I was a big fan of the first Bioshock game, it wasn't quite System Shock 2 but it still offered a good story and gave enough hair-raising moments that I hit F6 more often than needed. So on February 9th comes the release of Bioshock 2, something which I'm looking forward to playing. I've held off buying a physical copy because, well, I knew it would be on Steam. And that it was, retailing at a mere $80USD for us Australians.
While that's about the same price I would pay retail, I was a little confused. Steam usually gives good prices on games. They don't have to worry about packaging, distribution, retail surcharge. Basically the advantages of Steam is that all you are paying for is data and data distribution (which is essentially nothing), which should save costs. And this is the sacrifice to have a permanent non-resellable item. Unlike my physical copies, I can't just give away unwanted Steam games.
So what do I find when I get on the UK and US stores? That it's retailing on both those stores about $30 cheaper than it is in Australia. What the?!? For decades Australian gamers had to pay more for games than their American counterparts, so finally when we have a global distribution network systems are put in place to keep the same region-locking anti-competitive practice in place. It's exactly the same product, it's exactly the same distribution, yet we're still locked into the pricing practices that may have been an excuse back before online distribution.
When it's buying in a retail store, fair enough. I can and do buy games at that price when need be. But when it's blatant price gauging like this where I'm being in effect charged extra for the same product just because I live in the wrong country.
Thursday, 21 January 2010
Wednesday, 20 January 2010
The Forever
Looking into the future, being able to predict and plan for future events is something fundamental to human nature. For one, it enables us to predict the consequences of particular behaviours and thus make decisions. We aren't the only species to do this, but it seems that we do it to an extent unmatched in the animal kingdom.
This opens up a new problem though, time itself becomes largely illusory. Academically we can think of a month, a year or even a decade ahead, but we have no idea how to grasp onto that. Having lived 25 years now, I can't really say what it feels like to live for decades. Memory is fragmented, a childhood memory can be as vivid as something I experienced yesterday yet I have no mental means to appreciate the length of time that can be externally measured by the movement of the earth around the sun.
Yet without being able to grasp the time frames associated with our own life, somehow we often think in terms of the eternal. That there is hang-ups over the certainty of death, and the futility of action thereof. Somehow the ultimate overtakes the proximate and the fear of existential nihilism becomes overwhelming.
Being able to project into the future brings academic fears as distinct possibilities. We know that in the next two billion years the earth will be uninhabitable. In another 5 billion years or so, the sun will die. Yet before that, there is always the possibility of a massive caldera or a giant meteor hitting the earth. And yet I have to look both ways when crossing the street.
In the before-time, risks could be seemingly mitigated by a strict moral code. If there was an earthquake or flood, it was because of the actions of the people in the society and it was a form of divine retribution for such behaviour. Thankfully this kind of thinking is merely a vestigial reflex these days. Even when there is intentionality of malevolent action on the part of the agency the reflex rears up. But that's another story.
Back to this notion of forever. That the notion of futility comes hand in hand with the inability to put our projections into perspective. The desire for ultimate meaning, for permanent vindication or admonishment for particular actions belies finite nature of our existence and influence.
Consider the following statement: "What's the point in giving to charity? You're not going to solve world hunger." This to me is the problem of the expectation of the infinite. The action seems to need an ultimate solution in order for some to think it valid. Not that it might help provide food and / or medicine to those in need and act to slightly alleviate their suffering, but it has to be ultimately meaningful instead of fleetingly significant.
Yet why do anything at all? It's ultimately futile, it's ultimately for nothing. The disparity as to how we experience time and how we project final significance is part of modern religious apologetics. Especially in the Creation / Evolution controversy, there are many who use the threat of nihilism to get people to shy away from "Darwinism" and towards God.
Each of us represents a 3.5 billion year unbroken chain of replication, that is to say our ancestors were the lucky few throughout history that were able to take all that the environment threw at it. Of all the species that died out, of all the individuals within surviving species that didn't reproduce (necessarily so), each one of us is that unbroken sequence of survivors.
