Week 5 Questions–4th Hour
OK, time to move away from the question of the last two weeks. Thank you for all teachers that responded and gave us your opinions. So, here we go with this week…
Question #1…Blaise Pascal was a French philospher who came up with an proposition called Pascal’s wager. Find a site other than Wikipedia and summarize Pascal’s wager in your own words. No copying and pasting allowed.
Then explain whether you believe Pascal’s wager is appropriate to apply to our belief in God–if we follow Pascal’s wager are we truly beliving in God?
Does it work better for global warming and its implications assuming GW cannot be proven?
Can it be used equally for both or is it better applied to one vs the other.
Question 2…Define electrolysis–in the chemistry sense–not in hair removal. 
35 comments Mr. Holt | AP Chemistry (1st)
Question #1: Pascal’s wager states that if you mistakenly believe in God then you will just assume that death is the end and once your dying you’ve reached the end. But if you correctly beleive in God then at your death bed you believe that you are going to live in eternal happiness with God. If you disbelieve in God then you will just assume that death is the last stage and on your dying bed realize you have reached the end. But if you believe in GOd and choose to sin and go against God and believe in God but in the wrong way, the way he teaches us not to behave, then you will have eternal damnation with the devil!
Pascal’s wager is a way to look at belief in God, but if you believe in Pascal’s wager I would say your not truly believing in God.
I don’t think this goes along very well with global warming either. It’s like you are splitting people up into the categories of wheter or not they believe in something. In this case, it is either you believe in global warming, you disagree, or you think it is a possibility and are looking out for it. But either way there will be an end to this. The people who believe will realize they knew global warming was coming all along and was in fact going to kill everyone on the earth. Or the people who disbelieved all along and said “I told you so” to the people who believe in global warming. Or to the people who thought it could be a possibility or it could not be a possibility.
I think Pascal’s Wager can be used for both viewpoints. It just all depends where you stand on these issues and what you believe in, in your heart.
Question 1:
Pascal’s wager is Blaise Pascal’s belief in God. He made three arguments or wagers. The arguments were superdominance, expectation, and generalized expectations. In the argument for superdominance, Pascal asked if God exists or if he doesn’t exist. He says “If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.” This means that if you choose that God exists then you will have everything and if you choose that God doesn’t exists, then nothing will happen to you. His second argument from expectation says that if you believe that God exists, then you will have an everlasting reward. His third argument from the generalized expectations is that if you believe that God exists, then you will have eternal happiness on earth and in heaven.
I don’t think Pascal’s wager is appropriate to apply to our belief in God because he bases his knowledge of God’s existence on probability and you shouldn’t use probability to decide on something so great as your belief in God. No, I don’t think we are truly believing in God if we follow his wager because we are basing our decision on the probability that if we believe in him then we will live eternally and if you don’t believe in him, then you won’t have eternal happiness.
No, it doesn’t work better for global warming and its implications assuming global warming can’t be proven because global warming and God’s existence are two completely different things.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/
Pascal’s wager is essentially the semi-belief in God. It says that believing in God has a billion pros but not too many cons. If he’s real, then you’re set, if not then at least you lived a moral life. This works very well with GW. We may not be able to prove its existence, but believing it is real has more pros then cons. Regardless, we will be making steps forward to cleaning up the environment. Only positive reactions will happen to prevent it. On the other hand, if we say its fake, then it will be ignored and the planet will either stay exactly the same or digress. I think it is applied great to both. In both situations, the positive that can occur from your belief highly outweigh the no work done by throwing its existence aside.
Pascal’s Wager says that people are better off believing in the existence of God because of the fact that “the bet” has a better chance for a good outcome than the chance for a good outcome in not believing in his existence. Pascal’s Wager basically says that the outcomes for believing in God are that you either go to heaven or nothing happens. As a result, that is better than not believing in God in which you either go to hell or nothing happens. Therefore, it is better to just believe in God because there is a better chance for a good outcome. I do not think that it is appropriate to follow Pascal’s Wager because then you are not truly believing in God. You are believing in God on the basis that your chances for a positive outcome are better than if you did not believe in God. I believe that people should believe in God because they truly believe that he exists and that they want to be in heaven with him when they die.
