Ludi writes:

>Precisely my point. Consider:

>Freedom from beliefs +3
>Beliving in a god -3
>Going to hell -1000
>chances of hell if not believe 1 in 100

Baggins:
The fallacy here is that, since there is no reason, whatever, to
think that there is a "hell", the numbers change to.

Going to hell -0
chances of hell if not believe 1 in <infinite number>.

And as many have noted in the past, the negative result
of belief could be argued to be much greater then the -3 given...

At the vary least,,, -10... Tithing, I think it is called. :-)

If the numbers do NOT change, in this way, then there is no reason
one cannot insert ANYTHING that has zero support, into the equation,
with just as much validity.

The same logic would demand that you drop EVERYTHING you are doing,
and spend the rest of your life searching for the Fountain of Youth.
Yet few are doing this. If this is an innate tendency of Humans, and this
type argument holds weight, then why not?

Is there a +3 benefit to being free from such beliefs?

I might argue that one, also, :-)


But it would seem that this whole thing boils down to a claim that,
because of
innate tendencies of human nature, Pascal's Wager is not seen as logical
fallacy,
but rather it is taken as valid reasoning by human folks.

For a description of said "wager".. see:

http://stripe.colorado.edu/~morristo/pascal2.html

http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/stanford/entries/pascal-wager/

Maybe this is true, as one might consider the sales of
lottery tickets as undeniable proof of this tendency.. :-)

I would rather think of the lottery as more of a tax
placed upon folks who are not good at math.. :-)




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