3.5 billion years is a long time. A really long time, a really really long time. It's unfathomably long. Your life is but a fraction of that. Even in terms of homo sapien, the species has survived for about 200,000 years. For less than 10% of that time, homo sapien has been able to farm and domesticate livestock. For less than 10% of that time, there has been the concept of 0. For less than 10% that time, we have known that germs cause disease. And for less than 10% of that time, we have had the internet in the average person's home. The average life constitutes ~0.0004% of the entire length of our own species. In terms of life as a whole it's ~0.00000002%!
To think in terms of ultimates has the problem of not being able to adequately grasp time scales. To think of our actions any more than a few generations down the line is projecting into total inadequacy. Even if the sun will make the earth uninhabitable in a billion years, a billion years ago there wasn't multicellular life. It was only 400 million years ago that land vertebrates emerged, 200 million years ago that mammals emerged, 50 million years ago that monkeys emerged, and only 5 million years ago that our ancestors came down from the trees.
The point being that projecting that far into the future makes no sense. Just as it makes no sense that what we do now affects what happens on a similar planet to earth that may exist in the Andromeda galaxy. We are finite beings occupying a finite place where our actions have finite consequences. That we can affect the continuum of life in other species, that we can affect the quality of life for individuals - these are things that are in our control.
It must be recognised that we don't have the ability to make ultimate actions, but that doesn't mean that our actions are meaningless. Even if one wanted to transcend their life with particular actions, there is cause for that now. We are all indebted to the first people who made primitive tools, over 2 million years and ~50,000 generations benefited. We are all indebted to those who first mastered fire, around 1 million years and ~25,000 generations have benefited.
I could go on with all different inventions that one time or another have immensely benefited subsequent generations. The person who first domesticated grain might not have any descendants nor do we know their name, it's lucky that we can even attribute any of these early inventions to a culture let alone a person. The action has transcended the individual and culture and is now at the heart of civilisation.
Countless people have benefited from certain actions in the past, evidence that actions live beyond the self and into the world around and through time. And that's taking the most extreme examples. Even in our daily lives our actions are recognised not only by the self, but by those they affect. An insignificant life is still one that can't help but flourish in meaning. We are intentional agents so we can't help but find meaning in action!
If nothing else, I hope I've made the case that we should be wary of thinking in ultimates as it goes against our finite nature. That time is a fuzzy concept and that there is no difference between 1,000 years and 1,000,000,000 years when projecting. Part of losing this sense of ultimates is losing the sense of absolute responsibility, which might be comforting but gravely erroneous. There is the here and now, and even the not to distant future where the immediacy of actions makes them meaningful.
This opens up a new problem though, time itself becomes largely illusory. Academically we can think of a month, a year or even a decade ahead, but we have no idea how to grasp onto that. Having lived 25 years now, I can't really say what it feels like to live for decades. Memory is fragmented, a childhood memory can be as vivid as something I experienced yesterday yet I have no mental means to appreciate the length of time that can be externally measured by the movement of the earth around the sun.
Yet without being able to grasp the time frames associated with our own life, somehow we often think in terms of the eternal. That there is hang-ups over the certainty of death, and the futility of action thereof. Somehow the ultimate overtakes the proximate and the fear of existential nihilism becomes overwhelming.
Being able to project into the future brings academic fears as distinct possibilities. We know that in the next two billion years the earth will be uninhabitable. In another 5 billion years or so, the sun will die. Yet before that, there is always the possibility of a massive caldera or a giant meteor hitting the earth. And yet I have to look both ways when crossing the street.
In the before-time, risks could be seemingly mitigated by a strict moral code. If there was an earthquake or flood, it was because of the actions of the people in the society and it was a form of divine retribution for such behaviour. Thankfully this kind of thinking is merely a vestigial reflex these days. Even when there is intentionality of malevolent action on the part of the agency the reflex rears up. But that's another story.
