I leave it to the mathematicians among us (no, Duke, not you :-)) to tell us
what really happens when you multiply an infinite by an infinitesimal!

Regular readers of this group know that Duke has a favorite argument in
favor of the proposition that one should believe the doctrines of the Roman
Catholic Church (RCC).

Regular readers of this group know that Duke has a favorite argument in
favor of the proposition that one should believe the doctrines of the Roman
Catholic Church (RCC). It is the argument from risk-aversion: the
consequences of failure to believe in the RCC are so dire that the only
rational course is to embrace RCC doctrine.



Here I argue that risk-aversion is a poor guide to decision-making. I also
offer a more rational alternative.

PRELIMINARIES



In other traffic, Duke remarks on my practice of referring to "Yahweh"
instead of "God." This is, of course, deliberate. I do this because "God,"
in traditional discourse, is automatically accorded a certain status. The
word is capitalized; even pronouns referring to Him are capitalized. I'm
not concerned with that. But I am concerned with the automatic assumption
by religionists that their particular god is God. I happen to believe that
Yahweh is no more God than Allah (the Muslim God), Pan Gu (a Chinese God),
or Coatlique (an Aztec God). I use "Yahweh" to remind proponents of His
divinity that there's a lot of baggage in the Bible that goes along with
Him. In other words, arguments for the proposition of God don't necessarily
imply anything about Yahweh (or Pan Gu or Coatlique). Anyway, where I write
"Yahweh" below, Duke would write "God."



I don't intend to talk about positive consequences or reward; the focus here
is on risk-avoidance. Various religions promise various rewards for their
faithful. Almost all stipulate that they come due only after death. To my
mind, that renders these putative rewards suspect, but that's not why I
disregard them here. Duke's argument is based on negative consequences, not
positive consequences. For that reason, I pay little or no attention to
rewards below.



Discussions of decision-making under uncertainty frequently involve a
state-of-nature diagram. I have attempted several below. If you're reading
this in a proportionally spaced font, they will look terrible. The
alternative was a verbal description, but that just turned out to be too
cumbersome. If the diagrams look really bad, you should be able to
reconstruct them in a simple pencil-sketch.



DUKE'S ADVICE BASED ON RISK-AVOIDANCE



Anybody reading this has read something like this from Duke.. It's your
funeral. Two seconds after you die, you'll be judged. If you don't believe
in Yahweh, it's everlasting torment for you. Say what you want, but I'm
right: you'll end up burning for all eternity. Do you really want to take
that risk? That's a fool's choice. Why take the risk of eternal
punishment?



What Duke is saying can be summarized in a state-of-nature diagram. Such a
table shows the outcomes of a decision limited to two options under a
dichotomous but uncertain state of nature. The outcome for each choice is
tabulated for each state of nature.





State of Nature

RCC True RCC False

------------------------------ My Decision

| | |

| Win | Nothing | RCC True

| | |

|----------------------------|

| | |

| Eternal Pain | Nothing | RCC False

| | |

------------------------------



Duke argues* that anyone contemplating this table would conclude that the
rational decision under uncertainty is to chose RCC. The fact that there is
a possibility of a "Win" is icing on the cake, but the base rationale is
risk-avoidance.



In other exchanges, I asked Duke if he was arguing that the uncertainty of
the truth of the RCC's doctrines was outweighed by the magnitude of the
deleterious consequences for non-belief in them. Specifically I asked him
if he believed that the expected value of the negative consequences would
always be infinitely bad since, regardless of their probability of
occurrence, the product of that probability and the magnitude of the
consequences would always be infinite. He agreed with that formulation.



(*I believe this to be a complete and accurate representation of Duke's
argument from risk-aversion. Of course, Duke is notably parsimonious with
his arguments. In the past, I have invited him to correct my
characterization (up until now, formulation of unarticulated premises) of
his arguments if he disagrees with them. He does not do this. Instead, he
asserts that my arguments are wrong or irrelevant, without fully formulating
his own, presumably more correct arguments. I address this tendency in a
closing section: CLOSING NOTE ON REFUTATION.)



Alert readers (as Dave Barry might say :-)) may object to several things in
this diagram and its argument.



For example, one might argue that a correct decision that the RCC is false
yields a "Win" instead of "Nothing" in the lower right-hand corner. After
all, one could live one's life without the cost in money, time, and freedom
of conforming to RCC doctrines. But we're not concerned with wins here,
just negative consequences.



