When I tried telling my dad why I didn't believe, he said, "You're going to die sometime! You can't avoid it!"

Is this a good reason to be an active Mormon? Some people seem to believe it is. It's a reason why people practice other religions as well.

Think about it. You are going to die, and you don't have time to study all religions in detail, so you'd better pick the religion you were born into, and follow its teachings, because you will probably be better off after death than you would be if you followed no religion at all.

You look at all those old people sitting in church, and wonder how many of them are there because they are just frightened, knowing that their time is coming soon. They are not there because they have logically decided that the Church is true; they are there because they are afraid, and the threat of death is too scary for them to think about doing anything else.

If there is a God, would he reward people for following a religion just because they're going to "die sometime?"

Would a God reward a person who suspended judgment, and didn't join any church because he didn't find one he believed in? Would God look at this type of person more favorably than he would look at someone who followed a religion under threat of death?

It's a deep question. If you have been raised Mormon and have lost faith after studying Mormonism for many, many years, you might be 60, 70, or 80 and have no religion. Do you just live out the rest of your life defining yourself as a person who "doesn't believe in Mormonism?" Becoming a nonbeliever in Mormonism is a great accomplishment for many people. They have invested years of their lives to achieve the goal of knowing the real truth about Mormonism, no matter what. It is a worthy goal, something that many people cannot reach.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/18/2025 04:36PM by behindcurtain.

"You're going to die sometime! You can't avoid it!"

So, why would you waste your time with the Mormon church? Why give money to a church that clearly doesn't need it?

Mormons invest heavily in an afterlife that is 100% speculative. It's like betting on horse you've never seen and only hope exists.

>> It's like betting on horse you've never seen and only hope exists.

That's a good way of putting it. I got to a point where I gave my own personal beliefs more weight than any church's beliefs.

When I was on my mission I had a companion that used that type of logic on investigators---you have nothing to lose by being Mormon and everything to lose by not. (Note the term logic is being used very loosely here.)

How he explained it was that if you join and then when you die and find Mormonism is true then you will have a wonderful reward in the CK. If you die and Mormonism is not true then at least you had the best possible life here on earth as a Mormon as it is a wonderful group to belong to who are supportive and loving.

Okay. The first part is a wild crazy crap shoot at best and the second part is just plain wrong. You will have a better life without Mormonism on your back making you feel not good enough no matter what you do and sucking time and money out of you in exchange.

This is precisely Pascal’s Wager, except he was applying it to the Catholic Church.

This is precisely Pascal’s Wager, except he was applying it to the Catholic Church.

COMMENT: Well, not really. For a complete mathematical and logical breakdown of Pascal's Wager see, Jeff Jordan's book, *Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God* (2006). Here is a shorter but also complete explanation:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/

For a modern, apologetic, but detailed (and readable), presentation of Pascal's Wager, I suggest the book, *Taking Pascal's Wager: Faith, Evidence and the Abundant Life* by Catholic theologian Michael Rota, who has written extensively on this subject. (Which, of course, does not mean you have to agree with him.)

In short, Pascal's Wager is complex and nuanced, and most certainly is not "precisely" what is stated by OP in this thread; not even close! If all you know about Pascal's Wager is the simplistic dismissals offered by anti-religion skeptics, you are missing something worthwhile, in my view, including a great deal about the application of mathematics and logic to religious faith.

But then, what do I know about anything? :-)

It's unfortunate that modern Mormonism discredits religion. Saying religion could be good is like saying sex could be good. Maybe so, but after being married to the church your whole life, who wants sex?

I disagree. Pascal's Wager itself is quite straightforward. It is not an argument for the existence of God, it argues that as a matter of rational self-interest, wagering on God makes more sense than wagering against God. All the nuance comes in with his analysis of why that is the optimal decision.

Behindcurtain's dad is making the same probabilistic argument. You should bet on God, whether he exists or not. The payoff matrix is the same either way. If you bet on God, the options are
1) whatever goodies God gives out to believers, or
2) your life ends at death.

If you bet against God, then the options are
1) your life ends at death
2) you reap eternal damnation (fire and brimstone for Catholics, a TK Smoothie™ for Mormons)

Betting on God is at least as good as betting against God, and possibly much better.


I see two major flaw's in Pascal's Wager. The biggest logic flaw is that as far as I know, Pascal did not consider the problem of believing in the wrong God. Do you get crossover points for Krishna or Ganesha or Buddha? (I know, Buddha is technically not a god, but close enough for Pascal's Wager purposes)? Is the wrong god as bad as no god at all? That would seem to be the Mormon view.

The other problem is that the Wager does not take into account all the BS that is required in your mortal life to bet on God, depending on when and where you happen to be living at the time.


I'm sticking by my original claim. Behindcurtain's dad is saying that as a matter of rational self-interest, you should bet on the Mormon god. That is Pascal's Wager, with one extra adjective - Mormon.

> The other problem is that the Wager does not take
> into account all the BS that is required in your
> mortal life to bet on God, depending on when and
> where you happen to be living at the time.

That's the point. Modernized, Pascal's Wager is essentially

NPV=P*ER, where

NPV is the net present value of the strategy,
P is the probability of it paying off, and
ER is the expected reward.

The problem with that formulation is that if the Expected Reward is positive, the bet is always net positive even if the probability of success is infinitesimally small.

But the actual proposition should be written as

NPV=P*ER-C, where

C is the cost of the investment measured in inconvenience/pain of living the religion during one's mortal existence, in which case the NPV could easily be negative.