Back to this notion of forever. That the notion of futility comes hand in hand with the inability to put our projections into perspective. The desire for ultimate meaning, for permanent vindication or admonishment for particular actions belies finite nature of our existence and influence.
Consider the following statement: "What's the point in giving to charity? You're not going to solve world hunger." This to me is the problem of the expectation of the infinite. The action seems to need an ultimate solution in order for some to think it valid. Not that it might help provide food and / or medicine to those in need and act to slightly alleviate their suffering, but it has to be ultimately meaningful instead of fleetingly significant.
Yet why do anything at all? It's ultimately futile, it's ultimately for nothing. The disparity as to how we experience time and how we project final significance is part of modern religious apologetics. Especially in the Creation / Evolution controversy, there are many who use the threat of nihilism to get people to shy away from "Darwinism" and towards God.
Each of us represents a 3.5 billion year unbroken chain of replication, that is to say our ancestors were the lucky few throughout history that were able to take all that the environment threw at it. Of all the species that died out, of all the individuals within surviving species that didn't reproduce (necessarily so), each one of us is that unbroken sequence of survivors.
3.5 billion years is a long time. A really long time, a really really long time. It's unfathomably long. Your life is but a fraction of that. Even in terms of homo sapien, the species has survived for about 200,000 years. For less than 10% of that time, homo sapien has been able to farm and domesticate livestock. For less than 10% of that time, there has been the concept of 0. For less than 10% that time, we have known that germs cause disease. And for less than 10% of that time, we have had the internet in the average person's home. The average life constitutes ~0.0004% of the entire length of our own species. In terms of life as a whole it's ~0.00000002%!
To think in terms of ultimates has the problem of not being able to adequately grasp time scales. To think of our actions any more than a few generations down the line is projecting into total inadequacy. Even if the sun will make the earth uninhabitable in a billion years, a billion years ago there wasn't multicellular life. It was only 400 million years ago that land vertebrates emerged, 200 million years ago that mammals emerged, 50 million years ago that monkeys emerged, and only 5 million years ago that our ancestors came down from the trees.
The point being that projecting that far into the future makes no sense. Just as it makes no sense that what we do now affects what happens on a similar planet to earth that may exist in the Andromeda galaxy. We are finite beings occupying a finite place where our actions have finite consequences. That we can affect the continuum of life in other species, that we can affect the quality of life for individuals - these are things that are in our control.
It must be recognised that we don't have the ability to make ultimate actions, but that doesn't mean that our actions are meaningless. Even if one wanted to transcend their life with particular actions, there is cause for that now. We are all indebted to the first people who made primitive tools, over 2 million years and ~50,000 generations benefited. We are all indebted to those who first mastered fire, around 1 million years and ~25,000 generations have benefited.
I could go on with all different inventions that one time or another have immensely benefited subsequent generations. The person who first domesticated grain might not have any descendants nor do we know their name, it's lucky that we can even attribute any of these early inventions to a culture let alone a person. The action has transcended the individual and culture and is now at the heart of civilisation.
Countless people have benefited from certain actions in the past, evidence that actions live beyond the self and into the world around and through time. And that's taking the most extreme examples. Even in our daily lives our actions are recognised not only by the self, but by those they affect. An insignificant life is still one that can't help but flourish in meaning. We are intentional agents so we can't help but find meaning in action!
If nothing else, I hope I've made the case that we should be wary of thinking in ultimates as it goes against our finite nature. That time is a fuzzy concept and that there is no difference between 1,000 years and 1,000,000,000 years when projecting. Part of losing this sense of ultimates is losing the sense of absolute responsibility, which might be comforting but gravely erroneous. There is the here and now, and even the not to distant future where the immediacy of actions makes them meaningful.
Friday, 15 January 2010
Special Pleading Makes My Brain Hurt
Michael Behe is an interesting fellow. He may or may not be the next revolutionary mind in biology, if shown to be true he may have settled the God question in the affirmative (or at very least put the Raėlians into overdrive) and if his concepts are vindicated then he'll go down in history as the man who changed everything. It opens up a scientific revolution, Nobel Prizes, immense fame and glory await.
