It was about a year ago when I came across something what is called a "blog" and I first thought it was just something like a personal diary where people noted down their activities in their day-to-day lives.As the clock ticks as I write this,time passes on and as we get more matured, we gather, understand and produce innumerable informations in our minds (with or without our knowledge and acceptance). We also find a constant need to remember and keep these informations for future reference . It was then that I realised that a blog need not just be a record or a note of what is happening daily but can also be used to freely convey,express everything right from the silliest of the thoughts to the most complex understandings that comes to your mind.
Statistics (Yes,I know 40% of all statistics are made on the spot :) ) shows that there are over 70 million blogs in the world ie. to mean there are atleast 70 million people from whom we can read, learn an enjoy from. Assuming that one views ten blogs on an average per day , it would take around 20000 years for anyone to view all the existing blogs itself! So when I wanted to start a blog, I thought of making this a little bit different(there is nothing fully different right? )as well as meaningful to others.Have I made a difference? I cannot say that now,probably time will tell.
We know that "Brevity is the soul of wit", but why then is "Brevity" a tw0-syallable word and not a one-syllable word. Why do I mention this now? Solely to excuse me if you feel this to be a lengthy post :).
In line with the above phrase, the best thing that I can do as of now is stop wasting anymore of your time and straight away put down my thoughts.Let the mind unravel...
Every human being on this earth can be comes under one the following categories with respect to his or her religious beliefs.
Theism The belief that a god exists ,He created the universe and interacts with the daily events in the universe.
Atheism The belief that god does not exist at all.
Deism The belief that a god exists, He created the universe but decided to take a break and not interact with the daily events in the universe.
Agnosticism The belief that there is no way to know if god exists or not.
Blaise Pascal, a brilliant mathematician offered a pragmatic reason for believing in God: even under the assumption that God’s existence is unlikely.He said that the potential benefits of believing in God are so vast so as to make betting on theism rational. The Wager says that it is a better "bet" to believe that God exists than not to believe, because the expected value of believing is always greater than the expected value of not believing. The possibilities defined by Pascal's Wager can be put as follows.
CASE 1:You live as though God exists.
If God exists, you go to heaven(assuming this as the highest gain in one's mortal life) : your gain is infinite.
If God does not exist, you gain nothing & lose nothing.
CASE2:You live as though God does not exist.
If God exists, you go to hell(assuming this as the highest loss): your loss is infinite.
If God does not exist, you gain nothing & lose nothing.
For those who are unfamiliar with "expectation" in decision theory, the idea can be illustrated as follows. Suppose there is a bet saying that we will get $1000 if a "head" appears on flipping an unbiased coin, and that we will lose 10$ if a "tail" occurs.(Note that both "tails" and "heads" have an equal probability of 1/2 to occur.
Is it rational for us to take this bet? If we calculate the money we expect to get from tossing a coin, ($1000*1/2 - $10*1/2 = $495), we find that on average each ticket is expected to gain $495( Note that we cannot get $495 exactly in reality, as we can actually get only either $1000 or lose $10 as per the bet) . In comparison, not playing involves zero gain and zero loss. Since $495 is preferable to $0, it is rational for us to accept the bet. Alternately, suppose the same bet says that we will get $1000 if a "head" appears on flipping an unbiased coin, and that we should give 10000$ if a "tail" occurs.If we calculate the money we expect to get now($1000*1/2 - $10000*1/2 = -$495), we find that on average each ticket is expected to lose $495. Hence it is irrational for us to take this bet.
a. The Super-Dominance Argument to believe in God
Either God exists or does not, and either you believe or you do not. Let 'U' be a unit of measure of an individual's happiness(it can be anything of any finite value).
TABLE I
You believe in God and God exists ------(a) infinite reward (+ infinite 'U')
You believe in God and God does not exist------(c) 100 units (100 'U')
You do not believe in God and God exists------(b) infinite punishment (- infinite 'U')
You do not beieve in God and God does not exist------(d) 50 units (50'U')
If God exists, then theists will enjoy eternal happiness (cell a), while atheists will suffer hell(cell b). If God does not exist, then theists will enjoy finite happiness before they die (say 100 units worth), and atheists will enjoy finite happiness too (say 50 units). This is less thanwhat the theists enjoy because atheists will experience angst(the fear of possible suffering and a behavior resulting from uncertainty and strain which is caused by pain, loss, and death), rather than the mental peace that theists get from morally adhering to a religion. Regardless of whether God exists, then, theists have it better than atheists; hence belief in God is the most rational belief to have.
b. The Expectations Argument
What if the atheist is a happy hedonist(one who believes that pleasure is the most important pursuit of mankind and the theist is a miserable puritan?(one who restricts from worldly pleasures inorder to be truthful to his religion). In that case the value of cell (d) is greater than that of (c) since the theist would have had lesser happiness in hs life than an atheist due to his self-imposed restrictions to a moral but a less pleasurable life.Hence the dominance argument no longer works here and the table-I s modified is modified as Table- II given below.
