up (into one video per objection). They'd be more "crash course" and bite sized. Keep it up!
Thanks Blake! I think you’re right. Breaking videos like this up will be more bite sized and I think get more watch time. I’m very open to any additional advice you have.
You thought this video was awesome? You’re kidding right?
What is this so-called "updated" version of Pascal's Wager? Please explain what it is and if it's legitimate.
Wait, so if you think there's a 50% chance you'll get your money back and then some, it's rational to hand your money to the mugger?
The Realistic Nihilist yep. But do you really think it’s possible for a mugger to convince you there’s a 50% chance you’ll get your money back and then some? It seems to me that the very act of him first trying to mug you would lead you to think him a dishonest person. Maybe you can concoct a pretty fanciful scenario. Have at it! I think it will probably stop being a story about a mugger and start being a story about a con artist.
Crash Course Apologetics replace mugger with god, getting your money back with him existing and dishonest with utterly evil and you see why belief in god is irrational
@@TheAnalyticChristian where do you derive this 50 percent number for christianity and what type its official doctrine in Catholicism jehovah witness church and Mormonism that all people outside their church are dammed.
In order not to be biased towards the religions that contingently happen to be around now we have to accept the possibility that there are infinitely many possible God concepts with nonzero probability of being the true one and with different reward/punishment conditions, in which case no strategy dominates another since for any god G that rewards x and punishes y, we can come up with another God G* that rewards y and punishes x. Your payoff matrix needs to be expanded, a lot.
Invoking a Christian who gives a (subjective) probability of >=0.5 to Christianity is irrelevant in the context of the Wager, because a) "reason can decide nothing here", the whole point of the Wager is to sidestep natural theology and appeal to universally accepted principles of rational decision theory. If one has evidence favoring one hypothesis over the rest, one doesn't gamble but simply makes an inference to the best explanation and accepts said hypothesis. b) opposing religions can do the exact same move. Both Christianity and [some other religion] can't be true, so the move can't be sound.
You're correct about there being infinitely many possible states (god concepts coupled with different reward/punishment conditions as you put it) and so long as they contain no logical contradiction, they have a nonzero probability of being actual. From that fact though, you claim no strategy dominates another. But why think that? Infinitely many possible states would only be problematic for making a decision if each state was assigned equal credence. I've been offering arguments and evidence though to give reason to think Christianity should be assigned a higher credence than other religions. In response you say, "reason can decide nothing here." Why think that? Arguments and evidence can be employed to show that Christianity is more probable than other religions. You call such an attempt "subjective." The credence I assign to Christianity based on arguments and evidence is no more subjective than the credence you assign to Christianity. You then add one more objection, namely decision theory isn't necessary if we bring in argument and evidence...it just becomes and inference to the best explanation at that point. That doesn't follow at all. Suppose one weighs all the evidence and arguments and comes to think naturalism deserves a credence of 95%, Christianity a credence of 4%, and all other possible states make up the remaining 1%. Pascal's updated Wager (particularly the one articulated by Dr. Liz Jackson) would show mathematically that despite naturalism being the winner of the inference to the best explanation, Christianity is a BETTER inference than other religions. When coupling the high credence with the pragmatic value of Christianity that I defended in video#3, it is most rational to commit to the Christian life. Hope that makes sense. Feel free to follow up with questions. I would highly encourage you to listen to my interview with Dr. Liz Jackson if you have not. Her paper is excellent!
Crash Course Apologetics Please show ANY religion has a non-zero probability. Sorry, but this video is a joke. I see no reason to “commit” to something I don’t believe is true. That’s just bizarre.
What if the only people that get the golden ticket to “heaven” are atheists?
@K A No, that's your job.
You said many words. I completely lost you. Let me put a wager forward, when you have to do cartwheels to prove your point. Is it really a good point?
Do you have a discord account? I'd like to discuss objections with you.
The Realistic Nihilist No I don’t. Think maybe you could briefly share some here?
@@TheAnalyticChristian Well I'd like to discuss it over voice because I generally dislike text discussions.
But I think that the skeptical God objection is a good objection. The skeptical God is just a God who thinks you should be skeptical of deities. So if you reserve commitment, That's the best possible outcome if the skeptical God exists. Now if that's true and you laid out your decision matrix, not committing is the best because it fulfills all the criteria if he exists and no commitment, if atheism is true and no commitment, but only fails in cases where some other god who wants commitment exists yet there is none. On that view, the decision matrix favors unbelief.
