Eggs Maledict

For fear of seeming too elitist in this community, I was thinking about Pascal's Wager.

The Wager runs along these lines:

1. Either God exists or He does not, and you can either believe in God or you can not.
2. If God exists and you believe in Him, the benefit to you is infinitely great (you will be rewarded such that there can be no improvement of your circumstances) and if God does not exist and you do not believe in Him, then you've only lost a finite sum.
3. If God exists and you do not believe in Him, you might suffer infinite or finite punishment (it doesn't really matter which) and if God does not exist and you do not believe in Him, you have lost nothing.
4. You should behave in a way which maximises your expected returns.
C. You should believe in God.

The argument -- when set out in greater detail -- is generally considered to be valid. Attacks are usually made upon it being sound (premises 2 and 3 are usually challenged).

Alan Hájek has an interesting take on it: he denies that the argument is valid. For those interested, it's quite a technical objection and I'm not entirely sure that Hájek succeeds in demonstrating that it's invalid (he certainly shows another reason why the argument has significant problems).

Personally, there seems to be something just fundamentally wonky about the whole Wager. Nobody -- with the possible exceptions of the symbol-processing machines over in antitheism -- actually reasons in this way. This isn't a lived account of how one would come to a belief in God. This is sterile, symbol-processing reasoning.

Reasoning about beliefs is usually done after the fact. I believe something is true: when that belief is challenged, I find reasons why my belief is accurate (including attempts to show that the belief is inaccurate). The reasons for this are obvious: we generally have too much going on in our lives to sit down and work out every belief we should hold. So we believe first and rationalise second. Pascal doesn't believe in God because it's the best bet; Pascal believes in God for numerous socio-cultural reasons. Similarly, nobody's going to change their (dis)belief in God because it's the best bet.

An atheism member proudly displays his support for betrayal and complicity in political executions.

saveau thinks theology is irrational. When asked why, he compares it to Holocaust-denial, belief in government designed mind-control rays, and garden-variety sexism.

It gets better, though:

"Actually, what I did was provide examples of how there can be reasons to not grant the premises of a proposition that have to to with rejection of irrationality"

If you don't think that sentence made any sense, don't worry, you're just stupid.

"This defect is correctable, however; your local community college may offer an introductory course in logic. If this is not an option for you, you should have no trouble finding relevant in your local library. If this is too challenging for you, I recommend you begin your education with wooden blocks and brightly colored bits of string, and work your way up from there."

Since debate in this community often centers around Judeo-Christian cultural perspectives, I thought I'd offer something a little different. Professor Richard Hayes, in a series of lectures given at Leiden University, discusses ten philosophical questions that could be asked of Buddhists that are relevant to Western strands of philosophical inquiry. One of those lectures discusses the classical Buddhist arguments against the possibility of a single source of creation. Since I'm both dumb and lazy, I'm not going to attempt to summarize those arguments here, but offer the text of the lecture [PDF] for your leisurely perusal. And since, as I mentioned, I'm rather dumb, I'm at a loss as to whether the arguments made are in any way sound - although they seem so - or whether aspects of them have been addressed by Western philosophers or theologians.

Here's where you come in. If you are interested in reading this somewhat brief lecture and would like to attempt to rebut the arguments contained therein, I would be most grateful and interested in your arguments. I will also do my best to defend the arguments and/or explain the cultural/historical context in which they occurred. Or if you would not like to be bothered to compose original arguments, you may instead point me toward literature that would help me see past the convincing lines of reasoning that these arguments present. In either case,

convert_me

The following quote comes from a horrible article about the large hadron collider. It's not really an example of atheist fail, but it is undisputedly fail nonetheless, and as such it may be of interest to this community. I have emboldened the pertinent passage below:

If this new collider doesn’t produce groundbreaking discoveries, particle physics will have reached a dead end for a generation or more. The theorists would keep theorizing. But without hard experimental data pouring out of the L.H.C., says Jim Virdee, a Kenyan-born British-Indian physicist with the L.H.C., then “particle physics, the whole thing, becomes metaphysics.”

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaank.

There's a cool application for Philosophy. Probably one of the few worthwhile apps on the site.

http://www.facebook.com/philosophers?v=info#/philosophers?v=wall

The images look swell on your profile, and just like on LJ, there's the occasional influx of Libertarians and Randroids on the discussion forums looking for a fight.

I'm a high school debate coach and our new resolution* has me searching for definitions of "government." I'm looking for one that defines the limits of government, some of students are looking for definitions that justify expansion of government.

Beyond Locke, Rousseau, and Hobbes, is there a philosophy that we should explore? A philosopher or work we should read?

Thank you for your help.



*Resolved: Economic sanctions ought not to be used to achieve foreign policy objectives. Yes, the affirmative is arguing a negative. Someone out there hates me. XD

How can you be familiar with, and seemingly otherwise fond of, Garrison Keillor and yet still lack a sense of humor?

We're talking about the same guy who said Christians shouldn't be allowed to vote because, really, their place is the kingdom of heaven. It seems Lutherans must have thicker skin than Unitarians, otherwise Keillor would have been tarred and feathered long ago.