OK, then, but shouldn't the upper right-hand corner contain "Loss" instead
of "Nothing?" The upper right corner says the outcome of a mistaken
decision that the RCC is true is "Nothing." One might argue that the true
outcome is a lifetime of laboring under a religious fiction. Of course Duke
would respond that, next to Eternal Pain, any such mild inconvenience pales
to insignificance.



So the critical factor is the "Eternal Pain" in the lower left-hand corner.
I leave it to the mathematicians among us (no, Duke, not you :-)) to tell us
what really happens when you multiply an infinite by an infinitesimal!



The eternality of the punishment for non-belief in RCC doctrines is
established only by RCC-approved documents. This is a circular argument.
Why should we take it seriously?



The argument demands that we accept that the artfully selected collection of
writings of a bronze-age, nomadic, Mediterranean tribe be given total
credibility. That's silly! The assertion that non-belief in RCC doctrines
has consequences that are eternal and therefore of infinite weight can be,
with as much validity, be met with the assertion that the likelihood of
these consequences occurring is zero. Any attempt to put an expected value
on these consequences thus suffers from a divide-by-zero error.



The reader may also object that Duke doesn't hold the bottom row of the
table to be "RCC False" but to be "Atheism." I would reply that Duke's own
posting history, his exchanges with me about Yahweh, and the quote from Pope
Paul VI about the RCC mass in his signature all argue that he is not only
arguing against atheism but also for Yahweh, the RCC God of the Old
Testament, as manifested in the RCC trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.



DUKE DOES NOT FOLLOW HIS OWN ADVICE



Duke offers the foregoing advice to avoid risk to all of us readers of this
news group. The problem with this advice is that there is more than one
religion out there. Some of these also promise deleterious consequences for
non-belief. If we take Duke's advice to heart, i.e., that negative
consequences that are infinite outweigh any lingering doubts as to
probability, we must investigate other religions.



Indeed, this is a major flaw with basing one's decisions on risk-avoidance.
You must either spend all your time looking for some potentially greater
risk or admit that you're really ready to tolerate some risk.



WHY DUKE SHOULD CONVERT TO ISLAM



If Duke really believed his own advice, he would convert to Islam. First of
all, in other correspondence, Duke argues that Allah, the Muslim God, is
just another name for Yahweh, the RCC God. So there's no problem there.
Islam also professes that the Bible is valid scripture, so there's no
problem there. Islam also adds a new prophet, Mohammed, and a new
scripture, the Koran. We needn't be concerned with Koranic teachings about
rewards in the afterlife. We need only note that Islam promises the same
Eternal Pain as does the RCC for non-believers. In addition, the Koran also
teaches that kaffirs, non-believers, have few rights in an Islamic society.
Should it come about that this country is ruled by a caliphate, kaffirs will
lose certain rights during this life. (Muslims are, of course, welcome to
correct any misinterpretations I may have made.)



So let's look at another state-of-nature table. The problems of a kaffir
under a caliphate are called "Current Pain."



State of Nature

RCC True Islam True

------------------------------ My Decision

| | Eternal Pain|

| Win | plus | RCC True

| | Current Pain|

|----------------------------|

| | |

| Eternal Pain | Win | Islam True

| | |

------------------------------



As before, we can ignore the wins, because we're only interested in avoiding
risk here. Clearly, the rational decision for a risk-avoider is that Islam
is true. That way we avoid the risk of (Eternal Pain plus Current Pain).
If we decide the RCC is true, we avoid only the risk of Eternal Pain. Since
(Eternal Pain plus Current Pain) is worse than (Eternal Pain), the decision
is clear: Islam, here we come!



What? It's unlikely that we should ever live under a caliphate? So what?
Even a small probability makes an absolute difference. If we're going to
accept that risk, we might as well admit that this whole risk-avoidance
thing is so much straw!



But, hold on here. Islam doesn't hold with the Trinity or the Immaculate
Conception, both important RCC dogmas. Is that enough for us to tolerate
the risk that maybe Islam is true? You decide! I think I know what Duke
will decide :-).



WHY DUKE SHOULD CONVERT TO LDS



What about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS)? This
church has a lot going for it. It's growing fast. (Duke once said that 53%
of all people believe in Yahweh/Allah/Jehovah, so I take it numbers and
trends are important to him.) It holds the Bible to be canonical. It
exalts the person of Jesus. It teaches that hell is the permanent
habitation of Satan and those who follow him and who have knowingly rejected
and denied the influence of righteousness, goodness, and God their Heavenly
Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost. That means we have Eternal Pain
for non-believers.