The Realistic Nihilist That’s’ an interesting objection so let me ask a few clarifying questions.
First, if you commit to the Christian God, but the skeptical god is real, what happens? Do you suffer eternal torment, cease to exist, or eventually get a chance to go to heaven anyway?
Second, if the skeptical god wants you to be skeptical of deities, I assume that includes being skeptical of any claims about him as well, like that if you commit to the Christian god in this life you will will punished for it (possibly eternally). So how would you ever be able to say there’s a 50% chance the skeptical god is real? It seems just by the nature of who the skeptical god is and what he wants from you, you would have to say there is a very very low chance of the skeptical god existing otherwise you’re not being skeptical enough.
Third, which of the two premises in the argument I give at the end of the video is this objection supposed to undermine? How so?
@@TheAnalyticChristian I don't see how believing there's a 50% chance that something is true means that you're not skeptical.
Imagine a coin flip. You can be both skeptical that the coin will land heads and that the coin will land tails. Being skeptical of one rather than the other isn't the same as being skeptical of the disjunction heads or tails. In other words, if someone asked you to commit to heads, you would say no. if they asked you to commit to tails, you would say no. But if they said a commitment to either, then you could just say ok.
So the idea is that, when faced with something you think is 50% true, you shouldn't commit to it. But all that means is not assenting that you should bet on the skeptical God. It doesn't follow from the fact that you shouldn't bet on the skeptical God that you should bet on any other God.
But it would follow that you shouldn't bet on the Christian God or any other God. This includes not betting on the Skeptical God.
So, if someone says "Are you going to wager that the skeptical God exists," you say no. Likewise, if they ask you to wager that the Christian or any other God you say no.
I think this shows that if you think there's a 50% chance of christianity being true and that you oughtn't live the christian life.
The Realistic Nihilist “when faced with something you think is 50% true, you shouldn’t commit to it”. That implies that there is no consequences of heads or tails being right. Its only a good comparison if there is a significant loss by choosing one wrong side of the coin compared to the other. Likewise, The idea of eternal torment in hell is much more costly than even 80 years of pain on earth.
This is not an objection to the wager just an observation
The wager only works if you assume that the deity is an amoral narcissist. Now I could point at the parts of the Bible that show this but that is not what this is about. Any Christian that proposes pascals wager makes this claim, their deity is an amoral narcissist. You are not punished for bad things you are not rewarded for good things, there is no moral judgment, no justice, the requirement is simply worship. Ivan the Terrible has a very bad name even among the tyrannical Czars of Russia. Listing a few of his crimes against his people would see this comment removed. Ivan was a devout believer he gets heaven, Sir David Attenbough has worked his entire life to improve the treatment of animals and get us to all to see we need to treat the planet better. Sir David does not believe so straight to hell for him.
Now Buddha and similar deities say work to be good. Pascals wager does not work for them as you do not need to have heard of Buddha to do good.
So the wager only works if you claim that your deity is an amoral narcissist. Is he?
@U Temuulen You can add to that list all the humans from the first around 200,000 BCE to when Christianity got to their country.
@K A you prove fairies
You prove Zeus
You prove Harry Potter
you prove SpongeBob
Got any more meaningless statements you want to make?
We have been around this loop before. Do you have any evidence now or will you just make baseless claims like last time?
Nice video! You could use more from Pascal than Rota though. I feel like Pascal doesn’t ever get the attention he deserves.
Anyway, it’s good to see a pro-wager vid. Not many of them out there. Thomas Morris’ Making Sense of It All is another good read for a Pascal enthusiast.
Thank you. Yeah I feel like pro-wager videos are extremely rare on UA-cam, and that's why I wanted to make this series. I will have to check out that Thomas Morris book you referred to. I agree. Pascal doesn't get the attention he deserves, even in apologetic circles. Stay tuned for my next video coming soon.
If this wager simply gets a person to rethink their atheism as presuppositional as a theist and a honest investigation into the claims of JC is accomplished is that the greatest achievement of the wager?
Why didnt you bring up Roko's Basalisk?
The specific god of Christians: Father , Son, and Holy Ghost is so incoherent that it doesn't even rise to the level of being false.
How is it incoherent? I have a playlist of videos on the logical problem of the Trinity and various models show there is no problem.
@@TheAnalyticChristian Thank you for the quick response. It's late, and I'm tired. More tomorrow.
