Pascal's Wager

This is a supplementary post of my breakdown of the book "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist." Related posts can be found by clicking here.

   Pascal's Wager is often presented to atheists by Christians (even if the don't know there is a name for it). It's a lousy argument for belief. The basics of the argument are as follows:

Pascal's Wager...is a suggestion posed by...Blaise Pascal that since the existence of God cannot be proved (or disproved) through reason, but since in his view there was much to be gained from wagering that God exists (and little to be gained from wagering that God doesn't exist), a rational person should simply wager that God exists (and live accordingly).

And the logic breaks down as follows:

1. "God is, or He is not"
2. A Game is being played... where heads or tails will turn up.
3. According to reason, you can defend neither of the propositions.
4. You must wager. (It's not optional.)
5. Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.
6. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is. (...) There is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite. And so our proposition is of infinite force, when there is the finite to stake in a game where there are equal risks of gain and of loss, and the infinite to gain.

   I can go ahead and grant the first four premises for the sake of argument, as it is the fifth premise that is deeply flawed. Pascal is assuming that, if God exists, (1) you will be rewarded with an infinite afterlife if you wager that God exists and (2) you get nothing if you wager that God does not exist. It is interesting because he claims that God is unknowable, yet he assumes he knows the results for believing. This is absurd. Atheists, therefore, have been known to suggest that if a god exists, it rewards people for being skeptical over being gullible; in other words, there is reward for wagering that God does not exists but not for wagering that God does exist. Just changing that assumption reverses the recommended wager. This is why Pascal's Wager is ultimately useless in regards to the existence of a god.

Another Logical Fallacy: Argument from Authority

   In researching for my last post, I came across an argument from authority in the comments for the video I linked. The fallacy is actually quite simple, but yet very common. The argument generally breaks down like this:

1. Person x is really smart.
2. Person x says that y is true.
3. Therefore, y is true.

   It is important to note that this sort of argument is not always a fallacy. The places where it is not a fallacy tend to be where multiple people are cited on topics for which those people are experts. For example, when I say that 97% of climate scientists agree that global warming is real, it is pretty safe to say that global warming is indeed real. (It is still true, though, that those scientists could be wrong, so staying skeptical is of course acceptable.) But whenever you see someone cite one or even just a few specific people, be alert for the argument from authority, espcially if the topic is not in the field of expertise of the authority figure(s) or if the authority figure(s) holds a minority position amongst peers.

   Anyway, here is a portion of the YouTube comment in question:

Dr. Collins is a brilliant man who mapped out the human genome consisting of 3.1 billion letters in DNA code creating an instruction manual for the make up of the human being. I'd listen to what he has to say.

So, the first premise should be fairly obvious; the commenter is setting up Dr. Collins' credentials. The second premise is already known from the context of the video, which is related to Dr. Collins' belief in Christianity. Now, the conclusion here is not quite matching with the argument from authority, but it is still close in that it is still suggesting the audience strongly consider Collins ideas because he is smart. And, sure, I'll listen to what he has to say, but if he makes fallacious arguments, I'll point them out.

   Additionally, these arguments seem to be an attempt to get the audience to not think for themselves (or question the authority figure). Sometimes I see arguements like the one above, but the person will add, "Do you think you are smarter than <authority figure>?" It should raise the obvious response question, "What do you do when two people smarter than you have conflicting opinions? Then how do you decide who is correct?" The same can even be applied with Francis Collins. There are other smart people (Neil deGrasse Tyson, Stephen Hawking, and Lawrance Krauss just to name a few) who are atheists and reject Christianity's claims. So how do we decide who is right?

Think for yourself.

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   On an additional note, I am not counting this as a preview of IDHEF. I do not recall this argument being brought up much, if at all, in what I have read thus far. I just thought this is a fallacy people should be aware of in general usage.

UPDATE: Actually, upon further reading of IDHEF, this argument has come up a few times. I'll often reference to this post when it comes up in my review.

Another Logical Fallacy: Special Pleading (IDHEF Preview)

   One important fallacy I missed in my original post is special pleading. Most often, special pleading involves holding a double standard, where different standards are being applied to similar situations. This should be an easy concept to grasp, but sometimes the differences in standards are difficult to recognize as the person guilty of special pleading may also provide an explanation of why they feel the situation is actually deserving of a double standard. In which case it becomes a matter of whether or not the audience accepts the explanation. At other times, the standard may not be known by the observer, in which case it will be hard to recognize the pleading.

   I recently watched Bill Maher's "Religulous" and one of the people interviewed was Francis Collins. Francis Collins is a scientist — and is said to be a really good scientist at that — but he is also religious. He provides a few examples of special pleading in just a few minutes in this video. (The copyright holder has disabled embedding, so you have to go to YouTube directly.)

   The first case of special pleading can be seen around 35 seconds in. There Collins says "They were close to [eyewitnesses]" after Maher called Collins out on his original claim that they were eyewitnesses. This is special pleading in that Collins wants to be able to call the authors of the gospels "eyewitnesses" even though such people who are writing from second-hand information would most likely never be called eyewitnesses in any other circumstance. (Not that eyewitness testimony is even reliable, but that is a separate issue.)

   The second case of special pleading is shortly thereafter around 48 seconds. Here, Collins is pleading that he should not be expected to follow a rigorous standard for evidence in the case of his religious beliefs. This is one of those that may be less obvious. First, this is one of those cases where the audience my not be familiar with the scientific standard for evidence. Then, Collins twists things to make it appear that it is Maher who is pleading by saying (emphasis mine), "You are setting up a standard..." An ignorant audience will likely fall for Collins' twist. But there was a reason Maher brought up the idea of a lab experiment. As stated, Collins is a scientist. Collins thus follows a rigorous standard when it comes to his career work. Additionally, there is a concept in skepticism — and science applies skepticism to its methods — popularized by Carl Sagan, that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

   There will also be examples of this in IDHEF, (the shorthand for) the book I will be discussing in the near future of my blog. Those cases will be addressed as they come up.

Preview to IDHEF - Logical Fallacies

   Soon I'll be starting to break down the arguments from the book "I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist," which I'll be abbreviating IDHEF for short. As with the rest of the blog, my remarks will be informal. And, yes, I'm bound to go on occasional rants when something really irks me...which is bound to happen a lot with this book. I'm also intending this more for those who have either read the book or who have a copy and can follow along, though I will likely quote anything I comment on directly.

   I've really only gone through half the book, but I want to bring attention to some of the most common fallacies I have found in the book, so that you can familiarize yourself with them beforehand.

I need some help on this...

I'm trying to get some examples of a situation where something is claimed to be a bad example of something, yet there are so many bad examples that an observer gets the sense that the bad example actually "comes with the territory."

One that I have been able to come up with that is close to what I'm looking for is if someone claimed that "Rock and roll is about the music! Any musician who is a drug and/or alcohol addict is not a good representation of the industry!" The idea here being that drugs and alcohol have a history of being abused by many rock stars, so anyone who claims otherwise is stating what they perhaps see as ideal, but does not accurately reflect reality.

To put this another way, the "No true Scotsman" fallacy is being presented and I'm wanting a way to show the fallacy in some other example. But more so, I want the counter example to be frequent. In my example above, if one said a true rock star doesn't abuse drugs and/or alcohol, that would exclude a lot of rock stars!

***EDIT: My example was not influenced by the recent death of Amy Winehouse. This is an example I had before this event. This is merely a coincidence.***