Picking apart Pascal’s Wager – Part 2

This article is continued from Part 1.

As agnosticism is the only intellectually honest, logical and justifiable position — regardless of whether you are a theist or atheist — there then often comes the argument that surely you should believe “just in case” there is a god. Enter Blaise Pascal‘s famous wager, considered by many to be a breakthrough in probability theory and apologetics in its time:

1. If there is a god and you do believe, then you’ll go to heaven.
2. If there isn’t a god and you do believe, then it has cost you nothing.
3. If there isn’t a god and you don’t believe, then it has cost you nothing.
4. If there is a god and you don’t believe, then you will go to hell.

Therefore, the logical conclusion is: You should believe… just in case. The implication is that at worst you will have wasted time and effort, but at best you’ve gained a place in heaven. As if an omniscient god wouldn’t know that you’re merely playing the numbers? In reality, points 2 and 3 above mean that you have wasted time, effort and potentially yours and other lives.

Unfortunately the Wikipedia entry for Pascal’s Wager has been edited by one or more of “the faithful,” diminishing its usefulness in providing a contrast. The fundamental argument against Pascal’s Wager is as follows (using just monotheism as an example):

1. If you believe in one god, which out of an apparently infinite number will you choose from?
2. Most gods declare they will punish you for eternity if you do not accept just them.
3. If there is only one god and many imposters, how can you be certain to choose the correct one?
4. Due to the near infinite number, you have almost no chance of choosing the “One True God.”
5. The holy book of each god is full of lists of those who will never go to heaven — murderers, adulterers, covetors, the greedy, gluttonous, those who walk further than a number of paces on the sabbath, and any number of other mental and physical acts. Trust me when I say that you are on that list.

Therefore, the probability of you going to heaven, allowing for the possibility that it exists at all, is so infinitesimally small that it doesn’t matter whether you are religious or not (unless you’re the kind of person who thinks a 1:14,000,000 chance of winning the lottery jackpot means that at least 4 people out of a population of 61,000,000 must win it each week).

One criticism of Pascal’s Wager is the assumptions that it makes:

• God will ignore (or is somehow unaware of) the fact that people are praying just to avoid hell.
• Hell is a place of eternal misery, like Dante‘s medieval Inferno.
• Heaven is a place of eternal pleasure.
• Belief has no cost to the believer.
• A loving god will damn you to hell if you don’t believe in him.
• Sincere belief is a conscious act that can be changed at will.
• God is the Judeo-Christian Abrahamic god.
• God is loving, forgiving, and takes things seriously, rather than mischievous, cruel or ironic.
• There is only One True God, not many gods. Monotheism excludes much older pantheistic and polytheistic traditions.

Another way to pick apart Pascal’s Wager is to ask the reader to conduct a thought exercise and consider that God is an imposter that they follow, and that Ugg (a name I pulled out of my head) — who only requires that you don’t worship anyone else — is really the One True God. This exercise is sometimes called Reversing the Wager:

1. If you don’t believe in God and Ugg does exist, then you’ll go to heaven.
2. If you don’t believe in God and Ugg doesn’t exist, then you have lived a good life.
3. If you do believe in God and Ugg doesn’t exist, then you have lived under unnecessary restrictions, and wasted the time, effort and lives of yourself and others.
4. If you do believe in God and Ugg does exist, then you’ll go to hell.

This shows that atheists will come out the best (heaven or a good life) and theists are toast (hell or wasted life). If you’re a Gnostic Theist, then this argument will go sailing over your head and you’ll snort derisively in your knowledge that God would never let that happen, but if you are able to think clearly or at least entertain other points of view, then you’ll see the point. It’s just a thought exercise, of course.

Last of all, there is the Agnostic Atheist Wager that is a simple and effective refutation of Pascal’s Wager that is, perhaps surprisingly, compatible with the message of Jesus, and states:

Whether or not you believe in God, you should live your life with love, kindness, compassion, mercy and tolerance while trying to make the world a better place. If there is no God, you have lost nothing and will have made a positive impact on those around you. If there is a benevolent God reviewing your life, you will be judged on your actions and not just on your ability to blindly believe, when there is a significant lack of evidence of any one god’s existence.