@@TheAnalyticChristian John 10:30 I and the father are one. Yet: Luke 22: 42-44 Father if it be thy will take this cup from me. But thy will be done. Sure sounds like petitioning a separate, and higher rank being. I presume he was NOT asking to let everyone go to hell. I presume he was asking to forgive repentant sinners WITHOUT him being tortured to death.. You have to agree that is a good question, because Jesus asked it. I don't think there is a passage in which the father explains to him why not.
@@TheAnalyticChristian You can answer anytime. Are there verses in which the father explains, to the son, why they can't just forgive people without the son's tortured death?
@@TheAnalyticChristian ?
On #1: I thought that all was required for entry into heaven was that you repent and accept Jesus before death. Assuming that is true, wouldn't the maximum value be obtained by not wasting your life with all the prayer and other nonsense and just do the minimum at the end?
I typed pascals wager. It lead to an RPG mobile game then I searched it in Playstore then bought it.
Haha. Cool. Glad I could help
Not sure if this is covered in your later videos in this series but in response to your arguments about objection #5: I would think that the fact that there are multiple competing religions suggests that its more likely that none of them are true than any one of them being true because religious belief could be explained by one or more aspects of human nature and cultural evolution.
First you need to ask the question why is there suffering ? If its original sin then we need to be really pissed of at Adam and Eve !
do you find the many gods' objections compelling? Can Pascal answer it? Why or why not?
50% chance of saving your friend will live if you were willing to believe lord ram 😅😅 so hinduism is what you should go for because you shouldnt be a bad person.. but if we are talking about the better religion in which one religion that has an faction that diddles kids or ones who kill in the name of their religion sounds like the good one because youre saving your friends life..
I am a muslim but I won't try to refute it because a version of it can work for Islam as well. But I just find 50% part a little unreasonable. That means everything else is less (including atheism) than 50% individually. There is no need for pascal's wager then. If atheists were convinced that there is more chance of a reigion being true than nothing, they would not stay atheists. Definitely no one would have even thought about proposing the many god objection. I do think my religion is true. But others obviously don't think so.
I think 5% still works. The robber example does not work because the more money he promises the less likely it is, so it cancels out. If there is 0.0001% chance of getting 10 times back, there is 1 out of TREE(3) chance of getting let's say a googol back. And if we are talking about infinity, then it should be 0% chance or at least tends to 0%. Getting infinity of something is most reasonable if it is coming from one that claims and shows some evidence to be God who is fully capable of giving it to us. And if God and christianity/islam is true, then a robber giving back an inifinity must be false since that idea contradicts these religions.
At 19:25 remove that last comment "if Christianity is true"', the paragraph makes no sense with that clause in there.
😂😂😂 Freudian slip some?? 😅
Amazing series. Just purchased the book too.
I'd like to ask, as an extention to objection 5, how would the possibilities of Deism and Pantheism effect things? Would love to see a video adressing these.
Keep up the good work. Subscribed!
The Curly Catastrophe that is very encouraging! Thank you for subscribing. I’m glad you are enjoying this series, and I think you will enjoy the many other projects I have planned after this book.
To address your question let me ask you, If you filled out the decision matrix, what would the outcome be for committing to God in the Christian way on deism? It seems that that outcome would be very similar to naturalism, since on deism God sets nature up then walks away so to speak. On pantheism, nature (the universe) is God and so it again seems a lot like the outcome would be similar to that of naturalism to me.
In terms of the evidence I think deism has more going for it than pantheism, but I think theism has more going for it than deism, and I think Christian theism has more going for it than generic theism. The evidence I’m talking about here will he the topic of my next several videos. Let me know your thoughts
Thank you very much for your response. I haven't really had time to put deism and pantheism into the decision matrix (which is why I eant you to adressthem in a fiture video, haha), but you've certainly given me some food for thought there. Really looking forward to new videos from you.
Once you have a larger video catalogue (about 20 vids maybe), you should consider doing interviews/doscussions with other channels such as JMD apologetics and Inspiring Philosophy for intetesting convos, and for the promotion. Also, (again, once you have a few more videos), it might be worth doing a few youtube debates through channels like capturing christianity or modern day debate. Would be a great way to get your channel put there, but if your not the debating type, that's cool. Keep up the good work, and I look forward to future videos
The Curly Catastrophe that is great advice. I will definitely try to follow that game plan. Thanks so much for the support!
