Toggle comments on Questions on Theism - Less Wrong

23 Post author: Aiyen 08 October 2014 09:02PM

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Comment author: Aiyen 15 October 2014 06:55:45PM 1 point [-]

As C.S. Lewis would say-are they lying, are they mad, or are they telling the truth? People do lie sometimes, and perhaps my difficulty in letting go of Christianity despite a mountain of evidence against it is that my prior on people making up stories is too low. It would take an awful lot of psychosis to make someone believe that a leg had regrown, but again, people do go insane. But is there a way to get a sense of how likely/unlikely this is? With Pascal's Wager on the table, it's not enough to say there's ~40% chance Christianity is true, that's less than half, it's probably wrong. Rejecting it without constant fear would take near certainty that accounts like this one are fraudulant or deceived.

Comment author: Lumifer 15 October 2014 07:53:31PM 1 point [-]

With Pascal's Wager on the table

One major problem with Pascal's Wager (among others) is that it doesn't specify which god. It applies equally to worshiping Yahweh, Kali, and Huitzilopochtli -- and offers no guidance on how to choose between them.

Comment author: Toggle 15 October 2014 09:50:08PM 0 points [-]

And let's not forget the hypothetical Trickster God, omnipotent ruler of the universe that sends all people that believe in Him to hell, and everyone else goes to heaven. In other words, Pascal's wager coexists with its exact inverse.

But even without the wager on the table, I think we can safely agree that the question of God's existence is high-stakes.