What if all you had to go on in deciding whether there is a God is what you think will make you a more moral person. Kant thinks that our knowledge of nature is of reality as it appears to us and not as it is in itself, so for him I think it knocks out all the standard evidential arguments and leaves us with what we can postulate as a matter of practical reason. But I am asking what the argument is for people in a wager-like situation, where you are making the wager not based on what is in your personal best interest, but based on what is in your moral best interest.
If this is your view of things, do you wager on God? Or not?
6 comments:
I don't understand the wager.
How is one's personal best interest different than one's moral best interest?
Anyone heard of the secret code of Narnia?
I'm not sure I do either. I think Victor is asking, Would you decide to believe in God if you believed this was the sole way of becoming a morally better person? A bit like deciding to wear a brace in order to straighten teeth or bones, perhaps. My problem with this is that I don't think belief is a matter of the will. One cannot decide to form a belief in the same way as one can decide between getting up for a beer or not. In order to guide my acts, especially in circumstances where I am tempted to act badly, a belief must be an integral part of me, not something I can renounce by a mere act of will.
Maybe you can be convinced if you use a certain toothpaste you will be attractive to girls so you decide to use that toothpaste. What have you got to lose?
The wager analogy is a false one. Sure, I can bet on the toothpaste coming in a winner but I can't bet on my belief in God in the same way. I can't raise the stake, as it were.
Yeah.
Like I mentioned, I don't understand the premises.
In Pascal's wager he was asking someone who couldn't decide to take the chance that there is a God. There would be nothing to lose and everything to gain.
In this case, if I win, then I am not achieving what is in my "personal best interest" but my "moral best interest". How is losing what is in my "personal best interest" somehow winning?
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