I think that it does work better for GW because if people believe that it’s a problem, then they can still take the necessary steps to prevent it if it actually does exist. Being aware of the fact that GW may exist is better than not being aware at all. The positive outcomes of believing in the existence of GW, even though it cannot be proven, outweigh the positive outcomes of not believing in it. Therefore, I believe that Pascal’s Wager is better applied to the situation of Global Warming.
Blaise Pascal is basically saying that if you incorrectly believe in God you gain nothing and death is the absolute end. On the other hand, if you correctly believe in God, then you gain everything, eternal happiness. But he also says that if you correctly disbelieve in God you gain nothing, but if you incorrectly disbelieve in God you lose everything.
paschal wagner is basically saying that if you believe in god by mistake then you recieve nothing just death in the end,but if you believe in god truley and honestly you achieve everything such as eternal life and you wont be damned to hell. whereas those who “erroneously disbelieve in god.”
i believe that paschal wagners beliefas is not appropriate to apply to our belief. if you follow wager then your not truely believeing in god, who is he to say that those who disbelieve will be sent into enternal damnation,ridiculous, for example say their is a child who has been taught all there life that there is no god, then thats what they know you cant blame them for what theyve been taught and the ignorance that they have.it does work better for global warming because neither theory has been proven, although we know that there is a problem with the world you dont know what it is , just as we know there is someone bigger and better then us we just dont know who whose to say its god, it could be a bird, they fly higher, basically these are assumptions made by people who have never met god and have not proved global warming yet.pascahals theory is better used for one than the other and thats global warming.
1. Pascals wager is that if you believe in God you get everything, but if you don’t and he actually does exhist then you lose everything. In either way if God does not exhist then nothing is lost or gained from the belief.
I do not think that this is a legitimate theory for our belief in God. First off, your beliefs should not just be that they are just better than the alternative without any feeling to back them up with. Also, there are the problems with chosing which of the gods or goddesses to believe in.
This idea does work for the issue of Global Warming. Since, it is unable to be proven, just as God is, it can only help to try and make the world cleaner and better. While if it turns out not to be true then ablsolutely nothing is lost from the efforts. I would say this way of thinking will even fit better for global warming than it does for God. This is because if we work to try to make the world better and free from global warming we are still improving the earth. If the whole issue of global warming turns out to be myth, then not only is nothing lost from the environmental improvments, but there is also a lot more gained from them.
Paschal’s wager was a proposition created by Blaise Pascal that had four main points about whether or not to believe in God. If you believe in God, live a virtuous life, and when you die there is no heaven or God, you virtually lose nothing. If you believe in God, you live a virtuous life, and when you die there is a heaven and a God, you have everything to gain. If you don’t believe in God, live a sinful life and when you die there is no heaven, you have nothing to lose. If you don’t believe in God, live a sinful life and when you die there is a God and heaven, then you lose everything.
I don’t believe it is appropriate to apply to our beliefs because then we are just believing in God because we think it makes sense to. We can’t just believe in God because of philosophy, we have to actually believe in our hearts and have faith. Our faith means much more than something that can be proven or tested.
I think it works better with a matter such as global warming. I think this because if you believe in GW, you work hard to keep the environment safe, and then you find it’s not a real issue, you have nothing to lose. If you believe in GW, you do your part to keep the environment safe, and then you find it is a real and major issue, you have everything to gain. If you don’t believe in GW, live a life being careless and pollute the environment, and you find it’s not a real issue, you have nothing to lose. If you don’t believe in GW, live a life of carlessness and pollution to the environment, and find out that it is a real issue, you lose everything.
In philosphocal terms, I think it could be used for both. However, I, myself, believe that it can better be used for earthly situations rather than situations concerning one’s faith.