Committing to God in the Christian way does not weakly dominate not committing to any religion at all unless you assume there is no hypothetical situation in which not being religious carries a better afterlife than being christian. What if a non christian god is testing our gullibility by putting out a bunch of false religions and sendinf believers to hell?
The important question isn't so much: "What if a particular god exists?", but: "What if I think it's plausible/probable that a particular god exists?".
Do you believe there's a significant probability that a non christian god is testing our gullibility by putting out a bunch of false religions and sending believers to hell?
@@MatthewFearnley I think it has equally good evidence as the christian God yes
If you're already assuming that there is good enough evidence to make the christian god reasonable to believe in, then the wager is useless
@@computerflight2145 ok, maybe I’m confused. Is the hypothetical god you’re talking about one you’ve made up, or is it just a god of another existing non-Christian religion? What evidence do you consider for it?
@@MatthewFearnley There is no good evidence for it, hence they are equal in plausibility
You need to learn what a straw man is. So much for your credibility.
No reason to believe that Christianity has a 50% chance of being true. If I believed that there was a god that that one of the major religions had to be true, there are so many to choose from.
Love the way you destroy pascals wager with the chart at 21:42 but gloss over it. It does not even matter what words you put in the boxes it is just the fact that you are showing more than the false dichotomy that the wager argument relies on. What if you draw a chart that includes all the other possible religions and explanations not just one then how many boxes? Millions? How many different combinations do you get and Christianity shrinks in to one in a lottery sized pool. How many of you would base your life on one lottery ticket?
This feed back into the other arguments, the cost of the commitment goes way up if you are committing to one in a million chance that you guesses right.
Chris Young love the way you glossed over my response starting at 22:19
@@TheAnalyticChristian No I didn't because you made the unsubstantiated claim that "Nothing in this objection challenges the conclusion that ... submit in a Christian than not". You can not use the "basis argument" line as by introducing many more boxes than the false dichotomy first argument you have changed the rules so your previous argument no longer holds. What you are saying is that you claim proof of the argument while ignoring these other states then when you bring them in claiming that as you proved the argument without them then you can pretend they do not affect your proof.
if we assume that oogleflart is the real god then it is obviously ( as we all know what he is like) better to say "I don't know" than the Christian "My god is true oogleflart isn't". So as the table should always have an "in worst trouble because I guessed the wrong god" option in the tens of thousands of options that each line has then it is not better to guess Christian. Now you could mitigate some of this by spending all you waking ours going through a list of the deities know and unknown (that is harder) saying your
" (insert god name here) if you exist then ..... " but you will have to persuade every one of them that you do not really mean the other thousands of very very similar prayers you say to the others. Jealous petty deities like Yahweh will be upset you keep breaking the only worship me rule.
@@TheAnalyticChristian Your last part about choosing your religion based on the evidence is very funny in this context. If there was the evidence to pick a religion to follow then there would be no need for Pascal's wager as the evidence would be there. So you come up with the final argument that to get around the failure of Pascal's wager you need the evidence that does not exist therefore you have Pascal's wager and around the loop we go. This line shows that your video was aimed squarely at believers for whom Pascal's wager is irrelevant apart from trying it as an argument with nonbelievers. As soon as you identify two deities that say "ONLY ME" then atheists have the edge in Pascal's wager so we are back to evidence, actual evidence for a deity then which one it is. The wager is dead in the water with the first commandment.
Chris Young both additional comments you made show me that you’ve not understood my response to the many gods objection. Perhaps that’s my fault, and I poorly communicated what I was trying to say. But, the tone of your responses suggest to me that you aren’t open to possibility that this many gods objection doesn’t work. I can promise you though that I am open to the possibility that it does work. If I am shown that Pascal’s Wager fails then I will make a video critiquing what I’ve said in this video. I genuinely want the truth.
With that said, if you are open to the possibility that the many gods objection doesn’t work, then you should check out the interview I did with Liz Jackson. She is a professional philosopher who wrote a peer reviewed paper on the topic of the many gods objection. I think she has a compelling response that she explains very clearly. Here’s the link to my interview with her on that paper.
ua-cam.com/video/e6qHRLkFhCM/v-deo.html
@@TheAnalyticChristian on the other video 3:20 "there are two ways the world can be either God exists or god does not exist". This denies the many gods objection from the start. Unless you can tell me that this is not the basis for the rest of the hr and a half I will not waste my time.
