Dragaera

Religion - The Pragmatic Argument for Belief in God

Mon Dec 2 18:41:26 PST 2002

On Mon, 2002-12-02 at 21:01, David Dyer-Bennet wrote:

> 
> Which brings me to a variant of that argument, called Sipfle's Wager
> (after prof. David Sipfle of Carleton).  It's the same basic argument,
> applied to free will.
> 
> Breaks down to three cases:
                 ^^^^^

> 
> 1.  Free will exists, and you choose to believe otherwise.
> 
> 2.  Free will does not exist, and you're predestined to believe in
>     free will. 
> 
> 3.  Free will exists, and you choose to believe in free will.
> 
> 4.  Free will does not exist, and you predestined to not believe in
>     free will.

Oh.. looky, we get a fourth case for free! :)


I find these black and white arguments amusing, mainly because I don't
live in a black and white world.  I believe in both free will and
predetermination.[1]


[1]  I believe that some key things are predetermined, but there are an
incredibly large (possibly infinite) variety of ways for us to arrive at
those key points.


Jag