TABLE II
You believe in God and God exists ------ (a) infinite reward (+ infinite 'U')
You believe in God and God does not exist------ (c) 100 units (100'U')
You do not believe in God and God exists------ (b) infinite punishment (- infinite 'U')
You do not believe in God and God does not exist------ (d) 200 units (200 'U')
Considering a 50-50 chance that God exists, we can calculate the expectations for the above two cases as below:
The expectation for believing in God = (positive infinity x ½ + 100 x ½) = positive infinity; the expectation for not believing = (negative infinity x ½ + (50 or 200) x ½) = negative infinity. Since the expectation while believing in God is more than that in not believing, it is only rational and logical to believe in God!.
The following are some of the criticisms over the above arguments.
1. Atheist's argument
The argument is that if a person is uncertain whether a particular religion is true and the god of that religion is real, but that person still "believes" in them because of the expectation of a reward and the fear of punishment, then that belief is neither a true valid belief nor a true faith in that religion and its god.
2. Assumption that divine 'rewards' and 'punishments' are infinite
The Wager assumes that an existent God will reward believers with eternal life, or something else of infinite value. Variations that mention hell similarly assume eternal or infinite punishment.
However, some people believe that an infinite utility could only be finitely enjoyed by finite humans and that the utility of salvation cannot be infinite.
3. Assumption that the correct god is worshipped and is not vengeful
Since there are many religions throughout history, and therefore many alleged gods, it is impossible to determine which one to worship based on the wager. Hence there is a high probability of worshipping the wrong god, which could be severely punished if the God who actually exists is vengeful.
Is Belief a Matter of Choice- What should we do?
Believing and disbelieving are choices that are up to us to make. If I offered to pay you $1000 for believing the sky is green, for instance, could you sincerely adopt this belief simply by wishing to? Evidently not. Therefore, some say, Pascal's wager does not give legitimate grounds for believing in God.
Just as we cannot adopt a belief simply by "deciding" to believe, the same is true for other actions. For instance, we cannot go to school or college or office simply by deciding to; rather, we have to wake up by a certain time (which may mean first developing a certain kind of habit), we must get dressed, we must put one foot in front of another while walking, etc. Then if we are lucky enough to cross the volatile traffic unscathed, we will end up at our destination, though this is far from guaranteed. Likewise for any other endeavour in life: be it when one aspires to attain stardom in his career, or to marry by age 25, or to spend a holiday in the cool Alps of Switzerland-- the attainment of such goals can be facilitated, though not purely willed, by appropriate micro-steps that are more nearly under voluntary control.
Indeed, even twitching your little finger is not entirely a matter of volition, as its success depends on a functioning neural system running from your brain, through your spine, and down your arm. Your minutest action is a joint product of internal volition and external contingencies. The same applies to theistic belief: although you cannot simply decide to be a theist, you can choose to read one-sided literature, you can choose to join a highly religious community, or you can choose to chant and pray. No mere exercise of "will" can guarantee that you will end up believing in God, but neither can any exercise of will guarantee that you succeed in doing anything else you decide to do. If there is a difference between our ability to voluntarily believe something and our ability to voluntarily wiggle our toe, it is a difference in degree of likely success, and not a difference in logical kind.
Yet a difference in degree may be significant, and it’s worth noting that theists and atheists may disagree on the power of prayer to change one’s beliefs. Theists generally think that prayer tends to bring one into contact with God, in which case one is likely to notice, recognize, and believe in God’s existence. Atheists, on the other hand, have no particular reason to think that mere praying should notably effect conversion.
Indeed, it really does not matter whether we can choose to have the beliefs we have. There is atleast one argument or proof (Tables I or II ) given by statistics or mathematics, the true language of the Gods (if they exist) to shows that it is pragmatically better to believe in God. Is there any other proof in philosophy or mathematics or in any field for that matter which says that it is better to disbelieve in God than to believe? The answer is a strict NO!
It is generally believed that theists, taken across all possible corners of the world, are on average better off than atheists in most of the aspects. It doesn't matter whether theism results from personal will-power,or God's grace, or cosmic luck -- regardless, if believing is being better off than not believing in atleast one context,be it mathematics or anything------- JUST BELIEVE, not because YOU CAN but YOU WILL -- and that is the bottom line!
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