So I was having a shower this morning, wondering why in Canada you can't seem to buy shower gel bottles with a built in plastic hook that you hang on the shower head, when I all of sudden I had a flashback to a philosophy tutorial I was once in many moons ago.
It occurred to me that the 19th century German philosopher, Nietzsche may have had a point when he stated that God is dead. His underlying premise was his idea of "life-affirmation," which involves an honest questioning of all doctrines which drain life’s energies, however socially prevalent those views might be. Nietzsche’s atheism was voiced in reaction to the conception of a single, ultimate, judgmental authority who is privy to everyone’s hidden, and personally embarrassing, secrets; his atheism also aimed to redirect people’s attention to their inherent freedom, the presently-existing world, and away from all escapist, pain-relieving, heavenly otherworlds.
However, the 17th century French philosopher, Blaise Pascal, formulated a wager in respect of God's existence. He reasoned that you might as well believe in God because if he did not exist you would lose nothing, whereas if he did exist, believing in him might earn you a place in heaven (or hell for non-believers). Expressed symbolically using decision theory we have:
If you prefer A (agnosticism) to B (existence of God), and prefer B (God) to C (eternal hell and damnation), then there is a gamble between A and C (A with probability p, C with probability 1- p, for some real-valued p) that you regard as equally desirable as B (existence of God) for sure. Therefore, you are better off believing in God than no God.
LOL - how was all that for arguing with myself ! :)
1 comment:
That's such a good quote. I'll remember to use it the next time during my philiosophy lessons.
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