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roarcher • yesterday at 6:49 PM • 3 replies • view on HN

I've always thought that surely an all-knowing god would consider Pascal's Wager to be rather mercenary and insincere, and it wouldn't count.


Replies

lazyasciiart • yesterday at 7:32 PM

A god who didn't like rules lawyering would ruin a lot of people's plans https://www.npr.org/2019/05/13/721551785/a-fishing-line-enci...

jrochkind1 • yesterday at 7:04 PM

Or maybe he'd even penalize you for it.

It's important to recall that an all-knowing God isn't necessarily very compassionate, or even rational. Some of the people I've known who knew the most have been the biggest assholes. Or insane.

What if there's a god, but he punishes humans for believing he exists, just for fun? Where's your wager now?

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TFNA • yesterday at 7:36 PM

Judaism has, outside some mystical currents, less of an emphasis on "well, do you really believe?" than in Christianity, and more of an emphasis on rule-following (and studying how to navigate those rules) as the basic bargain between God and man.

EDIT: My bad, I missed that Neumann asked to be baptised, so he wasn't going back to the Judaism of his ancestors through his Pascal's Wager-esque step.

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