Pascal's wager

My point was that the U.S. government slandered King, and ran a campaign of lies against him, fomenting hatred, and possibly contributing to his murder. Then, once he was dead, they gave him a holiday.

Hint: He was not a Communist. But in those days, Democrats and Republicans alike viewed racial equality as communist.

I have friends who follow the teachings of Jesus, rather than the Pauline Christianity of most Christian churches. I agree with these people on a lot of things. The foundation of Jesus's teachings was a humanist philosophy of love and generosity and caring. Paul created a cult of personality in which if you believe the right creed you go to heaven and otherwise you go to hell. I find the latter repugnant, and when it tries to foist itself on me I argue strenuously. But I agree with pretty much all of the former.

This is all irrelevant, because unless you can place actual values on the probabilities, the example has no validity for real-world situations.

And when talking about religion, you can place no actual values on the probabilities of the various religions or dogmas, because there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever for any of it.

Which is more probable: That Jesus was god, that god is a unicorn, that god is a flying spaghetti monster, or that god is a door knob? Any answer you give will be pure opinion, based on nothing but your own whims or what someone you trust has told you. Personally, I like the FSM because his religion has a beer volcano in heaven. But that's just my unfounded opinion. Any value you give all those pees is arbitrary and meaningless. So your long p-filled example does nothing to cast any light on Pascal's wager.

 

No. He was not a Socialist. There are and were Socialist political parties. He did not agree with them, and he certainly did not belong to them.

He did oppose the war, however.

Not at all. I dismiss Pascal's wager ONLY after demonstrating it to be illogical and based on meaningless assumptions.

WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!!!!!!!

If you have no evidence to assign a probability you accept the fact that you can draw no conclusions about outcomes.

In roulette, assuming an honest wheel (not always a valid assumption, but probably valid in the larger casinos nowadays) the probability of the ball's landing in any given slot is exactly 1:38. From there, you can calculate the odds of winning any given bet. The odds are known absolutely. And since the payout is only 36:1 for a bet on a number, or 1:1 for either red or black, the house wins in the long run.

No guesswork. No "assuming" values for unknown odds.

WRONG again. If there is no evidence on which to assign a probability, then there are no grounds for any conclusion. Another way to put it is that the error bars on any such calculation would be plus or minus infinity. In other words, nothing is known about the outcome whatsoever.

I'm not sure what your question is. But "expected value" ONLY has meaning if there is some real basis for the expectation. As I keep repeating, if your "expectation" is based on nothing but wishful thinking or whim, then, no, "expected value" is not a basis for anything.

I can choose to "expect" a beer volcano in heaven. My whimsical "expectation" does not magically make the beer volcano "equally likely" with there being nothing at all after death. Expectations are worthless unless they are based on something real, and there is nothing real in religious dogma.

This is indeed one common interpretation, and I actually agree that a person who really believes will show that belief in their actions.

But Calvin was very clear in his doctrine, a doctrine still followed by some sects today, that you are saved by faith alone and by grace alone, and that nothing you can do will make a difference. Calvin further believed that the "saved" were elected by god before god ever created the world, and nothing anybody could do would alter that selection one way or another.

It is, in my view, the exact opposite of what Jesus taught. But it is a dogma held by many Christians today. (Which also means that a Calvinist would reject Pascal's wager, because you are saved only by faith, and you have faith only by grace, and no decision you could make, such as accepting or rejecting the wager, will make any difference, since god made the decision some six-odd millennia ago, before making the world.)

As far as I remember (I am not a Bible scholar, though I've read large parts, including all four Gospels and Acts) Jesus never mentioned beliefs, or if he did, it was secondary. Jesus's teaching was all about actions and behaviors. When people asked how they could be saved, he talked about giving away their wealth, loving god and their neighbor, giving a thief more than he took from you, etc. Paul turned it all upside down by stressing belief as the central point. Though he did say that belief without works is dead, his principal focus was on belief, and he was obsessed with "correct" belief. Paul said you not only had to believe, but you had to believe his particular theology, rather than any of the other Christian theologies. It was not enough merely to believe in Jesus. You had to believe the "right" things about Jesus. This is why I consider that "Jesus-ism" and "Paul-ism" are very different religions. Paul was a master politician, and he managed to convert large numbers of people, by making his form of Christianity so much easier, and by his masterful campaign against competing Christianities, of which there were many in the early days. And then Constantine finished the job by making Christianity a religion where you could be wealthy or a soldier, two things that were anathema to Jesus (wealth and the use of violence).

The result is that mainstream and fundamentalist Christianities today bear virtually no resemblance to the teachings of Jesus, with their focus on belief and on giving money to the church (rather than to the poor). Only a few radicals even attempt to follow Jesus today. And those are the ones I respect and admire and support with money and volunteer time in their endeavors.