Many religious texts state that by our actions we will be judged and, surely, it’s more beneficial to humanity and the Earth as a whole to act well rather than ensure that we speak the right words or bow to the right statue.

The more you learn of religions throughout human history — even if you just limit yourself to Abrahamic monotheism in all its forms — the more you realise that it is a wilful and conscious act to ignore all the other religions and gods in favour of just one. The religion chosen is usually the one in which your parents raised you or from the culture in which you grew up, probably based upon our tribal instincts, need to fit in, and from the assumption that our experience (or family, team, or nation) is the only or best one possible.

How can an accident of your location (or time in history, considering the spread of the “good news” around the world) of birth be the ultimate determining factor in whether a kind, loving god makes you spend an eternity in hell or heaven? Modern apologetics that glosses over that by saying that “those who haven’t heard it yet go to heaven” is dodging the real issue, and those who say it know it.

It’s all very complicated and requires a great deal of cognitive dissonance to adhere to one faith and exist with the natural world — and that applies even for members of religions that are mature or adaptable enough to accommodate scientific advancement (often called God of the Gaps). I’m hesitant to use Occam’s Razor…

When you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is the better.

…as a kind of coup de grâce to this article, as I have seen it used successfully by both sides of this argument, and I’m not sure that it isn’t a non-sequitur in this context as neither science nor those without belief purport to have the answer to the origins of the universe (or even to have the answer to the origins of life, though there are a number of interesting scientific theories).

Rather, science seeks to find out as much as possible about as much as possible, and religions throughout human history have seen knowledge as a direct challenge to the unknowability of their gods (or worse). It is not the intent or goal of science to do away with religion; its goal is to gather knowledge. If that somehow challenges your faith or religion, then that is your problem and you must address it somehow — but not by attacking those merely trying to learn and discover the exciting mysteries of the universe.

Picking apart Pascal’s Wager – Part 1

Last night I was chatting with a friend about religious belief, absence of belief, the differences between agnosticism, atheism, gnosticism and theism, and helping him determine his state of belief, along the lines of:

• Gnostic Theism: “I know that there definitely is a god(s).”
• Agnostic Theism: “I don’t know for certain, but ‘all this’ must have been created by someone or something.”
• Agnostic Atheism: “I don’t know for certain, but attributing a supernatural force to its origin is poor logic.”
• Gnostic Atheism: “I know that there definitely is no god(s).”

Looking at those four terms for a moment:

• Theism is the belief in at least one god. In Western society it nearly always refers to the god of Christianity and nearly all Western religious arguments are about this god, unless otherwise stipulated.
• Atheism prefixes the Greek a- (without) to theism, and means simply “without belief in at least one god.” It does not mean disbelief or refusal to believe; it is a position of neutrality: absence of belief. To place it in context: a baby is atheist until it is introduced to supernatural concepts at a later age; animals are atheist.
• Gnostic is from the Greek word gnosis and refers to knowledge about spiritual matters, and in this case absolute conviction. It generally discounts evidence and logical argument as it is not a position based on rational deduction and analysis, and usually has the Argument from Incredulity/Ignorance at its core.
• Agnostic was a term coined by Thomas Huxley to complement the term gnostic with the Greek a- (without) prefix, making it mean in this context “without absolute conviction.” It’s an intellectually honest position that recognises that there is insufficient evidence or knowledge to make a definitive conclusion for or against the existence of god(s).

My problem with the term atheism has generally been that it’s a term that defines itself as the opposite of another, or by the absence of something: without the term theism, the term atheism would not exist. An example might be the term slim (in the context of body weight) and me calling myself unslim (rather than overweight), or conversely fat using afat as its complement. Ultimately it’s just semantics, but defining oneself as the opposite of something is a topic worth addressing.

This article is continued in Part 2.

Mainstream social taboos

While reading a recent post on the always excellent Friendly Atheist blog, I was interested to see a guest blogger writing about the polyamory lifestyle. The article opens as follows:

As atheists, many of us have faced some level of negative reaction from those around us, on account of our deviation from our culture’s expected norms. I’ve found that atheists, in general, tend to support GLBT rights and other civil rights issues despite opposition by an offended religious majority. After all, atheists have no religious inhibitions that lead them to view certain deviations from the norm as anything immoral or harmful to society. Atheists know what it’s like to be demonized and hated by those who fear us for our differences. I’d like to call your attention to another group of people — a group even deeper in the “closet” than atheists — who could use your support: polyamorists.

The rest of the article can be found here: In Defense of Polyamory

Part of what interested me about this article was that I was unaware polyamory was a lifestyle movement outside religion (e.g. Muslims or Mormons) and hedonistic stereotypes (bored marriages, bohemian students or artists, etc). Another interesting point was the author’s comments about deviations from cultural and social norms, which I suspect is most likely the crux of religious and conservative problems with those who don’t fit into the God-fearing, husband & wife, missionary position, change-is-bad, tradition-is-to-be-trusted, meat & 2 veg pigeonhole.

It seems that most old law-giving religions were borne from tribal groups where certain laws and behaviours were established to keep the (relatively small) tribe fit and healthy, with transgression being met with brutal punishment as the survival of the tribe was at stake. (We still do the same thing: consider the penalty for treason in your country). Hence, non-procreative sexual activity was distrusted and, when it let to same-sex relationships, the tribe had lost two potentially viable sources of children and mates for two other people. No more children means no more tribe, and we recognise that concept today in our perfectly correct “children are our future” mindset. It doesn’t matter that the argument is a false dichotomy.

It’s not inconceivable that the tribal prohibition against same-sex relationships could have, as the law gradually became more conservative over time, been extended to include other relationships outside the “proven to work” formula (choose a mate or have one chosen, betrothal and binding, breeding and offspring; rinse and repeat). This simple linear progression has worked since Prehistory but, when enshrined in law or even cultural expectation, it doesn’t allow for what engineers call a corner case: people who don’t fit into the expected behaviours. We see this in both animals and humans, so it’s not people just “choosing to be different.”

However, what struck me the most about the article was that although I have reassessed my opinion on homosexuality — which has naturally expanded to include the LGBT umbrella — polyamory and polygamy are two concepts that I had not yet reassessed. By reassess I mean the thoughts and opinions that we all gather over time, initially as children through young adulthood and into mental and emotional maturity. Some people are constantly re-evaluating their perspective on things as they encounter them, some reach old age without adjusting many opinions formed in childhood, and I suspect the majority fall somewhere in between — perhaps leaning one way or the other based upon our liberalism and conservatism. But especially pronounced if we are religious.

As I’ve blogged about previously, I had minimal formal religious instruction (though various notable influences) until I was 17, then a few years of intensive fundagelicalism during which everything I knew about just about anything was re-forged and realigned into a specific way of thinking — a kind of mental aquaduct designed to funnel everything along a certain route to a certain outcome. When I was eventually spat out of that homogenous situation, every opinion I had was filtered through that lens and my rational self knew almost none of it could be trusted. These opinions were not mine and they had not been formed through critical analysis; they had been overlaid to match the party line. Deconstructing one’s own mind is no trivial undertaking.

So this article has got me thinking about two aspects of life that I haven’t had cause to reassess in 17 years or more. That’s not to say that I will automatically find a way to accomodate acceptance of it, as that is not the application of critical thinking. The way I have managed the deconstruction of my mind is to treat just about every contentious topic as a blank canvas — I have no opinion on many things, allowing me to consider and think about them properly before forming my own opinions.