But the rallying around the Darwinian paradigm is suppressing him from radically transforming the scientific landscape. There's the equivalent of a warning label on his university's webpage, written by scientists who are being caught in the backlash of his radical idea. Biologists are still refusing to talk design - sticking to the tried and true (only a theory) random heritable mutation and selection that makes what we call Darwinism.
Who knows, science may need to include astrology in its definition. It might be that complexity might require a designer. And that designer must be supernatural because explaining complexity with complexity just means a further explanation for that complexity (i.e. watch implies watchmaker but watchmakers don't exist ex nihilo). Maybe there are limits to the Darwinian process, whereby other processes might need to come into play. And one obvious candidate is design.
It might be that Behe is being attacked on philosophical grounds as opposed to scientific grounds. The review of Darwin's Black Box by H Allen Orr sounded like a scientific rebuttal but that must only be to my layperson eyes, just as Ken Miller's Only A Theory had what I thought were scientific objections to the claims made by ID but again I chalk that up to my non-biologist status. Savage reviews by Jerry Coyne, Sean Carroll and Richard Dawkins show true Darwinian colours that keep ID down. No science in those reviews...
Wait, what am I saying? I don't feel right, and I haven't since I listened to Behe on Point Of Inquiry last night. It was all going well and good until about 15 minutes into the interview when DJ Grothe asked him why he was so critical on "Darwinists" for not providing a mechanism for particular features yet not providing one himself. His answer could be summed up as follows: (don't just take my word for it, listen to the podcast yourself)
It's just going to take an astrophysicist to write a book or two about the limits of cosmology to explain natural formation and thus design. While they can no more claim credit for the argument than Behe can for Irreducible Complexity (It's Herman Muller's idea), they can kick up a fuss about the problems of methodological naturalism and cry persecution from the Swedenborg sympathisers in academia who aren't addressing the problems of the model.
Where such argument falls apart however is the necessity of mechanism. The nebula hypothesis, though not perfect, has at its core a viable mechanism for how such systems could arise. If design was the default, then it should be preferred as a plausible explanation with or without a mechanism that allows for the design of solar systems.
Solar systems aside, what about life? Replace Darwinism with Lamarckism and the argument still stays the same. Lamarckian inheritance can account for longer necks on a giraffe, but how can it account for a neck in the first place? And why is it that there are such big horns on a moose when generations of head-banging should reduce the horns to nubs? Since Lamarckian inheritance can't explain these features and design can, we must conclude design.
Applying Behe's logic to 200 years ago shows the problem with his position. No known mechanism, therefore design. Destroying Lamarckian inheritance in the absence of knowledge of Mendelian inheritance, evo-devo or epigenetics does not automatically fall back on a design hypothesis. It just shows that no answer is known.
That there isn't a mechanism is a grave concern to any appeal to design, because it can never escape being simply the alternative to any known theory. Knock natural selection off, and then all it is doing is biding its time until a new evolutionary paradigm comes along. Then repeat, knock down the new paradigm and then wait until the next one.
The danger of such thinking is that it puts proponents of the negative in the position where their entire position relies on them showing that whatever they are arguing against is wrong. No matter what it has to be that the paradigm is wrong, leading to essentially an argument from ignorance. Indeed, many of the reviews accuse Behe of this very fallacy, that he does not understand natural selection and thus arguing a straw man.
It's special pleading, special pleading that sounds superficially valid but underneath is utterly vacuous. There's simply no reason to think of design on a universal scale because we don't know of any force capable of design. We can speculate hyper-intelligent aliens or conceive of gods, but we don't know whether they are there since we have no evidence of them being there.
Now it could be that intelligence was involved in processes, it can't be ruled out. It's just there's no reason to rule it in. The problem of the argument is that for design to be valid this way, it means ruling out every possible explanation that could be; let alone what is being proposed now. Otherwise one might think they have proved design by defeating Lamarckian inheritance.