In Mormon terms, perhaps the expected reward of eternal life praising God and having perpetual sex as one of trillions of wives is only modestly attractive and/or the happiness forgone in this existence is significant. Then the Net Present Value of the project is negative and no one should invest in it.

In short, Pascal's conjecture is wrong. It only makes sense if you consider this life irrelevant.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2025 03:00PM by Lot's Wife.

"I disagree. Pascal's Wager itself is quite straightforward. It is not an argument for the existence of God, it argues that as a matter of rational self-interest, wagering on God makes more sense than wagering against God. All the nuance comes in with his analysis of why that is the optimal decision.

COMMENT: Well, yes in that broad sense it is straightforward and simple. But the nuances come necessarily into play when one realizes that a "wager" requires a rather detailed assessment of (1) just what the alternative positions amount to, including especially what believing in God commits one to; and (2) whether there is sufficient evidence as to the particulars of that commitment to make subjective belief even possible.

Let's talk minimally about the God issue, and assume such belief requires only belief in a personal, interested, benevolent God, along with some form of a positive afterlife. All other religious baggage can be set aside for the moment. This means that there are no *institutional* religious burdens or benefits, either doctrinal or behavioral as related to the present life. It is just belief vs. disbelief. (I realize, of course, that I am now leaving Pascal behind, but the 'wager' is still potent.)

In any event, the question becomes as follows: "Assuming one could believe in God, would it be in one's rational self-interest to incorporate such a belief into one's worldview, rather than not believe and live a totally secular life? Cashing this out is highly subjective and value-laden, but intuitively there is something to be said for the psychological value of an expanded worldview that encompasses God and an afterlife --- again, if the evidence was sufficient (subjectively) to allow one to displace doubt and allow such minimal belief to even take root. For many of us this is a huge psychological 'deal breaker.'
_______________________________

Behindcurtain's dad is making the same probabilistic argument. You should bet on God, whether he exists or not. The payoff matrix is the same either way. If you bet on God, the options are
1) whatever goodies God gives out to believers, or
2) your life ends at death.

If you bet against God, then the options are
1) your life ends at death
2) you reap eternal damnation (fire and brimstone for Catholics, a TK Smoothie™ for Mormons)

Betting on God is at least as good as betting against God, and possibly much better.

COMMENT: This is quite expansive of the OP, and again quite simplistic because it does not cash in either the "goodies" God is supposed to offer, and the rationale for belief such goodies. After all, theoretically one could add all sorts of positive "God benefits" on the God side of the equation, but such would have little value if it was manifestly 'unbelievable' or grossly improbable.
____________________________________

I see two major flaw's in Pascal's Wager. The biggest logic flaw is that as far as I know, Pascal did not consider the problem of believing in the wrong God. Do you get crossover points for Krishna or Ganesha or Buddha? (I know, Buddha is technically not a god, but close enough for Pascal's Wager purposes)? Is the wrong god as bad as no god at all? That would seem to be the Mormon view.

COMMENT: Although true, this is a bad argument in my view. It reminds me of Dawkins' constant whine about "which god do you believe in," or "I just believe in one less god than you do." The main theological point requires a minimalist approach, as I suggested above, where all of the confounding sectarian details are left out. This is certainly possible when considering belief in God, and in fact many have such a minimalist belief.
_________________________________

The other problem is that the Wager does not take into account all the BS that is required in your mortal life to bet on God, depending on when and where you happen to be living at the time.

COMMENT: True again, but again if you leave out these institutional burdens, making only minimalist assumptions about God and the afterlife, the calculus becomes solely psychological. At that point, it might be argued, the best bet for most people would be to believe in God, if such belief could be rationally justified on metaphysical grounds and divorced from religious dictates.
___________________________

I'm sticking by my original claim. Behindcurtain's dad is saying that as a matter of rational self-interest, you should bet on the Mormon god. That is Pascal's Wager, with one extra adjective - Mormon.

COMMENT: Well, if that is what he is saying, and you may be right, clearly I agree that the institutional baggage of Mormonism is great, and the evidence so poor as to make belief almost impossible. But when you divorce form the God belief all of the religious performance burdens, it is not clear that one's self-interest is adopt a secular worldview rather than a 'religious' one.

Of course, the bottom-line problem from all of the above is whether belief in God (as defined minimally above) can be rationally sustained by the person facing the wager issue. There is no question that many, including intellectual types, have managed to maintain such a rational 'faith' and would probably claim that they were the better for it.

In any event, this is what makes "Pascal's wager" (if we can still call it that) of interest in the modern world, where belief in God is not necessarily tied to some institutionalized religion and burdensome dogma that extend well beyond the basics of mere faith.

Paraphrasing from Neil Degrass Tyson:
"After death if a deity says, why didn't believe in me. My answer is, you gave me a brain and I used it."

I actually reverted back to what I was taught ... which was nothing. When I was 12, I tried being Catholic. Then I tried being Baptist. Then I was Mormon for 30 years. Finally, I studied my way right out of religion entirely.

I was not raised with a religion, and now I'm not religious at all. I just went back to where I began.

"...then at least you had the best possible life here on earth as a Mormon"

Guess this mishie never had a priesthood leader tell you or the congregation that you aren't doing enough and Heavenly Father is displeased. I and others wasted too much time trying to please others, including a church which judged so many to be unworthy. The same church which teaches God's love is 100% conditional.