Those opinions may turn out to be wrong, but they’re mine. From there it’s relatively straightforward and clear sailing…

Russell’s Cosmic Teapot

Continuing with the Bertrand Russell theme, here is his excellent illustrative analogy of the burden of proof when it comes to religion and other belief systems:

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the Sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes.

But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

Once you get past the automated, unthinking supposition that any given religious book is immutable fact, it’s easy to see Russell’s point.

This point was then further elaborated upon over 50 years later by Richard Dawkins, in his book A Devil’s Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love (2003):

The reason organised religion merits outright hostility is that, unlike belief in Russell’s teapot, religion is powerful, influential, tax-exempt and systematically passed on to children too young to defend themselves. Children are not compelled to spend their formative years memorising loony books about teapots. Government-subsidised schools don’t exclude children whose parents prefer the wrong shape of teapot. Teapot-believers don’t stone teapot-unbelievers, teapot-apostates, teapot-heretics and teapot-blasphemers to death. Mothers don’t warn their sons off marrying teapot-shiksas whose parents believe in three teapots rather than one. People who put the milk in first don’t kneecap those who put the tea in first.

While I don’t always agree with Dawkins’s approach — I think his behaviour is sometimes counter-productive as it seems to simply raise the hackles of those with opposing viewpoints, discouraging further discourse — I completely agree with his message. That’s also true in the case of the above quotation, as it is also an excellent illustration of Russell’s original premise.

The Ten Commitments

Bertrand Russell‘s ethical and modern replacement for the Ten Commandments (Deut. 5):

1. Do not lie to yourself.
2. Do not lie to other people, unless they are exercising tyranny.
3. When you think it is your duty to inflict pain, scrutinise your reasons closely.
4. When you desire power, examine yourself carefully as to why you desire it.
5. When you have power, use it to build up people, not to constrict them.
6. Do not attempt to live without vanity, since this is impossible, but choose the right audience from which to seek admiration.
7. Do not think of yourself as separate, wholly self-contained unit.
8. Be reliable.
9. Be just.
10. Be good-natured.

News media legally permitted to lie?

Most you know that I’m not in the US, but what goes on there has a habit of spilling over into the rest of the world. This is particularly true of politics, culture and media…

It appears that the US news media is legally permitted to lie to and has no legal onus to tell the truth to the public, according to that government’s law courts and communications regulatory authority, the FCC. For many people this has been an accepted, if unwritten and cynical, fact for decades, but I wonder how many know that it’s actual fact?

I realise this sounds straight out of one of the Internet’s countless conspiracy theory websites, but this is one of those situations where it’s completely accurate. It started with an article called Fox News gets okay to misinform public, court ruling on CeaseSPIN, a website that states its mission is to seek a return to “more objective, truthful, fair, balanced, relevant and representative news reporting.” (Though the cynic in me wonders if such an animal has ever existed).

The most notable portion of the article says:

On February 14 [2003], a Florida Appeals court ruled there is absolutely nothing illegal about lying, concealing or distorting information by a major press organization… The ruling basically declares it is technically not against any law, rule, or regulation to deliberately lie or distort the news on a television broadcast.

People like Noam Chomsky have been saying this for years, in books such as his Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies, but — if I’m brutally honest — although he’s clearly a brilliant and intelligent man, I’ve often wondered if maybe he was one step away from the puzzle house. However, that opinion was based on the assumption that there was a legal requirement for there to be at least an attempt to tell the truth in the news media. We can all think of examples where the news has got it so wrong as to be laughable, though we normally put such things down to over-eager reporters or not having all the facts. But what if that’s wrong?

Thinking that this article must be incorrect or sensationalised, I looked a little deeper into the facts behind the story. According to a number of online resources, it appears that two former employees of a Fox News-owned TV station in Florida, Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, refused to knowingly include false information in a report about an artificial hormone developed by a multi-national biotech company and they were subsequently fired. Presumably believing that they were wrongfully dismissed and that the station had knowingly broken the law, the couple sued them under Florida’s whistle-blower’s law (among other things).

