Originally Posted by John Voorpostel
One could apply Pascal's Wager to climate change.



Pascal argues that a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. If God does not actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.), whereas he stands to receive infinite gains (as represented by eternity in Heaven) and avoid infinite losses (eternity in Hell).

Applying it to the climate change argument, a rational person should live as though climate change is real because the "loss" of such belief is investment in remediation (which I would argue should be borne by those who actually create the problem...but I have no issue with incentivising action through the public purse).... whereas the gain is a better environment for all and an avoidance of the problems we are seeing in weather, reduced ice caps on both poles, the disappearance of many species and reductions in many polulations of anaimals.....



Pascal is a boob. Because if God exists, would He be dumb enough to believe we are being sincere, if we were just doing it cause we had nothing to lose? Faith is a bit bigger than that. I hope Pascal is right though, because that is where I stand sometimes. Hopefully honesty counts for something