Originally Posted by
crave681
Ah yes.... this matrix is also known as Pascal's Wager...
Pascal's Wager is the French philosopher Blaise Pascal's application of decision theory to the belief in God. (It is also occasionally known as Pascal's Gambit.) It appears in the Pensées, a posthumous collection of Pascal's notes for an unfinished treatise on Christian apologetics. Pascal argued that it is a better "bet" to believe that God exists, because the expected value of believing that God exists is always greater than the expected value resulting from non-belief. Indeed, he claimed that the expected value is infinite. With this, he sought to convert those, to Christianity, who were uninterested in religion and unimpressed by previous theological arguments for it.
The wager fails to mention any costs relating to belief. It is argued that there may be both direct costs (time, health, wealth) and opportunity costs. Most modern religions require their followers to spend time attending religious services at houses of worship and to donate money to the maintenance of these places and/or to the needy, when possible. As a result, if a person believes in a God that does not exist, then that person has lost time and money that could have been used for some other purpose. There may be opportunity costs for those who choose to believe: for example, scientific theories such as evolution that appear to some to contradict scripture could theoretically enable a non-believer to discover things and accomplish things the creationist could not. It is also argued that belief incurs a cost by not allowing the believing person to participate in and enjoy actions forbidden by dogma. Many devout people make more noticeable sacrifices for their religious beliefs. For example, Jehovah's Witnesses do not accept blood transfusions.
(To Pascal however, such costs were insignificant, since he considered secular life to be without meaning, consisting only in the vacuity of what he called "divertissement." On the other hand, he considered that only the contemplative life of a Christian feeling the love of God was truly rewarding for the human soul, God being to him the "supreme good.")
Others have argued that the utility of salvation cannot be infinite, either via strict finitists or belief that an infinite utility could only be finitely enjoyed by finite humans.
Sigma Summa: To quote a contemporary singstress, "Who will save your soul, if you wont save your own?"
ps: Whatever floats your boat, SeaRay! :biggrin: