@Lotherio said in Do you believe in paranormal things?:
@Vorpal said in Do you believe in paranormal things?:
Pascal's wager, although one of the more respectable arguments assembled in favor of belief, has some serious flaws. Blaise was, of course, a Christian, so he framed his argument for it to accommodate to the Christian god. It assumes there is only one valid religion, God, or belief system to choose from, that of Christianity. Well that just isn’t so. If we can make the wager about the Christian god, then the same argument can be equally applied to the thousands or millions of deities out there from the beginning of time. Zeus, Brahma, Azhura Mazda, Allah, Cher (some say she is a goddess), etc. If you take Pascal's wager as a serious philosophical proposition then you have to apply it to its logical end- an end that, ironically, Blaise the monotheist didn't really anticipate.
That means you would end up believing in every deity, just to be safe... and if the beliefs are contradictory? You'll still have to believe all of them because you never know. In fact, you would have to end up believing in different versions of the same deity, in cases where pantheon origins are a little muddy, which adds a whole layer of trouble. Then, if we apply it to the supernatural and paranormal in general, you would basically have to believe every claim made- fairies, dragons, werewolves, otherkin, la llorona, the chupacabras, conspiracy theories, slenderman, etcetera.
At the end, you'll be an enormous self-contradictory mess, or the most gullible person on earth. Neither of which is an ideal state to be in.
(thank you for the hugs, @surreality - it's been a day like you wouldn't believe)
That's a slippery slope. Let me apologize, I didn't mean it in his complete context, I didn't mean to go religious. Just that it's okay to believe in things that others do not, simply because, if in the end it doesn't exist, no one is hurt.
Except lots of the things that you would argue for using this sort of logic also require you to act a certain way or do certain things, often things that affect other people, or at least encourage actions that affect other people adversely. So "no one is hurt" isn't really applicable.
Even outside of a religious context, conspiracy theorists and people who obsess over UFOs tend to let their lives and those of their loved ones crumble around them. Not everyone is an obsessive, of course, but it's worth keeping in mind. Also, believing in things science can't prove furthers anti-scientific thought, which hurts scientific progress (hel-lo, Climate Change deniers and Creationists)!