But the rallying around the Darwinian paradigm is suppressing him from radically transforming the scientific landscape. There's the equivalent of a warning label on his university's webpage, written by scientists who are being caught in the backlash of his radical idea. Biologists are still refusing to talk design - sticking to the tried and true (only a theory) random heritable mutation and selection that makes what we call Darwinism.
Who knows, science may need to include astrology in its definition. It might be that complexity might require a designer. And that designer must be supernatural because explaining complexity with complexity just means a further explanation for that complexity (i.e. watch implies watchmaker but watchmakers don't exist ex nihilo). Maybe there are limits to the Darwinian process, whereby other processes might need to come into play. And one obvious candidate is design.
It might be that Behe is being attacked on philosophical grounds as opposed to scientific grounds. The review of Darwin's Black Box by H Allen Orr sounded like a scientific rebuttal but that must only be to my layperson eyes, just as Ken Miller's Only A Theory had what I thought were scientific objections to the claims made by ID but again I chalk that up to my non-biologist status. Savage reviews by Jerry Coyne, Sean Carroll and Richard Dawkins show true Darwinian colours that keep ID down. No science in those reviews...
Wait, what am I saying? I don't feel right, and I haven't since I listened to Behe on Point Of Inquiry last night. It was all going well and good until about 15 minutes into the interview when DJ Grothe asked him why he was so critical on "Darwinists" for not providing a mechanism for particular features yet not providing one himself. His answer could be summed up as follows: (don't just take my word for it, listen to the podcast yourself)
The asymmetry in burden of proof comes from what is trying to be explained. It's the appearance of design that needs explanation, and one cause of the appearance of design is design.And on the surface that sounds quite reasonable. The same argument was made some 300 years ago regarding the structure of the solar system. Isaac Newton wrote "This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being". So 300 years later, such structures can somewhat be explained by the Nebula Hypothesis. So since there are problems associated with the Nebula Hypothesis, it follows that it must be evidence for a designer.
It's just going to take an astrophysicist to write a book or two about the limits of cosmology to explain natural formation and thus design. While they can no more claim credit for the argument than Behe can for Irreducible Complexity (It's Herman Muller's idea), they can kick up a fuss about the problems of methodological naturalism and cry persecution from the Swedenborg sympathisers in academia who aren't addressing the problems of the model.
Where such argument falls apart however is the necessity of mechanism. The nebula hypothesis, though not perfect, has at its core a viable mechanism for how such systems could arise. If design was the default, then it should be preferred as a plausible explanation with or without a mechanism that allows for the design of solar systems.
Solar systems aside, what about life? Replace Darwinism with Lamarckism and the argument still stays the same. Lamarckian inheritance can account for longer necks on a giraffe, but how can it account for a neck in the first place? And why is it that there are such big horns on a moose when generations of head-banging should reduce the horns to nubs? Since Lamarckian inheritance can't explain these features and design can, we must conclude design.
Applying Behe's logic to 200 years ago shows the problem with his position. No known mechanism, therefore design. Destroying Lamarckian inheritance in the absence of knowledge of Mendelian inheritance, evo-devo or epigenetics does not automatically fall back on a design hypothesis. It just shows that no answer is known.
That there isn't a mechanism is a grave concern to any appeal to design, because it can never escape being simply the alternative to any known theory. Knock natural selection off, and then all it is doing is biding its time until a new evolutionary paradigm comes along. Then repeat, knock down the new paradigm and then wait until the next one.
The danger of such thinking is that it puts proponents of the negative in the position where their entire position relies on them showing that whatever they are arguing against is wrong. No matter what it has to be that the paradigm is wrong, leading to essentially an argument from ignorance. Indeed, many of the reviews accuse Behe of this very fallacy, that he does not understand natural selection and thus arguing a straw man.
It's special pleading, special pleading that sounds superficially valid but underneath is utterly vacuous. There's simply no reason to think of design on a universal scale because we don't know of any force capable of design. We can speculate hyper-intelligent aliens or conceive of gods, but we don't know whether they are there since we have no evidence of them being there.
