“Next, many of my Christian friends have asked me to find Jesus before I go. I’m not a believer, but I have to admit the risk-reward calculation for doing so looks so attractive to me, so here I go. I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and look forward to spending an eternity with Him. The part of me not being a believer should be quickly resolved if I wake up in heaven. I won’t need any more convincing than that. I hope I’m still qualified for entry.”
What an absolute fucking goober. Good luck with that one, chief.
That’s Pascal’s wager, and it’s nothing new.
There’s plenty more about him that can be criticized.
How about the fact he used his status as a conservative voice to skip the line and get priority experimental cancer treatments? Not only did he die, but somewhere out there there is another person dead or dying because they got bumped from the treatment
I prefer the one where he was such a shitty father that he mused about not having to murder his own teenaged son after he ODed
Things are “experimental” because we don’t know if they work, not because they are better.
Yeah, it could be that his final, worthwhile contribution to humanity was to be a line on a spreadsheet.
Pascal’s Wager is hilarious because it implies that their “omniscient” God is so stupid he can be tricked into thinking you sincerely believe. Sounds blasphemous to me!
I thank god everyday that I was made to be an atheist.
That’s why this guy is better known for his contributions to computer science
I suppose it depends on if you think faith is inherently important or it’s just the behavior.
I mean his paragraph is pretty much outright silly, but broadly you can decide that acting “right” might happen to help you in an afterlife scenario. Some specifics prescribed by religion are kind of arbitrary, but there’s some common things about trying to be good to others.v Going MAGA like he did would seem to be a perilous move in that context.
I refuse to believe the pantheons of gods didn’t predict pascal’s wager and hide an antipascal clause similar to Matthew 25:31 where not being an asshole will send you to heaven and being an asshole sends you to hell.
Don’t believe in God, until you’re standing at the pearly gates. St Peter hates this one weird trick
To be fair, that’s a very Southern Baptist way to look at it. If you’ve ever read a Chick Tract (I’m so sorry), you’ll know that many end with someone who lived mired in sin earnestly repenting and believing in God right before they die, and it’s shown to work. Some other branches of Christianity, notably Catholicism, relax the emphasis on belief and put more stock into your actions while you lived – although they also believe most but not all sins can be pardoned if you confess and perform penance.
However, I would suggest that believing in God because of Pascal’s wager is:
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Obviously idiotic (this part we all know). There are an infinite amount of gods you could believe in that would have the belief requirement. Even if you assert that it’s a belief in “a” god, how are we supposed to know it wouldn’t be some god who values empirical reason and would look down on this belief? These infinitesimal odds you’re wasting your only known life on aren’t even strictly positive.
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Something the God of the Bible probably wouldn’t appreciate? Within the shared fiction of Christianity, he knows exactly what’s in your heart, and I’m sure “I’m cooperating just so you give me the goods” doesn’t play well. Granted that’s kind of on God for being an abusive parent and threatening eternal damnation to anyone who doesn’t, but I’m still sure he doesn’t like people who game his abusive system for selfish ends.
I fucking love Chick Tracts and collect them. They are so wildly unhinged it’s great
Seconding that Chick Tracts are comedy gold (Exhibit A). They’re so feverishly deranged that they become an unintentional parody of evangelical Christianity. Solidly “so bad it’s good”.
They used to get left in the bathrooms on Washington State Ferries pretty reliably and I got together a pretty good collection. The first one I read was the classic Dungeons and Dragons one, this would have been pretty close to its first publication too. I wish I had kept those.
I used to get them as a kid, trick or treating. I kind of miss them in a messed-up nostalgia way.
I was hoping to find and share an image macro of Leela and Nibbler discussing the meaning of life, with Leela remarking, “So every religion is wrong!”
Unfortunately, all I could find is Leela/Nibbler porn. Lots and lots of it. Goddamn, humans. We should be lucky there’s no judgemental god watching us all.
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“The vilest offender who truly believes, that moment from Jesus a pardon receives,” so goes the old hymn.
You know that Jesus allegedly has said many times that not believing in God is the sinnest of sins? Down to hell with you, then.
That’s Pascal’s Wager, taken to the logical conclusion. Pascal’s Wager is basically the idea that debating whether or not God exists is meaningless; If you simply live life as if God does exist, then there are no downsides. Just be someone who God would want in heaven, and the actual belief doesn’t really matter.
But then when you take that to a logical conclusion, it basically turns into “there’s no downside if I’m wrong, and repenting on my deathbed means all my previous sins are forgiven. So why not repent right before dying, so my previous sins are forgiven and I’m dying with a clean slate?”
Different denominations have different opinions on it. Baptists tend to take the “fire and brimstone unless you repent, but you’re all golden after repentance” stance. So they would tend to agree with this scenario. This is also why southern baptists tend to be such cunts, because they tell themselves that their actions are righteous and backed by God, because they have repented. Basically, justifying evil is easy when you change the question from “is this morally evil” to “is this backed by my god?”
Catholics used to have a very hard “baptism washes away (almost) all sins” stance, but have recently adopted a more fluid “how you act in life is just as important as what you believe” stance. So older Catholics would have likely agreed, but modern Catholics would tend to disagree.
The more liberal denominations (like United Methodists) would scoff and say that faith without works is dead.
If he’s a pascal’s wager guy, I hope he died in battle just in case the Norse are correct. And his deeds in life kept his heart lighter than a feather, in case the Egyptians got it right. Etc.