Question #1
Pascal’s wager is basically this: If you do not know or lean one way or the other on whether or not God exists, you have more to gain by believing in him than not believing in him. If you believe in God and it turns out he does exists, then you get the ultimate reward of heaven. If he does not exist, you still probably lived a good life and were fairly happy. Now, if you decided to be an athiest and not believe in him and it turned out he did exist, you would lose out on heaven and have to burn in the fires of hell forever. If he really didn’t exist, you may have gained a few more earthly pleasures than other people, but you will not have gained enough to offset the potential loss you could have. This is why Pascal says you should believe in God.
However, Pascal’s wager does not apply to us believing in God. His wager is flawed because if you are believing in God because of his wager, you are just doing it because you think it has the most benefits and not because you truly believe in him. In order to reach heaven, we need to truly believe in God and not just believe halfway in him because we think it is the smartest thing to do, like Pascal’s wager says.
However, this does work when you are talking about global warming. If it cannot be proven, you are better off believing in it and having it not exist than not believing in it and having it exist. If you believe in global warming and take steps in preventing it and have it turn out to not be true, you have not lost anything. If it is true, then you have taken steps to prevent it. However, if you decide to believe that global warming is a myth and it turns out to be true, then it could harm the world. You lose nothing by believing in it and having it not be true, but you lose everything if you don’t believe in it and it is true. Therefore, it applies better to global warming than believing in God.
#1. Pascal’s wager says that if you believe in God and He does not exist(assuming that death is the end) you gain nothing. If you do not belive in God and He does exist, you gain nothing. If you do not believe in God and He does not exist you gain nothing, but if you do believe in God and He exists, you gain everything. This is appropriate because I do believe in God, and if He exists, I gain eternal life. If any of the three other courses of action are right, and do not gain anything. We are truly believing in God if we follow Pascal’s wager because if we believe with all of our heart and soul, we do not have anything to lose, but we have everything to gain. This also can work for GW. If we all believe in this and change our lives just so we can stop it, we do not have anything to lose, because it will help the earth in the long run because it will better protect the earth from GW. We would have nothing to lose for believing in either of these things. It can be used equally for both because there is no reason for us not to believe in either of them just becausewe don’t want to. If we refuse to believe in either, we gain nothing, but we could lose everything. This is why people should follow Pascal’s wager.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/wager.html
Pascal believed that you sould wager if God is real or not. The wagering factors were, if God does not exist nothing happens, if God does exist you can gain everything. Here is another example of his wager, If you are beting $1 and there is a chance that you can gain $5 or win nothing back. The better wager would be to try for the $5.
Pascal’s Wager is basically saying that if God already exists and you believe in him, you will be rewarded in heaven. If he exists but you do not believe, you will burn in hell. We should not believe in this because if we do we are only doing it so we won’t burn in hell and it does not say which god to believe in. It works better for GW because it is better to be safe than sorry. It cannot be used equally and you should use it more with GW.
http://www.abarnett.demon.co.uk/atheism/wager.html
Question 1:
While looking up information on Pascal’s wager, I discovered an interesting quote. This quote stated, “If you believe in God, and God exists, you gain everything. If you disbelieve, and God exists, you lose everything.” Basically, this quote is saying that it believing in something only has consequences when that thing actually exists. I feel that the wager is appropriate to apply in our belief in God. We believe in God, so only two things can happen. We can either earn the ultimate reward by going into heaven, or nothing will happen at all. I feel that this is a very fair wager in that sense. But, it would be a tricky wager if one did not believe in God. Because, if they did not believe in God, then they will either have to endure eternal damnation or nothing will happen at all.
I do not feel this wager applies to global warming at all. Global warming would be a harder thing to be proven. When we die, we will eventually know what the answer is to the question of God’s existence, but there is no possible way to prove global warming.
http://www.abarnett.demon.co.uk/atheism/wager.html
Question 2:
electrolysis= a process that results when ions react with an electrode, it can either lose or receive electrons.
http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/encyclopaedia/hutchinson/m0031622.html
I dont think that his wager is appropriate to our belief in God because there is no right way to believe in him or not, either you do or you dont, and if you dont you are not going to eternal damnation for it. If you follow Pascal’s wager then you are not really believing in God because if you are only believing in him so you can live in eternal happiness.