Global warming! World hunger! War! Pedophiles! These are the things that we seem to wring our hands about as whole societies. This is what we see on the TV and hear on the radio. It makes for good news. Especially if you have a celebrity talking about it, because celebrities are better than the rest of us and because we are all personal friends of theirs ("Oh yes, I know (him/her)! I read (his/her) twitter every day!).

Groan.

When I walk around outside I see the seeds of society's failure every day. I see the failure of most of the population around me to recognize that their wellbeing depends upon their cooperation with others.

I live in a busy city. I used to work in the heart of it every weekday. And every weekday, while on my way to work, I would have to cross several streets as a pedestrian. There were always dozens of other pedestrians waiting at the lights to do the same. Quite regularly the street we were waiting to cross would be quite packed with cars, such that they was one or two in the middle of the intersection. Large city buses often did this, knowing that the traffic ahead would move momentarily (the next light is green). Quite often, though, the lights would change just as the bus was crawling out of the intersection.

What do you think happened? As soon as the lights changed, 50 pedestrians would begin to cross. The vast majority of them would cross in front of the bus. There was now a space for the bus to move into, but that didn't matter to these people. They had the pedestrian light, so they were crossing. End of story. Meanwhile the bus was blocking the cross-street. Hundreds of cars had to wait until the next lights because this bus was in the way. And behind them, hundreds more had to wait at their lights because these cars in front of them weren't moving.

But what if those 50 pedestrians had waited for all of 10 seconds and let the bus through? Well, then everything would have been fine. No gridlock, no enraged drivers. Just some pedestrians waiting for 10 seconds.

It happens on an even smaller scale. There is a driveway into a warehouse around the corner from me, on a busy street. Occasionally while walking down the footpath I see a car waiting to enter or leave the driveway. There is a light up the road. If the light is red, the car has a chance to get in or out. If it is green they certainly will not be able to do so until it changes again. But in just 4 weeks, I have on several occasions watched as other pedestrians strolled obliviously across the driveway, blocking the car that had a brief chance to get onto the street. Had they waved the car through, or just walked behind it, that driver would have been able to get out. Or more importantly, get in, and not block 100 meters of traffic behind them.

I could make similar rants about the crap I've been hearing on the radio about how pubs have to close because alcohol is evil, or speeding drivers, drugs, what have you. It always seems to come down to the failure of just a few people to get some situational awareness as they live their lives.

What's the explanation? Are people stupid? Oblivious? Or is it just a lack of social responsibility? How do we teach this?

Send in the trains!

Ok, so all this environmental news has got me thinkin'. Everyone is busy talking up the technology-gospel as our way out of this mess. Hey, really, all we need to do is buy enough solar panels and everything will be fine. I'm not sold on this idea. In fact, I think it is the exact opposite. Technology is of the devil.

Take the tractor, for instance. We all like the tractor. The tractor lets a single person farm 20 acres a day. That is very impressive. Very efficient, right?

No, not at all. That stupid tractor takes 200 people to make, ship and sell. Thta's ok though, because the tractor makes enough food for the extra requirement of people. Nuclear power? Sweet. We get like 1.21 jiggawatts from a plutonium atom, or something. Of course, that nuclear power plant requires 2000 people to make, run and sustain. That's ok, our new carbon-free tractors can be used to grow even more food. Food that is now genetically engineered and sold by a team of 350 scientists, 600 grad students, 50 HR reps, 12 executives, and 1000 clerks.

Wait a second here, I'm starting to see a pattern. It appears that technology simply drives our ability to consume, and historically speaking, simply feeds our voracious desires and enables ever greater heights of consumption and thus, pollution. The idea that just getting rid of emissions will fix our problems is silly. The idea that technology will do anything other than drive our ability to destroy everything is silly.

I'm going Amish. The simple fact is that we are supposed to spend 14 back-breaking hours of heavy labor a day just to barely sustain ourselves. Oh, but what about our lovely musics and arts? Culture? Advancements?

I don't know, it all just seems like the Titanic at this point. I mean, it appears that the natural balance of nature is predicated upon animals doing two things: eating, sleeping, mating. Three things, then. Zeus was right to punish Promoetheus.

We need more trains!

I'm going Amish. Convert me away from my new lifestyle.

Now, the important questions to ask are:

1. Which of these general errors is more common? That is to say, of the two events: [Person refuting scientific theory via silly, uneducated thought-experiment], and [Person refuting moral theory via silly, uneducated scientific data], which occurs more often? And,


2. Which web-comic has a higher readership, and which one will thus continue to exert more influence on the population in general?

There could never be a more satisfying and simultaneously more depressing portrait of today's smug, self-aggrandizing, anti-philosophical, "scientific" intellectual than the XKCD comic. On the one hand, it's just a comic. On the other hand, the converse error (portrayed in the Chaospet comic) isn't just common, it's embodied in dozens of best-selling books, articles and television specials, all of which purport to tell us that the behaviour of animals is directly, even crucially relevant to human ethical ideas. The error portrayed in the XKCD comic is rarely committed, and rarely taken seriously.