Now it could be that intelligence was involved in processes, it can't be ruled out. It's just there's no reason to rule it in. The problem of the argument is that for design to be valid this way, it means ruling out every possible explanation that could be; let alone what is being proposed now. Otherwise one might think they have proved design by defeating Lamarckian inheritance.
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
Natural Theology
Again I'm going to point out my utter incredulity at the creationist mindset, and my utter inability to follow creationist logic. This is not to do with their false dichotomy of chance or design arguments, nor to do with their argumentum ad consequentiam meaningless immoral existence arguments. This is about God being the author of Nature, yet the insistence to shape Nature into the creation myth found in Genesis.
Natural theology has been around for thousands of years, it's nothing new. But surely if one were to believe that God is the author of Nature then it would follow that the word of God comes through understanding nature itself. If there is such a disparity between a story being proclaimed to be a historical account of the universe and between the scientific understanding of the universe, why should the story be preferred to the measured account?
The engagement in this kind of thinking is a story of special pleading. For while we know that humans author stories, it's alleged that the story of the bible was written by God. Meanwhile the story that the universe provides as measured by humanity is one that believers would say that is authored by God, yet this information is met with almost universal dismissal because of its contradiction to the bible.
Yet at the same time that so many question the foundation of rationality without God, that without God how can we trust our senses, or our capacity to reason? Such an argument is self-defeating if one is to reject science and critical thinking, and value myth more highly than measurement. It's rejecting the very faculties that is being said could only come from God.
It seems odd that the expectation is that God communicates to the world not in the intricate design of creation but through ancient storytelling or modern translations thereof. As part of the English speaking audience, should there be the expectation that the King James Version is a result of divine inspiration in translation any more than any other translation done in history? For that matter, why do we expect the initial Hebrew to be God's word?
It makes no sense if God is both author of The Bible and Nature that the accounts of The Bible contradict Nature almost completely. It would mean that there has to be deception either in Nature itself or in the accounts, bringing forth the problem of evil and the distinct possibility of a malevolent deity.
Yet all this is avoided by keeping God as the author of Nature and humanity as the author of The Bible - that it's not an infallible account of the universe but humanity's way of reaching out and understanding their place in the context of the divine. It is a strange inversion of attribution to expect it to be otherwise.
Natural theology has been around for thousands of years, it's nothing new. But surely if one were to believe that God is the author of Nature then it would follow that the word of God comes through understanding nature itself. If there is such a disparity between a story being proclaimed to be a historical account of the universe and between the scientific understanding of the universe, why should the story be preferred to the measured account?
The engagement in this kind of thinking is a story of special pleading. For while we know that humans author stories, it's alleged that the story of the bible was written by God. Meanwhile the story that the universe provides as measured by humanity is one that believers would say that is authored by God, yet this information is met with almost universal dismissal because of its contradiction to the bible.
Yet at the same time that so many question the foundation of rationality without God, that without God how can we trust our senses, or our capacity to reason? Such an argument is self-defeating if one is to reject science and critical thinking, and value myth more highly than measurement. It's rejecting the very faculties that is being said could only come from God.
It seems odd that the expectation is that God communicates to the world not in the intricate design of creation but through ancient storytelling or modern translations thereof. As part of the English speaking audience, should there be the expectation that the King James Version is a result of divine inspiration in translation any more than any other translation done in history? For that matter, why do we expect the initial Hebrew to be God's word?
It makes no sense if God is both author of The Bible and Nature that the accounts of The Bible contradict Nature almost completely. It would mean that there has to be deception either in Nature itself or in the accounts, bringing forth the problem of evil and the distinct possibility of a malevolent deity.
Yet all this is avoided by keeping God as the author of Nature and humanity as the author of The Bible - that it's not an infallible account of the universe but humanity's way of reaching out and understanding their place in the context of the divine. It is a strange inversion of attribution to expect it to be otherwise.
