Pascal Was a Piker

Economist Glen Whitman has the skinny on the economics of the afterlife.

Comments

[Eric]

Julian's trying to pick another religion fight! 🙂

[Pascal]

Wanna bet?

[B. F. Skinner aka Ruthless]

Reminds me of a careful dissection of why I should vote.
As an anarchic atheist, I have faith that voting is lunacy.
Would this be a good time to bring up my pet theory again that politicians voting in various capitals on the people's business should do so by secret ballot same as the suckers use to elect their parasitic posteriors in the first place?

P.S. I vote that dead should be defined as dead, gone, worm food... not a place where Hit and Run is... to be continued.

[Shultz]

Reading what agnostics write about Christians is entertaining in the same way that reading what Muslim conspiracy theorists write about Jews is entertaining.

It would be frightening if they didn't get it all so wrong.

Perhaps the greatest error, and this is a point I often argue with other Christians about as well, is the idea that Hell is there to influence our behavior. It isn't.

To most Christians, Hell is a natural consequence of ignoring God's will like being splattered is a natural consequence of jumping off a cliff wildly flailing one's arms in an attempt to fly.

Almost all Christians agree on one point, Jesus died so that we won't be judged soley by our actions. Whitman's analysis ignores this entirely.

I don't know why.

[Glen]

I acknowledged that it was an *assumption* to say heaven and hell are deterrence schemes. However, if you're going to attribute agency to a deity and say that he created heaven and earth, then either (a) he did it for a reason, or (b) he did it entirely arbitrarily. If he did it for a reason, what might that reason have been? Reward and punishment, perhaps?

Many different religious belief systems exist; they are similar in some ways, different in others. As someone who is interested in explaining the evolution of cultural artifacts, I want to know what factors give rise to religious belief systems and their differences and similarities. I suspect it has a lot to do with enforcing social norms. At bottom, I'm not trying to get into the mind of God, because I don't believe he exists -- I'm trying to get into the minds of people.

[Shultz]

If you're trying to get into the minds of Christians, please note that most Christians, at least the ones I talk to, expect to go to Heaven and are not afraid of Hell.

[garym]

Hell is the vilest example of injustice ever conceived: infinite punishment for all crimes, regardless of their degree. Thus the Christian God is the worst sadist ever imagined.

Hell is merely a "natural consequence," not a divinely created eternal dungeon? I thought God was (in the Christian view) omnipotent, and that natural laws were whatever He wanted them to be.

[Douglas Fletcher]

Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.

Well, except for Islamic extremist suicide bombers.

[John Hensley]

From what I know of scientology, Pascal's wager wouldn't translate too well.

If you accept, you have a chance at omnipotence.
If you refuse, you get to spend your money on other things and get to make the same choice again in a million years.

[B. F. Skinner aka Ruthless]

Shultz,
Do you want to take it back that curstshuns aren't afraid of hell?
Literal readers of the scriptures are obviously SUPPOSED TO BE scared shitless.

Nobody ever heard of "positive reinforcement" back in those days.

Lo and behold, the rapidly growing "churches" have.

[Jason Ligon]

The wager always struck me as a bit silly, because anyone could come up with a story that contradicts the Christian one and imposes equally dreadful consequences.

"My mom baked the universe in an apple pie in 1965, and her special ingredients were false memories and a false evidence of history. To return to the warmth of the Kitchen when you die, all you have to do is believe in Mom. She can forgive much, but whatever you do, don't believe another story, or she stuffs you in the back of the fridge next to the hairy pot roast for all eternity."

There, isn't it better to believe? There may be good reasons to believe in one version over another, but Pascal doesn't help.

[kevrob]

The truly devious explanation of hell that was fed to us in post-Vatican II parochial school was, "Hell isn't lakes of fire and devils with pitchforks torturing you. It is the horrible feeling of being abandoned by god, and cut off from his love." This was supposed to be even scarier. Now if the god-botherers would just leave me alone, I'd be able to enjoy hell-on-earth.

Kevin