LDS also has another appealing factor. Doesn't it ever bother you that all
the people who lived and died before the RCC or Islam or LDS are just SOL?
If you believe in the consequences of non-belief in their doctrines, I would
think you should be concerned. The LDS teaches that all saving ordinances
may be performed, indeed should be performed, on earth on behalf of the
dead. That doesn't mean that, if I reject LDS and don't perform saving
ordinances for my ancestors, that my ancestors are doomed to Eternal Pain,
as I would be. But is does mean that they don't get the full rewards they
might otherwise receive. I abbreviate that situation below as "Other
Problems." (As usual, Mormons are invited to correct any misinterpretations
I may have made.)



That sets us up for another state-of-nature table.



State of Nature

RCC True LDS True

------------------------------- My Decision

| | Eternal Pain |

| Win | for Me, Other| RCC True

| | Problems |

|-----------------------------|

| | |

| Eternal Pain | Win | LDS True

| | |

-------------------------------



By this time, the drill is familiar. We ignore the wins, because we're
talking about risk-avoidance. Since (Eternal Pain for Me + Other Problems)
is worse that Eternal Pain for me alone, any rational individual operating
under risk-avoidance would decide that LDS is true. That would be the only
ethical thing to do.



And besides, there's a ton of evidence to support the conclusion that LDS is
true. For example, there are several signed statements of individuals known
indisputably to have existed which testify to the truth of Joseph Smith's
findings.



Again I predict that Duke will not hustle down to the local stake facilities
to inquire into LDS. In other words, Duke doesn't follow his own
risk-avoidance advice.



WHY I DISLIKE RISK-AVOIDANCE AS A GUIDING PRINCIPLE



It's an excuse for not thinking. If one blindly followed the risk-avoidance
advice, one would leave RCC for Islam or LDS. Obviously, this isn't
happening. That's because adherents to RCC are thinking. If a new religion
were to come along tomorrow promising, as a consequence for non-belief,
eternal pain not only for the non-believer but also for his extended family,
would I blithely sign up? Or would I think about it first?



It's special pleading. The idea of Eternal Pain is never justified. It's
taken for granted, on the basis of a religion's own holy book.



It provides no information for choosing among religions. Just about all
religions promise Eternal Pain for non-believers. The risk-avoidance advice
requires that we give Eternal Pain infinite weight. Therefore the relative
but presumably non-zero probabilities that religions are valid are all
collapsed into an infinitely bad expected value for each. Thus there's no
information left to help choose among them.



And what's up with all this Eternal Pain? When one considers that most
religions threaten Eternal Pain for non-believers, one gets the idea that
Eternal Pain is a bogeyman, used to frighten the gullible into conformance.



With respect to religion, Eternal Pain should be considered a bug, not a
feature. What kind of Divinity would create the whole universe and yet
remain, as Sam Harris says, so provincial as to care what individual
creatures think, let along torture them exquisitely for all eternity if they
think the wrong thing?



Imagine a post-mortem judgment before the Deity.. "Hmmm, so you chose your
religion on the basis of avoiding the worst-case outcome. You chose poorly:
you picked the wrong one. Roast in hell for all eternity. Next!"



BUT WHAT ABOUT THE RISK?



OK, be smug about it if you want, but it's your funeral. You know in your
heart that there's a chance RCC doctrines could be right. And if they are
and you disbelieve, you lose big time! Why not avoid that risk by
conforming to RCC doctrines?



Because that's a silly way of avoiding risk. What does one do about the
risks of everyday living? One mitigates them rationally and then makes
decisions about whether insurance is necessary.



How does one mitigate the risks of non-belief in a certain religion? Should
one be so inclined, one takes a look at it, its founders, its history, its
doctrines, its behavior, its burdens, its claims and then decides whether it's
worth pursuing.



As for the remaining risk of error, one insures oneself by living an ethical
life, trying to increase the happiness and decrease the unhappiness of those
around one.



If that's not enough for your God, he's only a god. He deserves contempt,
not worship.



CLOSING NOTE ON REFUTATION



I respectfully remind Duke that a response is necessary but not sufficient
for a refutation. Merely to interlineate this post with assertions is a
response, but that alone won't make it a refutation. The argument is not
automatically won by the post with the latest time stamp.



