Sam_Bass ,

Kali giggles

jungle ,

Brilliant! This is one of those things that when you see it, it seems so obvious that you wonder how nobody thought of it until now. But it takes someone like Randall to pluck it out of the space of unexplored ideas and present it perfectly.

HubertManne ,

I always took pascals wager as just being about some nebulous creator type of thing with no real specifics because the argument can't really handle specifics.

stinerman ,
@stinerman@midwest.social avatar

It was specifically about the Christian God because all others were "obviously" incorrect. It's terrible logic because it discounts:

  1. God somehow doesn't know you're believing in him "just in case" rather than because of actual faith.
  2. The wager implies that you should be an adherent of the religion that gets you the most stuff in the afterlife.
HubertManne ,

ooh I like point 2. i have a new question now for thiests. well ya know allahs offering me a harem of 72 comely virgins. whats your offer?

hperrin ,

72 sluts.

HubertManne ,

im listening.

hikaru755 ,

the religion that gets you the most stuff in the afterlife.

I think it would be rather the opposite, should be the one that promises the worst fate in the afterlife to non-believers

danc4498 ,

I’m not sure I get what this is saying.

homura1650 , (edited )

Blaise Pascal is famous for 2 things:

  1. Pascal's triangle. This describes how to expand expresions of the form (a+b)^n as well as to compute how many ways there are to pick k objects out of a set of n (ignoring order.

This triangle is computed by starting with 1 at the tip, then having each element be the some of its 2 parents (except the diagonal edges with only one parent, which remains as 1)

  1. Pascal's wager. This is a theological argument for a belief in god that goes "if you believe and god doesn't exist, nothing happens. If you don't believe and he does exist, you suffer for eternity. The logical choice is therefore to believe"

The natural conclusion is therefore to believe in all gods. If procelatizing happens in just the right way, and no one realizes people are talking about the same god, you end up with a triangle of polytheists, where the number of gods they believe in is given by Pascal's triangle.

Edit: gid -> god

danc4498 ,

Thanks! I wasn’t familiar with 1.

BradleyUffner ,

All hail Gid!

Ookami38 ,

Gid is gud

Crashumbc ,

Finally something to believe in.

TeddE ,
@TeddE@lemmy.world avatar

Pascal was a famous thinker of their time, particularly in mathematics.

Two of the ideas they're remembered for are Pascals Triangle and Pascals Wager.

Their triangle is a helpful tool for combinations of things. Their wager is a (kinda bad in my opinion) argument for why you should believe in the Christian God.

The xkcd comic is a combination of both ideas

BradleyUffner ,

Ahh, so I did actually understand it... I thought for sure I was missing something since they are usually way more clever than this.

bstix ,

Religion is a whispering game between generations. The message is heavily distorted by bow.

massive_bereavement ,
@massive_bereavement@fedia.io avatar

Isaac Asimov's Bible guide convinced me that abrahamic religions are mostly made out from stuff either from Mesopotamia (Sabbath, Eden, the floods) or myths coming from later cults (e.g. Greece).

lars ,

That. Book. Is. Fire.

Diplomjodler3 ,

And the original message was dreamed up by dudes on shrooms.

feedum_sneedson ,

The true part.

notabot ,

I don't know about the shrooms, my reading of the old testament made me think it started with some old guy trying to stop his nomadic desert tribe dying of anything too stupid by telling camp fire stories with some sort of message. The whole 'god will make the ground open up to swallow you and your family if you screw up' is a desperate attempt to scare them into not doing stupid things like slaughtering too many of their livestock at once, or eating shellfish whilst wandering around in a desert.
The stories get retold, changed and embellished over generations before being written down, and you end up with the weird mess of basic survival tips, animal husbandry, heroic stories and mystic fluff that is the OT.

The new testament is just the story of a fairly chill guy, with a slight messianic complex, wandering around with his mates and suggesting people be nice to each other, put through a similar transformation.

Diplomjodler3 ,

You're ignoring 200,000 years of human history. The guys who wrote the Hebrew religious texts didn't start from nothing.

notabot ,

I was filing that under 'mystical fluff', but it certainly shapes the stories and how they were told.

Diplomjodler3 ,

All Religion has its origin in shamanism. That then led to polytheism which then led to monotheism. What all those have in common is that people made it up as they went along.

lars ,

Does Christian monotheism exist? A majority (?!) of Americans believe there is a Devil.

Diplomjodler3 ,

Which just goes to show that it's all made up nonsense.

Passerby6497 ,

Afaik, christians don't see the devil as a god, but as one of god's minions takes with temping the flock or having them prove their faith or some shit.

lars ,

Sounds like a god. Even if they’d sniff at it.

So do angels.

ValiantDust ,

Catholics also have patron saints for nearly everything from infants to ice skaters that they pray to but that are totally not gods because there is only one god. I mean, yeah, their second most important prayer is directed at the Virgin Mary, but that doesn't mean they worship her or anything.

laughterlaughter ,

The message is heavily distorted by bow.

I see what you did there.

Hey everyone, the message heavily distorted my bow!

bstix ,

Ha, that was unintentional. I'll leave it as a proof of concept.

Axiochus ,

Hey everything, the massage is highly defined by now.

sanguinepar ,
@sanguinepar@lemmy.world avatar

Hay everywhere - the master is hugely disturbed, my god

Crashumbc ,

Religion is intentionally designed that way. So it can be altered to better control the next generation...

gedaliyah ,
@gedaliyah@lemmy.world avatar

This presumes some type of "pure" original religion — which indeed some people believe — as opposed to an evolving understanding that is relevant in each generation.

bstix ,

Evolving evolution in a biblical context? My ass.

gedaliyah ,
@gedaliyah@lemmy.world avatar

You seem to be confusing religion with a bible, which is probably a reflection of the dominant religion near you, but not every religion has a book, and not every religion with a book understands it in the same way.

odium ,

Hinduism with 330 million gods somewhere deep down that tree.

lars ,

Since I read that number for the first time last month, I’ve been wondering which seems wilder to a Hindu: monotheists or atheists?

Everythingispenguins ,

Monotheists 100%

lars ,

I want to believe this, so—unlike monotheists in such a situation—I am suspicious of the answer

MBM ,

I think some Hindus would say they're monotheists because all gods are just different aspects of Brahman. Don't quote me on this though.

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