The pair won their case and, as often seems to be the case with big business, it went to appeal. Amazingly, and although the reasons for the original case seem not to have been contended, the appellant corporation successfully argued that while the FCC had a News Distortion policy, it was only a policy.

Florida’s 2nd District Court of Appeals Case 2D01-529 (PDF) concludes with the following statement:

Because the FCC’s news distortion policy is not a “law, rule, or regulation” under section 448.102, Akre has failed to state a claim under the whistle-blower’s statute. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment in her favor and remand for entry of a judgment in favor of [the appellant].

The original ruling was overturned on the basis that the news media outlet had broken no laws, and it didn’t matter whether they were conveying facts or lying through their teeth. In short, this means that there is at least one piece of case law in the US that states that news media has no legal requirement to report anything resembling reality.

The FCC’s Consumer Facts: Complaints About Broadcast Journalism page states:

The FCC is caught in a tug-of-war between two consumer factions: on one side, consumers have urged the FCC to set guidelines to prevent bias or distortion by networks and station licensees or to supervise the gathering, editing, and airing of news and comments; on the other side, consumers fear possible government intimidation or censorship of broadcast news operations.

Is this a classic example of a policy intended to prevent something from occurring actually facilitating it? What if the network or station isn’t one of the good guys?

For anyone who’s watched news networks in the US, UK or Australia (and most likely other countries) — particularly those with 24×7 news coverage — will be familiar with the concept of biased, unfair and unbalanced reporting being a matter of course, particularly when they become politically-aligned. I’ve been cheekily referring to “the news” as “infotainment” for years, but cases such as this make me wonder if I’ve been right all along.

None of this is likely to be news to anyone possessing basic critical thinking skills, but to see it enshrined in law is hideous. I wonder how many other pieces of case law around the world contain such rulings?

If you have examples, please provide citations in the comments.

The fundagelical problem with humanism

While reading a friend’s blog post in which he puts down some thoughts about recent events and the subsequent comments from his readers, I was struck by one comment in particular which was a comment to a comment, so to speak. Here is the relevant snippet from Mark’s comment:

Humanist and Utilitarian beliefs existed long before religion and will continue to exist long after religion has disappeared into the annals of ancient history. One does not need a fairy godmother to understand right and wrong.

It’s a perfectly logical comment, as the basic tenets of humanism are universal to the wellbeing of a group or society, and obeisance to or existence of a higher power isn’t a prerequisite (e.g. I love my parents and a god does not need to exist to enable that).

The comment that intrigued me also confused me a little. I’d rather not simply copy and paste it here as it would then be out of context, so here is the link to the comment for you to read in situ.

It appears to me that the commenter considers Humanism to be a world view devoid of morals and values, and quotes from the American Humanist Association‘s Humanist Manifesto II, written in 1973 (the most recent is the Humanist Manifesto III, written in 2003), choosing to combine parts of the 3rd Principle (Ethics) and 6th Principle (The Individual) as follows:

Happiness and the creative realization of human needs and desires, individually and in shared enjoyment, are continuous themes of humanism… individuals should be permitted to express their sexual proclivities and pursue their lifestyles as they desire.

I presume the intent of this is to justify the commenter’s assertion that Humanism is devoid of morals and values, as at face value and out of context this quote may suggest that it is hedonistic and perverted, existing to encourage lascivious behaviour and baser expressions of human activities. I believe the Daily Mail are always looking for journalists…

To provide their proper context, here are these two principles in their entirety (emphasis mine):

THIRD: We affirm that moral values derive their source from human experience. Ethics is autonomous and situational needing no theological or ideological sanction. Ethics stems from human need and interest. To deny this distorts the whole basis of life. Human life has meaning because we create and develop our futures. Happiness and the creative realization of human needs and desires, individually and in shared enjoyment, are continuous themes of humanism. We strive for the good life, here and now. The goal is to pursue life’s enrichment despite debasing forces of vulgarization, commercialization, and dehumanization.

