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    It is rational for an atheist or agnostic who initially f... — Carmelics
    Home/Natural Theology
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    It is rational for an atheist or agnostic who initially follows a mixed strategy (e.g., tossing a fair coin to decide whether to wager for God) to repeat that mixed strategy indefinitely after each tails result, because with probability 1 the coin will eventually land heads and the agent will wager for God.

    Natural TheologyTruth & Knowledge
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.After a tails result, the agent's expected utility reverts to that of an atheist or agnostic with no prospect of infinite reward.
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    • 2.Since the original mixed strategy was rational under those conditions, repeating it under the same conditions is equally rational.
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    • 3.A fair coin lands heads with probability 1 over an infinite sequence of tosses.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Rationality is temporally indexed: an agent facing an infinite sequence of deferred decisions cannot treat each iteration as decision-theoretically equivalent to the first.
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    • 2.Each repeated tails result constitutes new evidence that the agent is disinclined to wager for God, rationally updating the prior that the mixed strategy will converge to wagering for God.
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    • 3.William James's 'will to believe' doctrine holds that genuine belief-relevant decisions must be live, forced, and momentous — a strategy of indefinite deferral renders the decision neither forced nor live at any given moment.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.The claim conflates probability-1 convergence with rational obligation: almost-sure events in measure theory need not ground practical rational requirements, as Cain's objection to dominance reasoning in infinite decision theory demonstrates.
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    • 2.An agent who commits to repeating a mixed strategy after each tails result has effectively adopted a policy indistinguishable in practice from never wagering for God, since no finite tails sequence triggers revision of the strategy.
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    Topics

    Natural TheologyTruth & Knowledge

    Key Terms

    Agnostic(describes another type of person in the statement)
    A person who is unsure whether God exists and thinks it might be impossible to know for certain.
    Atheist(describes one type of person in the statement)
    A person who does not believe that God exists.
    Pascal's Wager(Pascal's own framing of the Wager's role)
    An instrumental argument intended as a first step toward genuine religious faith, not as a substitute for it.
    Rational
    # Rational A rational person is someone who makes decisions based on logic and evidence rather than emotions or hunches. Rational thinking means carefully considering the facts, weighing pros and cons, and coming to conclusions that make sense. It's the opposite of acting impulsively or based on feelings alone.
    Wager for God(a famous philosophical argument about faith and probability)
    A reference to Pascal's Wager, the idea of choosing to believe in and live as if God exists because the potential benefit (eternal reward) outweighs the cost of being wrong.
    With probability 1(in probability and statistics)
    A mathematical way of saying something will definitely happen eventually, with absolute certainty.
    mixed strategy(The uniform three-way randomization over bridges is the mixed strategy under analysis.)
    A strategy in which a player assigns probabilities over available actions and randomizes according to that distribution.

    Connections

    1 topic

    Modality & Possibility2 linked

    Related

    A fair coin lands heads with probability 1 over an infinite sequence of tosses.After a tails result, the agent's expected utility reverts to that of an atheist...An agent who commits to repeating a mixed strategy after each tails result has e...Each repeated tails result constitutes new evidence that the agent is disincline...

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: pascal-wager
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    Monton 2011 defends Pascal’s Wager against this line of objection. He argues that an atheist or agnostic has more than one opportunity to follow a mixed strategy. Returning to the first example of one, suppose that the fair coin lands tails. Monton’s thought is that your expected utility now changes; it is no longer infinite, but rather that of an atheist or agnostic who has no prospect of the infinite reward for wagering for God. You are back to where you started. But since it was rational for
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    +4 moreShow less
    Rationality is temporally indexed: an agent facing an infinite sequence of defer...Since the original mixed strategy was rational under those conditions, repeating...The claim conflates probability-1 convergence with rational obligation: almost-s...William James's 'will to believe' doctrine holds that genuine belief-relevant de...

    Similar

    The 'coin toss' strategy (probability 1/2 of wagering for God) has the...81%For a mixed strategy in which the probability of wagering for God decr...79%If there are uncountably many times at which one implements a mixed st...79%It is irrational to follow a rule that can lead one to assess as fair ...77%
    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
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