Option A: Five thousand dollars if the National League wins the World Series in 2050
Option B: One thousand dollars if the National League wins the world series in 2010
Not all beliefs can be settled in the short run. This raises an interesting source of bias. In theory we should aim our beliefs at the truth. But there is the temptation to choose beliefs that will get you a short term reward. That's doubly true for people with a high rate of time discounting. Could that be an important presupposition that explains why people choose atheism?
Option C: An eternity with Jesus in heaven
Option D: A freewheeling life of merriment on Earth
Here is another example.
Option E: Delaying sex until marriage
Option F: Having premarital sex
The upshot is that there is a strong incentive to choose beliefs that are convenient. If you are wrong you will not have to suffer the consequences, at least, not anytime soon. On this view atheists self-select (or adjust their beliefs) for wealth, status, and worldly merriment.
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4 comments:
Assuming you are going to marry the same person in E and F then there is no upside to E over F and much upside (and potential avoidance of downside) to F over E.
If you cannot see this then you have no place commenting on discounting or any economic ideas.
Not that these have anything to do with the main problem of Pascal's Wager which is that one cannot fake belief to an omniscient God.
Please try to explain how a non-believer faking belief and doing all the hypocritical praying, churching etc. is better than spending that time helping the less fortunate?
Is God so insecure He requires the Sabbath to be kept at the expense of the person the Good Samaritan was helping, not to mention what happens to the Good Samaritan himself?
That seems remarkably immoral.
That is a loaded assumption! From a signaling perspective abstinence before marriage is a costly handicap that could only be repaid by engaging in a long term cooperative venture with someone. Whether or not one has premarital sex is predicted to have a large impact on the quality of one's spouse.
This post is tangential to pascal's wager. It is really about the fact that atheism systematically steers one towards favoring worldly success and status. But I don't think Pascal's argument can be as lightly dismissed. It is not about faking belief so much that joining a community and actively participating will lead to a change in belief. See also: religious southerners who move to cities in the East Coast. They often become atheists even though they don't actually study philosophy in the process.
Sabbath. I'm not sure how this is relevant, but I'll bite. Jesus himself criticized the
legalism of the Pharisees on this point. He healed the man with the withered hand and the Pharisees objected because it was the sabbath.(Mark 3:1-6).
The spirit of keeping the sabbath is that people should set aside time just for God. It is a common topic in Christian sermons. We tend to feel like we have to multitask so the pastor will joke about praying while he shaves and brushes his teeth. God wants to spend time with you and not just be one item you are multitasking. That was true in biblical times as well. That is the real meaning of the Sabbath.
The assumption was loaded, but could be considered valid sometimes...
The Sabbath was not really about the Good Samaritan, more about how going to Church etc when you don't believe is surely a pointless venture compared to using that time to help the needy.
...atheism systematically steers one towards favoring worldly success and status
Since atheists only believe in the worldly I'll give you this point 100%.
However, you make a loaded assumption yourself - that success and status are in the narrow range that you consider immoral/unworthy/unhelpful. I would suggest an academic seeking to maximise human knowledge in his field is a good thing. A politician seeking to be viewed as the greatest leader in history would also be a good thing.
Status does not always come at other people's success - as you mentioned in another post many things are not zero-sum and I'd suggest a lot of successful atheists are involved in non-zero-sum games.
The people you are actually talking about are hedonists. They can be, but are not always or even mostly atheists.
If you wish to bring Pascal's Wager in to try to show that hedonism is an atheistic thing then I will say that the deathbed confession and forgiveness makes it more likely that a hedonist would be a Christian.
You are correct that some signals do have intrinsic value. Clearly signals of intelligence are often useful for society as a whole. But there are a few problems. When people are motivated by their status they will choose the signal of their comparative advantage, not what is best for society and/or their family. E.g. People with a comparative advantage in strength will develop the signal of big muscles. The outcome is a high opportunity cost.
I am not utopian. Status will be important even in a world with strong group and future oriented norms. But even when people are motivated by status the signals they will create healthier, more group-oriented signals. The goal is to get more people to develop signals such as "wealth" or "polymath" or "intellectual" instead of "big muscles." And that goes back to my opening point about atheism leading to a systematic bias towards a strong time preference.
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