Duke, consider your response to my thread "Duke's Evidence for God." You
replied to it, but you either could not or would not offer a logical
refutation. I refuted the syllogism for your argument from extrapolation
with an example of a hierarchy that could not be extrapolated. You replied
that my example was a human hierarchy, a true fact. Yet this doesn't alter
the fact that I showed your (imputed) major premise to be undistributed,
thus undermining your logic.



If you're going to talk the talk, you need to walk the walk. It's not up to
me to tutor you on the basics of constructing a logical argument. If you
think you have logical arguments, you need to state your premises, justify
them, and then make sure that your conclusions reflect only predicates in
your premises. If you don't know what a non-distributed major or a
predicate is, you're not ready even to talk about logic. People won't take
you seriously. They will ignore you. That doesn't mean you have refuted
them; that means you have amused them.



Or perhaps you've angered them, judging from the name-calling matches you
indulge in.



Speaking of which.. RCC scripture holds Jesus said, "Do unto others as you
would have them do unto you." With respect to the vast majority of your
posts, you seem to be doing unto others as they have done unto you, a
complete perversion of the golden rule.



Now you know that judgment in the two seconds after you die is going to
cover the golden rule. (It's just gotta be on the final :-)!) Based on
your behavior in this group, you should anticipate some time in Purgatory,
or worse, depending on how much weight the golden rule has in the RCC canon.



But back to refutation.. You claim to have refuted wbarwell's posts. Based
on your putative refutation of my posts, I have zero confidence that you
did, in fact, refute his arguments. I'd be willing to bet all you offered
is mere contradiction. I have no interest at all in reading what you have
to say to wbarwell, because you have such a poor track record.



What I'm telling you is that your ill-thought-out refutations have given you
a reputation for low credibility. Doesn't that bother you at all? You
spend time and bandwidth, only to be met with scorn? Have you no pride in
what you post? You are what you post, remember.



Is your goal simply to respond to every post?



Consider the corner you have painted yourself into. You post so many I'm-right/you're-wrong
one-liners that you provoke scores of antagonists. And, although you've
been kill-filed by many, there are still many who read your posts just for
the eye-rolling opportunity. They just have to give the "is not" to your
"is so." You're so well established that you just can't quit! Every day,
you must come home, fire up the news reader, and waste precious minutes of
your life responding to inane, name-calling posts. You must now respond to
every anti-Duke one-liner ever posted here, or you'll lose face. What a
burden!



But, hey, everybody needs a hobby, which reminds me that I'm still trying to
learn to read bass clef, a much more enjoyable pastime than typing things
like this. Later.



Geo

Here I argue that risk-aversion is a poor guide to decision-making. I also
offer a more rational alternative.

PRELIMINARIES
Anyway, where I write
"Yahweh" below, Duke would write "God."

I don't intend to talk about positive consequences or reward; the focus here
is on risk-avoidance. For that reason, I pay little or no attention to
rewards below.

DUKE'S ADVICE BASED ON RISK-AVOIDANCE

Anybody reading this has read something like this from Duke.. It's your
funeral. Two seconds after you die, you'll be judged. If you don't believe
in Yahweh, it's everlasting torment for you.

Say what you want, but I'm right:
you'll end up burning for all eternity. Do you really want to take
that risk? That's a fool's choice. Why take the risk of eternal
punishment?

What Duke is saying can be summarized in a state-of-nature diagram.
Duke argues* that anyone contemplating this table would conclude that the
rational decision under uncertainty is to chose RCC. The fact that there is
a possibility of a "Win" is icing on the cake, but the base rationale is
risk-avoidance.

In other exchanges, I asked Duke if he was arguing that the uncertainty of
the truth of the RCC's doctrines was outweighed by the magnitude of the
deleterious consequences for non-belief in them. Specifically I asked him
if he believed that the expected value of the negative consequences would
always be infinitely bad since, regardless of their probability of
occurrence, the product of that probability and the magnitude of the
consequences would always be infinite. He agreed with that formulation.

(*I believe this to be a complete and accurate representation of Duke's
argument from risk-aversion.

Of course, Duke is notably parsimonious with
his arguments. In the past, I have invited him to correct my
characterization (up until now, formulation of unarticulated premises) of
his arguments if he disagrees with them. He does not do this.

Instead, he
asserts that my arguments are wrong or irrelevant, without fully formulating
his own

Alert readers (as Dave Barry might say :-)) may object to several things in
this diagram and its argument.

For example, one might argue that a correct decision that the RCC is false
yields a "Win" instead of "Nothing" in the lower right-hand corner. After
all, one could live one's life without th