A Bear, and Pascal's Wager

[featherynscale]

The other day, I had a dream in which I was being chased by a bear. I often talk about dreams in terms of being chased by a bear (which I must have learned from some television show), as in "You had a bad dream? Were you being chased by a bear?", but to my knowledge, this is the only time that I have ever actually dreamed of being chased by a bear.

In the dream, I was back in college, in my Philosophy class. I was arguing with the professor about Pascal's wager. Now, for context, I really did have a philosophy class, in which I really did argue with the prof about this, and got roundly ignored for it. But here, in the dream, I had much better arguments than I had in real life. But anyway.

sky_pilott came in and informed us that there was a giant bear ravaging the campus, and that the best thing for it would be to run for our lives. And so we did. And there was, in fact, a giant bear. When I say giant, I don't mean giant like a real grizzly bear is giant. I mean giant like a bear in a kaiju film would be, if they ever made kaiju films about bears. It was rending the buildings and shaking students into its maw. This was, of course, when I woke up.

And I was thinking, how is the thing with the bear any different from Pascal's wager? I was told that there was a bear, and that if I didn't react in the appropriate way, I would suffer for it. Bear + running = fine, no bear + running = fine, no bear + no running = fine, bear + no running = dead. And I was perfectly willing to run from this reported bear, on no more evidence than sky_pilott's say-so. Now, I do consider sky_pilott to be a generally reliable source, so that's something. And yet, I reject the idea that I should believe in a deity based on someone's say-so, because I fear that if I don't, then something bad will happen to me. I suppose that I'm perfectly willing to have a fear-based relationship with giant bears, but not with gods. Or something.

Comments

Re: From a philosopher (me)

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

It was my contention at the time in the class that Pascal was ignoring the negative consequences of accepting the Christian faith. The prof was not inclined to agree with me, or even really allow me to get very far along that road of reasoning.