There are many many ways. for example how powerful does an alien race from another dimension have to be to be called god? What definition of god are you talking about ? If it is the Christian god then what is the difference between the Christian god existing and a different god. Assuming this false dichotomy from the start is the many gods issue.
Edit
If you claim just two states with x and without x then you may be able to say something about with x but all you can say about the other is it does not have x.
example : There are animals that are lions and there are animals that are not lions. We can state that lions are dangerous to pet. We can not go on to infer that other animals are not dangerous to pet as we have not stated anything but that they are not lions. A world with a Christian deity and a world without lets you say nothing about the world without apart from the fact that there is no Christian deity in it.
I reject your premise 1.
That’s the premise that says, “If Christianity has a least a 50% chance of being true, it is rational to commit to living a Christian life.” Why do you reject that premise?
@@TheAnalyticChristian can't rely on a premise that begins with an If.
@@FatBug12 ok, here’s an argument with a premise that starts with an “if”. Tell me if you reject premise 1 and the rest of argument as well.
1. If Jordan lives in Kentucky, then Jordan lives in the United States.
2. Jordan lives in Kentucky.
So,
3. Jordan lives in the United States.
Note, I do in fact live in Kentucky.
@TheAnalyticChristian it is wrong. You don't need an if in it.
1. Jordan lives in Kentucky
2. Kentucky is in Canada.
3.Jordan lives in Canada.
This is the right way. You premise in Christianity is wrong because it requires to assume that Christianity has a 50% chance of being right. But it doesn't. Furthermore I reject that if it's true then it's better to live a Christian life. Because you can waste your life for praying and worshipping God ( who is not good ) only to find out that you are wrong. And Muslims are right.
This is d u m b .
Which god need to apply pascal wager too..
somany gods so little time
Did you even watch the video? Like the part where I explicitly address many gods objection, the very objection you are raising? If you did watch that part, what exactly about my response is d u m b?
What an epic fail. Do neither "Lower chance of eternal happiness" - horseshit. When I'm dead, I'm dead. You can have my organs. The only consolation is that my soul "imprint" will continue in the things I created that I left behind, but I won't have a consciousness to enjoy it. The only true joy (as opposed to the fake Christian joy) is knowing that what I achieve in this lifetime, some of it may endure - Hey, maybe even influence future generations, Wow! - the joy is in the Now, fantasizing about that prospect (it's not hope - it's just a fantasy). There is no Christian joy that even comes close to the pleasure of that fantasy. And before you knock fantasy, be careful, Religion is a massive fantasy system. Not my flavor, I prefer science. But whatever floats your boat.
To bad cristianity being true isn't 50/50 what if you are wrong and buduism is true than that is at least a 33/33/33 chance but there are thousands upon thousands of religiojs it isn't 50/50
Simon Kravitz this is video # 4 in the playlist. Videos #5-11argue that Christianity has at least a 50% chance of being true. Have you watched those yet? But we don’t even need 50%. I’ve interviewed Dr. Liz Jackson on my channel and she develops a version of Pascal’s Wager that argues you should commit to the religion that has the best chance of giving you infinite reward. Buddhism doesn’t promise infinite reward. But take Islam for example. Both promise infinite reward for those who believe. If Christianity had a 3% chance of being true, Islam had a 2% chance of being true, all the other religions collectively had just a 1% chance of being true, and naturalism had a 94% chance of being true, you should commit to Christianity.
@@TheAnalyticChristian how did you come up with those probity and also I said but is just cause it was the first thing to come to mind if you are wrong about being Christian and s nothing like Islam m is true you go to hell and many others if your wrong about Christianity you either go to hell or not and why would a loving god make a place to iternally burn and torcher his children as I heard us commonly called(humans)
@K A i am not try to not beileve but when i look at the evidence i brought forth i don't find it unconvincing and i can prove god cause i don't know what whould be compling evdence to me but if it was give i would know it and if a god exists he would know how to convince so either a. He doesn't exist or b. Doesn't care if i know he exists or probly some 3 possoblity i am not thinking of but of the 2 options i listed it doesn't matter if he i know he exists so i can't just prove god to my self
How can this wager be immoral to an atheist? An atheist world is an amoral world. If morality is a concern then the person is using God thoughts in their argumentation.
No.
Pascal's wager only works if humanity has 1 religion 😂 simple as that
Did you watch the video where I explicitly answer that objection?