I dont see how it can apply to global warming at all. I dont understand how it can be compared to global warming because if I am understanding the Pascal’s wager correctly, its saying that if you want to be happy you have to correctly believe or disbelieve in something..I really dont know.
Question #2
During electrolysis, the ions react with the electrode, either receiving or giving up electrons. The resultant atoms may be liberated as a gas, or deposited as a solid on the electrode, in amounts that are proportional to the amount of current passed.
Pascal’s wager is pretty much and idea or suggestion that even though you can’t prove the existence of God by proof or reason, that you should believe or “wager” that he exists because it gives life meaning and something to live for and gain
continued…
and nothing to lose. I think that it is alright to apply this thought to our belief in God, because it gives us more reason to believe that he exists. It will help us live our lives for God and those who would have never followed or believed in God, might begin to believe that he exists because of this idea.I think that it can be equally applied to Global warming. It would be better just to believe in it and do something about it then to not believe it and do nothing. Even if there is no problem, the people have something to work towards, have same thoughts. I think that this idea can be equally used for both.
Question#2
In the chemistry sense, electrolysis of water is the decomposition of water into oxygen and hydrogen gas because of an electric current being passed through the water. This electrolytic process is used in some industrial applications when hydrogen is needed.
#1 I believe that what Pascal’s wager is trying to say is that if we believe in God and he actually does exsist then we are only going to receive good things. However, if we choose not to believe in God and he does exsist bad things may come our way. Also if God doesn’t exsist and we believe in him we will not receive a loss. So really the odds are to believe in God.
I don’t feel however that Pascal’s Wager should be applied to our faith. As catholics we should know and believe that God does exsist, and that is why we should believe in him. We shouldn’t follow pascal’s way of thinking that it is in our best odds to believe that God is real because we could only reap the benifits if he truly does exsist. Rather we should believe in God simply because as catholics we firmly believe he does exsist, and we do not need and more proof than the mass.
#2 electrolysis is a way to separate bonded elements or compounds that are in a solution by passing an electric current thru them. This causes the positive and negative charges to attract or repell to the charge being sent thru so they separate.
Pasca’s Wager is just saying that you might as well believe in God because it’s not like anything bad will come out of it, and there is a chance of something good coming out of it instead. I do not know if this is actually a good way for believing in God since you may only be doing it for the chance of reward, but I think that if you first apply this belief, you will start to believe for the right reasons so I would say that it is okay. I also believe this theory could be applied to GW because it’s not like something bad will happen from protecting the environment, so we should even if there is nothing to worry about. I think it can be equally applied to both, I just do not think that GW and God are similar enough to have an effective comparison.
Pascal’s Wager is that there no way to prove there is a God. So each person has to choose if there is a God or not. If you believe there is a God and live your life like there is a God, the rewards will be infinite. Pascal says that if there is no God then, you have lost nothing but you gain a good life. So the wager is to believe there is a God.
If you believe there is no God, and you live your life without God, you loose everything, if there really is a God. And there is no way around the wager. Everyone must choose to believe or not to believe.
Now when you put that with global warming its better to believe there is global warming because you will know that you did your part. But if global warming is not real then you still don’t lost nothing.
paschal wagner is basiccally saying if you mistakenly believe then god then in the end you just die, if you believe in god with yourwhole heart then will achieve grater such as eternal life in heaven. but if god doesnt really exist and we still believe in him you lose nothing its doesnt matter.
wagers theory is just like not truly believeing in god if you agree with him.
i dont think that wagers theory really apply to those who know and believe in god, as christians we know what =s real and we know that there is always someone trying to disprove that god really exist
electrolysis-a chemical decomposition reaction produced by passing an electric current through a solution containing ions
#2 electrolysis is a way to separate bonded elements or compounds that are in a solution by passing an electric current thru them.
