More on Risks

I want to talk about this controversy in terms of the frameworks for controversy we discussed in the course, but before that I am going to do a couple more posts on risks.


I think one of the biggest risks I've failed to include in any posts on the topic is the one involved in Pascal's Wager. Of course, this makes the assumption that anyone who accepts evolution is an atheist (which a lot of ID proponents would argue to be true), and as I've stated, I don't agree with this. Ignoring that, however, I shall talk a bit about the risk involved here (and how you could consider it to be wrong).


So Pascal's Wager goes something like this (from our lecture):

	God Exists	God Doesn't Exist
Theist	Infinity	2
Atheist	0 (or negative infinity for hell?)	10000000 (or any finite value)

This says that no matter how much satisfaction you'd get as an atheist for being right about God not existing, it would never be as good as the infinite happiness granted by heaven, so you should believe in God.


Of course, then what happens when you consider that you might be worshipping the wrong god? Or that a God may reward atheists who have still led good lives? Or you consider the 'God Doesn't Exist' benefit to be highly negative, because you've 'wasted' your life worshipping. Perhaps it's as Richard Dawkins suggests and God may punish blind or feigned faith. Just makes you wonder where the risk really lies.