@@TheAnalyticChristian that's not an objection it's a fact ... You can't avoid all religions' hells by believing in one religion's god
@@cyrus3316 if it isn’t an objection to the argument then why are you bringing it up? Come on now. Let’s be honest with one another. You brought it up because you think it shows that the argument fails. That’s what objections aim to do. They aim to show that an argument fails.
Now, please answer my question. Did you in fact watch the part of the video where I explicitly answer this objection? I’m talking about 21:17 and on in the video.
If you didn’t watch that first before commenting a second time with the same objection, even after I told you that I answer it in the video, then it reflects poorly on you as an honest inquirer. Go and watch what I say and interact with what I say and then comment, or just don’t comment at all.
@@TheAnalyticChristian you don't seem to get it .. am not trying to falsify your argument, your argument is false ( it's not a debate ) you can not avoid Allah's hell if you believe in Zeus & you can not avoid Jesus' hell if you believe in Krishna etc etc ... And ofcourse you can't believe in all gods so your argument is a failure am not trying to falsify it bro
@@cyrus3316 Good. You recognize that you did not show that my argument is false. You gave no objection to it. You merely asserted over and over that it was false. I can assert over and over again that it is true. We make no headway in the discussion if neither one of us tries to give reasons why the other’s view is incorrect.
Oddly, after admitting that you aren’t trying to show that my argument is false, you try to show that my argument is false. You are raising what is called the many gods objection.
If you’d like an answer to the many gods objection watch my video at 21:17. If you don’t want an answer to that objection, don’t watch my video. But please don’t leave here thinking there is no response. I gave it in the video, which it seems you refuse to watch.
I can see why this channel isn’t successful…
Please let me know. I’m always looking for ways to improve.
Hell is imoral so a loving god wouldn't make it so your hell isn't real
Simon Kravitz what is hell and why is it immoral?
@@TheAnalyticChristian I will not give you any sort of reliable scientific evidence for my existence, only send a "holy" book with multiple factual errors (yet state that it was written by me, a God, and thus contains no flaws or lies whatsoever) and then punish everyone who doesn't believe in it or doesn't commit to arbitrary rules I outlined in it with eternal suffering, no matter if they were good innocent people. Oh, also, if you are a selfish as hell but do what I want you to and blindly believe in my piece of fiction in order to save your ass you'll be eternally blessed. What a great loving God I truly am, why are those mortals not grateful to me?
God no more exists than a Pink Unicorn!!
I think the belief that everything came from nothing takes alot of blind Faith.
@@rationalsceptic7634 your saying an infinite being could not create a finite creation? Are not all creations finate? You see all theories of creation fall into infinite regress except for God. Specifically the God of Abrahamic religions. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. This is stating that God did not exist within the universe. Other gods exist within the creation which is impossible.
cap crunch
You are making Faith assertions and circular arguments!
You have yet to show how an Infinite God can act,precisely?
Photons have no Mass,so can't measure or record time..so in the early Universe...God and infinity fade away
Philosophical Failures of Christian Apologetics: ua-cam.com/play/PL3IOkNR8_9gpQa5teO1xQANB-3MiY17uk.html
@@rationalsceptic7634 god was not apart of the universe. You seem too have a fundamental misunderstanding of Christianity. A creator can not exist within a creation until he has created it. In the beginning God created the HEAVENS and the earth. He created the universe from outside the universe. Make sense now? I have made no faith ascertions you however made the incorrect ascertion that Christian's believe God existed within the universe. That somehow the universe ( a creation) was before God ( the creator) this is simply illogical.
@@rationalsceptic7634 in the beginning there were no photons. Protons electrons quark's or anything. There was nothing. There had too be a first cause. A reason regardless even if you believe in the big bang the universe being in a hot dense state then what was the cause? The why are we here question the cause is not explained with modern science and possibly can never be. That is why we look too philosophy and reason.
This video was crap. Lol your first one is a strawman calling out a strawman. Noice!
Chris Fahey I genuinely welcome constructive criticism, but I feel like your comment was meant to be destructive. Starting out with “this video is crap” is hurtful. If you’re willing to set aside the use of mean comments, will you tell me as respectfully as you can how I made a straw man? I want to be intellectually honest, and using a straw man is not. I’ll correct it, but I felt like I accurately represented the first objection. Can you help me see the error? Right now, I don’t see it.