#1Mr. Pascal is trying to say that if you believe in God and he exists you are good. If you believe in God and he does not exist you are good. If you do not believe in God and he does exist then you are in some trouble. He believes that you cannot trust reason and because of this it is just better to believe in God so that if he does exist you can go to heaven.
Pascal believed that you sould wager if God is real or not. The wagering factors were, if God does not exist nothing happens, if God does exist you can gain everything. I dont think that this applys to the way that we believe in God because we aren’t trying to wager if he exists or not, we have faith that God exists. We should all believe in God because we have nothing to loose. We should have storng faith for God and we should always believe in God no matter if the chance is greater or not to believe in Him.
Pascal’s wager is very simple if you analyze and makes some sense, if you beleive in God faithfully you will go to heaven and if you beleive in God for unjust reasons you wont. I agree with this in some way becasue I beleive that if you do beleive in God in a jsutful way its good and if you say you do, but really dont then its bad. I do think in a way that it can be applied to Gw because if you really do beleive in it and you will actually do something to change it than it can be altared, but if you say you beleive in it but dont do anything about it, nothing will change.
response:
I disagree with Benjamin Peters. I think he misinterpreted Pascal’s wager. I believe that, when you analyze the wager, all those who believe in God will go to heaven IF he exists. The people who don’t believe in God will not go to heaven UNLESS God exists. If God doesn’t exist, then nothing will happen to either side.
In response to Julie I would disagree and say that the fact that global warming is unable to be proved increases the ability for Pascals Wadger to be used in this case. Since, we cannot prove it we should still work to improve the environment and eventually we will be able to figure it out if it comes and nothing will be lost when that time comes if we still try to improve the environment.
I disagree with Alyssa’s viewpoint on the Global Warming issue and its relation to Pascal’s Wager. The reason that I disagree is because of the fact that she says that Pascal’s Wager cannot be applied to Global Warming, and I think that it can. I think that if you believe that GW exists, then either nothing can happen or something good can happen. If you do believe in GW, then you can take the precautions necessary to prevent it if it does in fact exist. Obviously if you take the necessary precautions, nothing bad is going to happen in the end. It will either end with a good result or no result at all.
I disagree with Kayleigh because I think that following Pascal’s wager is truly believing in God because you do not want to think of death as an end. Also, I disagree with her because I think that it can be applied to global warming because if you believe in it you will probably take some steps to prevent it, which will help everyone in the future, so it is better to believe in GW than to disbelieve in it.
I agree with you Monica. I believe our faith in God is not something you can wager, and those who do not believe in God everything to lose.
i disagree with ben becuase i feel that pascals wager does not deel with the matter of believing in god is just or unjust. Rather it is a matter of if you believe in him and he does exsist then nothing bad comes out of and if u believe in him and he doesnt exsist nothing bad comes out of it. However, if you dont believe in him and he does exsist then you are in trouble. So it is in you best interest to believe in god because then you are safe either way it doesnt really have to do with just or unjust
I agree with Ben because it is not just about whether you believe in God or not, you have to do it for the right reasons.
i agree with Scott Hall. Our Catholic faith should be the reason that we believe in God. As Catholics we believe and have faith and God exists and that he sent his only son to save us. As in Pascals wager, we shouldn’t believe in God because lots of people do and it is better too. It should be only because of our Catholic faith. I strongly agree with Scotts opinion.
i am goin to have to disagree with monica on this one. I disagree with her when she says, “if God does not exist nothing happens” this is not true because if u don’t believe in God you are not goin to go to heaven and you will most likely receive some kind of punishment. so even if you are believing in God just so you dont have to go to hell then you are still showing faith that God can save you from the evil of hell
I agree with Caitlin in that people should not base their beliefs simply on the fact that you may get a few extra perks at the end of everything, but I do not believe it is entirely wrong. If you are having struggles in finding which faith is right for you maybe a theory like this can help you to make your decision, as long as once you do decide you believe in that faith full heartedly.
I agree with Scott because if we do believe in God then we will have eternal happiness in heaven and good things will happen to us. If we don’t believe in od then we will go to Hell and bad things will happen to us.