SIXTH: In the area of sexuality, we believe that intolerant attitudes, often cultivated by orthodox religions and puritanical cultures, unduly repress sexual conduct. The right to birth control, abortion, and divorce should be recognized. While we do not approve of exploitive, denigrating forms of sexual expression, neither do we wish to prohibit, by law or social sanction, sexual behavior between consenting adults. The many varieties of sexual exploration should not in themselves be considered “evil.” Without countenancing mindless permissiveness or unbridled promiscuity, a civilized society should be a tolerant one. Short of harming others or compelling them to do likewise, individuals should be permitted to express their sexual proclivities and pursue their lifestyles as they desire. We wish to cultivate the development of a responsible attitude toward sexuality, in which humans are not exploited as sexual objects, and in which intimacy, sensitivity, respect, and honesty in interpersonal relations are encouraged. Moral education for children and adults is an important way of developing awareness and sexual maturity.

As can be seen, when taken in context the 3rd Principle is explaining that morals, values and ethics are based upon self-evidential experience (students of American history should be familiar with the idea of self-evidence, if not the phrase itself) and free from absolutism or dogmatic interpretation. That we know without doubt that we have this life now, but anything beyond that is uncertain and unproven, so to form an ethical framework around words written by men and adhering to them unquestioningly is foolish. And the 6th Principle is explaining sexuality and the universal sexual rights of human beings, again without unquestioning adherence to a framework or dogma.

That this Manifesto has seen four versions shows that Humanism is like science — it adjusts, revises and corrects as necessary. Nothing is absolute. And that frightens the living daylights out of many believers and conservative people.

Unfortunately for them, life and the universe is uncertain, relative and without absolutes. Those responsible for tracking objects from the Kuiper Belt and beyond may tomorrow detect an object on a collision course with earth with an ETA of 2 weeks and after which it’s All Over (if it happens, we won’t get much notice), the leader of a nuclear power may lose the plot and push The Button throwing us all into a nuclear winter, or any number of end-of-the-world scenarios.

Once you understand that not only do you not matter, that your country doesn’t matter, that this planet doesn’t matter to the universe, then you will have some insight into the marvellous thing that is life. Someone once said that before he was born he was a long time dead and after he dies he’ll be a long time dead, so he makes the most of this blink of an eye in which we’re born, grow, live, grow old and die. It also shows why Humanists have such a thirst for life, and why things such as the AHA’s Humanist Manifesto are so necessary.

Whether a god or gods exist is immaterial — and there are logical refutations and arguments that can be used to illustrate why such existence is unlikely at best — as that is not the issue here. There is nothing in human existence to suggest that any of the millions of religious texts on this world weren’t either written by men seeking power or a genuine, primitive attempt to understand the wonders and horrors of the world: fire, lightning, weather systems, the joy of sex, the birth of a child, the death of a mother during childbirth, the untimely diseased death of a child, a volcano burying a city.

We’re born into a world where people with an imaginary friend’s supposed writing dictates not only the way they live their lives but they mandate the same behaviour on to everybody else. What if you’re wrong? Have you considered that possibility seriously for just 5 minutes? I mean really seriously, without falling prey to the inevitable Argument from Incredulity or Argument from Popularity within 30 seconds and snorting your derision. And then extend that and ask how it can possibly be right for your values (immaterial of whether they’re correct or not) to be forced upon others — upon entire nations.

We’re a race that have flown to the Moon, we’ve fired things we’ve made to the very edge of the known Solar System, we’ve worked out empirically the age and size of the universe as we’re able to see it today, and we’ve sequenced our own genetic code and are in the process of decoding half a billion years of post-Cambrian development

And to this day we’re going to war for the same reasons with the same Books that we did back in the Bronze Age. Now tell me again why religion is good but Humanism is bad?

A mote of dust suspended on a sunbeam

As you should know by now — as I’ve quoted him often enough — Carl Sagan is my hero. Here’s something beautiful, humbling and inspiring from a lecture he did in 1994, two years before his untimely death:

Hat tip to irReligion.