I just hope you guys pray to Zork before you die. No, there's no fiery hell, but you will be met with 72 sexually ravenous Rosie O'Donnels. And fellas....the lights stay on.

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

There are so many reasons why that article you linked to is wrong. First of all... Pascal formed his wager around the context of the CHRISTIAN AND HEBREW God. His wager is not a deistic wager. It helps to actually know this stuff before you go posting rebuttals on the internet.

I made a thread on this. It is here.


Pascal himself dealt with this rebuttal, and it is quoted on the above-linked thread and commented upon.

That's why it's begging the question.

An argument that merely asserts that if the Christian god exists, then you should believe in him, isn't much of an argument. If you still don't get it, try applying it to other gods (or any random belief really), and see where that gets you.

You should start a little sooner. There are 100s of possible Gods that man has worshipped. By your logic you should pray to all of them. Its not like there's 100% that any of them don't exist.

yes, this.

interestingly, there would be less wrong with it if it WAS a diestic approach.

Yea, he hand-waved it. He basically said that its ridiculous and if you truly want to know why you will study the various religions and find out for yourself.

that's some refutation

Just out of curiosity if on your death bed you see a bright light and you hear a voice say to enter eternal happiness and avoid eternal damnation you must pray to one and only one deity, of whom you have heard of in your life because it has revealed itself to humankind...

What would you do? More specifically to whom would you pray? I'd take a 99:1 on such a crucial eternal decision any day than not gamble at all knowing I'll lose that amount anyway.

Don't take this ^^ statement as proof towards OP's question. I realize it's based on a highly unlikely hypothetical. But indulge me (and this is of course open to all). I think we already know the answer for Christians

I think it's a foolish question. First, a lot of gods don't require prayer in order to enter whatever promised land awaits. Second, most people don't know many gods off the top of their head, but as said, there's not many who might ask such a thing. Third, that situation would never happen, and no religion posits such a situation as being likely. Basically, the question is bad in every conceivable way.

No I don't think so. First of all, I don't know if you have a list of which gods do or don't require prayer, but I haven't seen one. It's a pretty common religious thing though, and for simplicity of this hypothetical situation just indulge it. Second, no one requires you to KNOW all 100+ gods for this situation. I'm just saying based on what you've been made aware of. Third, I already qualified the statement with the admittance of its hypotheticalness. If it was a real situation it wouldn't be on this forum it'd be in some tangible real one. It's RGT...

The point is to just indulge me. To be so staunchly atheist that you can't even play a theistic "what if" game makes decreases the distance between you and a fundie's approach to a reversal of the same game.

I don't think it's even a question? Pray, pray and pray some more. I would have to hear the voice though, the bright light just isn't cutting it. As for the specific deity, I think a vague "God" prayer would be best and should cover all of Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Mormonism.

You don't pray to a god in most religions. You might have prayer, but it's not to god, it's a form of meditation. Christianity isn't unique in being a religion which you pray to your god, but it's probably the only one you know of which would require you to pray to their god in order to avoid eternal damnation. Every other religion that might indulge prayer to a god, requires not just faith in that god, or prayer to that god, but also a life that corresponds with your faith in that god.

So basically, the answer to your question is Christ/god/jesus, whatever, because no other religion would require prayer as a get out of jail free card. I'm not being staunchly atheist, I'm saying you're asking a question that has but one answer, which makes it a terrible question, because the conclusions to be drawn from the answer are to contradict the beliefs of the person answering the question.

true (except according to a lot of Christians prayer isn't sufficient in Christianity either). I guess my thing is you can make the argument against Pascal's wager that you do "have something to lose" b/c you lead a less fulfilling life (though that doesn't affect these "last second" situations) and the whole "god(n) that punishes prayer to god(n-1)".

But although it's a valid point I see it like this: if there is a god whose actions we can influence in any way, would it not be more likely to be one of the "known" god's? I don't think a god who punishes a prayer (but also wouldn't punish not praying) is very likely. If this type of god exists, it hasn't made itself known to man, which isn't "fair".

I guess I don't see what you would have to lose is all I'm saying. I like asdf's generic prayer b/c when it all comes down to it, either all the religions are lying (most likely) or they are all deviations from some common truth (likely enough to cover a base).

What I particularly find troubling about applying Pascal's wager, especially in this situation is: how could it possibly work? Let's set aside the argument of multiple gods and just assume we're talking about the Christian god.

If a believer (of any religion for that matter) says to me that I should believe in God (because... insert any argument you want), it's really the same to me as he would say: "Look at your white wall. In this lifetime, I guarantee you it will spontaneously turn blue! Why? (doesn't really matter, insert any argument you want again)".

Now let's assume believing that my white wall will spontaneously turn blue would get me into heaven according to that belief, it doesn't change a single thing about really believing it.

I _can't_ believe in this premise even if I wanted to... so trying to tell me to believe in it because it might get me into heaven isn't the same as really believing it at all. And the same goes for Pascal's wager. Praying to God just before I die won't make me really believe it. Or at any other moment for any time period at this particular time, me being an atheist. (and keeping in mind that you _really_ need to believe genuinely in God for making it work at all... or at least that's what any believer ever said to me... the "God/Jesus wants hearts", "accept Jesus as your saviour" etc crap)

If that makes any sense at all, lol.

I totally understand. I'm pretty sure in addition to Pascal's wager he said something along the lines of "it's best to believe; sucks if you don't; fake it till you make it". At least I remember something along those lines, so I think there is some degree of just try until you believe and that's better than nothing. And to some degree it's obviously true. If you live in a small town where everyone is a Christian it just feels a lot easier to believe than when in a more liberal big city when you have a bunch of more intellectual friends and coworkers.

That being said I think the BEST course of action is to believe what you see. If you don't see God he can't fault you for lack of belief. I think I like Marcus Aurelius's ideas on the hard to find god than pascal's.