Argumentum Ad Consequentiam
Imagine there were two people standing at a waterfall, considering the possibility of jumping down. Both of them are hesitant to do so, but for different reasons. The first person considers it dangerous because of the possibility of rocks at the bottom which could kill her. The second person considers it dangerous because a transdimensional alien could be at the bottom where it will devour him.
Both beliefs have a finality in terms of consequences. Both beliefs if true hold disastrous, the outcome is infinitely undesirable. But what of the beliefs themselves? Is it fair to hold off from jumping on the basis of either belief? Imagine if you were to ask each of them for advice on whether to jump, would you take each statement as equal?
Now such a question is loaded with assumptions. This is of course unavoidable, and important to illustrate the point I'm trying to make. In the first example, gravity is something that most people are aware of and falling onto a hard surface is something that most of us would want to avoid. For some, the consequences would be enough to put them off jumping even if there weren't rocks there. That there could be rocks is enough.
With the other example of reasoning, how many would consider a transdimensional alien that devours humans a threat? Perhaps there are some. Perhaps they are science fiction fans who have just stumbled upon quantum mechanics, multiverse theory, xenobiology and happened to be watching Return Of The Jedi might somehow be cautious of it. But most, however, would just ignore such a reason not to jump.
From that, the problem of the appeal to consequences should be apparent. One cannot derive truth from consequences, but can derive consequences from truth. A transdimensional alien popping into our reality at the bottom of the waterfall the moment one jumps in would be a disaster consequentially, but with no reason to suspect that such an event is possible the threat is an empty one.
Pascal's Wager is useless in this respect. As an argument from consequences, it has no foundation of truth at all. And if the consequences don't match up with one's beliefs, then there's just no reason to take heed of the consequences. If one isn't already disposed to the strong possibility that Christ is lord, then Pascal's Wager doesn't follow.
If one doesn't have that predisposition to Christianity, then in order for Pascal's Wager to be effective the case must first be made that the consequences are real. Otherwise it's just like being told there's a transdimensional alien at the bottom of a waterfall. The consequences that stem if a particular belief is true depends on the if, and if the if is not established then there's no reason to consider the consequences.
Both beliefs have a finality in terms of consequences. Both beliefs if true hold disastrous, the outcome is infinitely undesirable. But what of the beliefs themselves? Is it fair to hold off from jumping on the basis of either belief? Imagine if you were to ask each of them for advice on whether to jump, would you take each statement as equal?
Now such a question is loaded with assumptions. This is of course unavoidable, and important to illustrate the point I'm trying to make. In the first example, gravity is something that most people are aware of and falling onto a hard surface is something that most of us would want to avoid. For some, the consequences would be enough to put them off jumping even if there weren't rocks there. That there could be rocks is enough.
With the other example of reasoning, how many would consider a transdimensional alien that devours humans a threat? Perhaps there are some. Perhaps they are science fiction fans who have just stumbled upon quantum mechanics, multiverse theory, xenobiology and happened to be watching Return Of The Jedi might somehow be cautious of it. But most, however, would just ignore such a reason not to jump.
From that, the problem of the appeal to consequences should be apparent. One cannot derive truth from consequences, but can derive consequences from truth. A transdimensional alien popping into our reality at the bottom of the waterfall the moment one jumps in would be a disaster consequentially, but with no reason to suspect that such an event is possible the threat is an empty one.
Pascal's Wager is useless in this respect. As an argument from consequences, it has no foundation of truth at all. And if the consequences don't match up with one's beliefs, then there's just no reason to take heed of the consequences. If one isn't already disposed to the strong possibility that Christ is lord, then Pascal's Wager doesn't follow.
If one doesn't have that predisposition to Christianity, then in order for Pascal's Wager to be effective the case must first be made that the consequences are real. Otherwise it's just like being told there's a transdimensional alien at the bottom of a waterfall. The consequences that stem if a particular belief is true depends on the if, and if the if is not established then there's no reason to consider the consequences.
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