Pascal's Wager Infinite Possibilities Rebuttal

Pascal

Pascal's Wager One Rebuttal

Pascal's Wager is an argument that asserts that one should believe in God, even if God's existence cannot be proved or disproved through reason.

Whether or not you believe in God, you should live your life with love, kindness, compassion, mercy and tolerance while trying to make the world a better place. If there is no God, you have lost nothing and will have made a positive impact on those around you. If there is a benevolent God reviewing your life, you will be judged on your actions and not just on your ability to blindly believe when there is a significant lack of evidence of his/her existence.

     There are infinitely many possibilities that could completely change the expected value of the wager. Here are a few examples:

    Pascal's wager argues that you should believe in one of an infinite number of poential Gods, with no way of knowing which is true, and damnation if you guess wrong. There could exist a god that punishes only Christians and rewards everyone else.

There exists a god that punishes people who believe in him based on probabilities (such as Pascal's Wager). Lacking specific evidence about the nature of the true religious faith, there are an infinite number of possible requirements for going to heaven and avoiding hell.

There exists a god who punishes everyone who is not an atheist, and rewards atheists for not believing in him.

For Pascal's Wager to really hold up logically, one has to show that the Christian god is more likely than any of the infinite other possibilities. There is no a priori reason to expect that. The reason that Pascal's Wager sounds so convincing at first is that the Christian paradigm was common among Pascal's peers (and still is many places), hence the Christian god seemed plausible whereas other possibilities were not considered equally plausible.

                                                            Pascal's Wager vs Atheist

 

Name The Trait Debunked

Ask Yourself NTT Argument Debunked

“Name the Trait” is not an actual argument, but a rebuttal tactic against the special pleading argument that humans are unique in the animal world. For any claimed rationale for humans to be treated uniquely, the Vegan site correctly points out this is an analog gradated feature, and humans are NOT unique.

The original justification of human uniqueness presumes that humans are valid subjects of moral consideration, and all humans are basically equal in this respect.

Name The Trait was formulated by the vegan Youtuber Ask Yourself. NTT seeks to establish veganism from a personal belief in human moral value, similar to the well known argument from marginal cases. Some street activists claim to have found the argument effective, when presented informally. However as we will see in this article, it is logically invalid, and Ask Yourself’s attempts to make it valid have led to an alternative version of the argument that is question-begging or that achieves possible validity only by the Principle of Explosion due to an internal contradiction.

Philosophical Vegan Forum

(P1) sentient humans are of moral value
(P2) for all sentient nonhuman animals there exists a counterpart to a sentient human that has moral value and has all the same traits as a sentient nonhuman animal
(P3) All things with the same traits are the same thing.
Therefore Animals are of moral value

Alternatively:

P1) If your view affirms a given human is trait-equalizable to a given nonhuman animal while retaining moral value, then your view can only deny the given nonhuman animal has moral value on pain of P∧~P.

P2) Your view affirms a given human is trait-equalizable to a given nonhuman animal while retaining moral value.

C) Therefore, your view can only deny the given nonhuman animal has moral value on pain of P∧~P

(‘Trait-equalizability’ is defined as something like, “If human moral value can be made identical to animal moral value and the result is that humans still have moral value, that reveals that animals had moral value all along”).

It is feasible to address the NTT contention and safeguard its enticing power by adding a reason that rejects twofold guidelines and changing the principal reason to require human virtue (or another ethical thought) to be founded on a quality. This makes NTT substantial, and permits it to be introduced similarly as it was expected.

NTT, regardless of any explicit statement, is used to show the absurdity of non-vegan positions thus elevating the status of the vegan position. However, this seems to run on a particular framing of moral conversations that can be objected to.

Ask Yourself Destroyed By Jack Angstreich In Name The Trait Debate

In the video linked above Jack Angstreich destroys Ask Yourself in a Name The Trait debate. Jack Angstreich gets annoyed with the dishonesty and starts yelling. in the AY Discord server. NTT argument is supposed to be an argument for veganism. Ask Yourself gets owned by Angstreich and pretends he doesn’t understand what is being said because he doesn’t know how to respond to the refutation.