I hope he died in battle just in case the Norse are correct
He did, he died battling cancer.
Well, the cancer died, too. So technically it was a tie.
debating whether or not God exists is meaningless; If you simply live life as if God does exist, then there are no downsides. Just be someone who God would want in heaven
Not what Pascal’s wager is, afaik.
Jesus says many times that not believing in God is the ultimate sin. Thus, if you don’t sincerely believe that God exists, you’re fucked. Ergo, Pascal’s wager is believing that God exists regardless of your actual attitude toward religion.
Which is why I said it is taken to the extreme logical conclusion. Many denominations believe that baptism and/or repentance is enough to wash away and forgive previous sins. After all, that was Jesus’ whole thing. So why bother believing for the majority of your life, when you can simply accept God on your deathbed? No need to believe your entire life, when believing right at the end is enough.
pascals wager is incredibly stupid and illogical. What about other 10 billion religions? What if accepting jesus now puts you down with 9,999,999,999 other religions?
Les paris stupides…
Gods hate him!
See how he faked his way into heaven using this one weird trick!
“Scott Adams is dead.”
That’s by far the finest Dilbert comic ever, so of course it’s not from Scott Adams.
Clay Bennett makes good toons. Even the art itself is decent.
He went from writing the quintessential office comedy comic, up there with fucking Office Space in status…
to being a Nazi piece of shit who advocated for racial segregation, and spent his remaining years sucking Trump’s asshole and swearing far-right psuedo-medicine would cure his cancer. And then he died of cancer.
Rot in Piss. The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi.
I had a small stack of his books of Dilbert from when my siblings and I were younger, it was a silly and entertaining strip.
I couldn’t give those things away a few years back, not even used bookstores wanted them. I put them outside on a table with a sign “free” for days and eventually had to throw them away.
The man really cemented his legacy.
I’m surprised some MAGA asshole didn’t pick them up.
Oh wait, they can’t read.
Promises made, promises kept. Lul.
Leopards got it full.
I mean, technically he’s not suffering from cancer any more
That can’t be real right???
https://xcancel.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1984915690634252352?lang=en
There’s even a response from RFK
My god…
No date or views/likes numbers, so it might’ve been generated through a bullshit generator app for all I care.
look, as an engineer, I like the Dilbert comics
but fuck that guy, and lol that he died to ass cancer
I think this is the only comic Scott Adams should be remembered by. It summarizes him perfectly as a person.
Say hi to Kissinger! Oh, who am I kidding, we all know that was the first thing you did.
I never liked how political the dilberts comics got
Mallard Fillmore was even worse. It was like a republican version of a Jack Chick comic.
Given where the Republicans are at this point… Explain.
There was no attempt at humor or even cleverness, it was just “They are stupid and corrupt and we are right” in the comics page. It was editorials pretending to be a comic strip. This was way back in the 1990s. It pretty much existed because of Doonesbury.
Thanks for elaboration, also I feel like that may actually be worse than Chick tracts since I’m pretty sure even Jack Chick attempted to mix in some intentional humor in some of them. Sure it usually didn’t hit quite right since it’s within some of the most surreal batshit content from the era but still.
They were about how much more capable the working class was than the ruling class.
It was always political.
I remember reading his blog like 25 years ago and it was pretty interesting. Some funny stories, thought experiments, interesting comments. I remember that he was trying to help some young author get into papers. The idea for comic was solid but drawing wasn’t good enough so they organized a competing for artists and blog readers voted. Other time he told people to write phrases that sounded like they mean something but didn’t and then made it into a song. Supposedly that’s how The Beatles wrote their lyrics. At some point he got married and become a stepfather so he wrote about that as well. Stuff like that. He wasn’t that famous, the internet wasn’t that big, it was all just for fun.
I stopped following it for couple of years and next thing I know he got divorced, his new girlfriend was 20 something Instagram model and he started writing about how great Trump was. WTF happened?
It’s one version of the white guy midlife crisis. They realize they aren’t special and it makes them angry and they turn to conservatism for some reason and acclimate to the racism and misogyny they surround themselves with and then them amplify it. It’s a miserable pipe line. With trumpers instead of getting the flashy car they get a young, trophy girlfriend. Or both if they have the money. Trumpism frees you from shame.
Seems to be particularly prevalent among celebrities when they fall out of popularity.
In the 90s, he was top of the world, the biggest comic strip, a TV show, and just so much merchandise.
Then in the 2000s, people just kind of got over it. It’s not like it became any worse or anything, just everyone had seen it by now, and it just became another strip among many.
So he joined the ranks of other celebrities that everyone just got bored with, like Kevin Sorbo, Kid Rock, etc. When fame leaves them they get all pissy and blame the world.
There are multiple episodes about him on Behind the Bastards, if that helps paint a picture.
Life broke him I guess.
oh no. So anyway
Hope it was painful.
Unfortunately, he wasted a bunch of time taking ivermectin and pursuing alternative treatments.
My best to those who miss him.
I’ve read mixed accounts of that.
Yes, he did try that stuff, but I’ve read some claims that he did it alongside the treatments the doctors gave him.
Like it was kind of pointless, but also kind of harmless because he didn’t let it get in the way of real medicine.
At least when it came to cancer, I don’t think anyone cited him being a denier about more effective treatments, just he was in the “I’ll try anything” mode of having a terminal illness.
Of course he had a lot of other problematic things as a die hard maga, including antivax and whining how white men have it so bad and saying Trump and friends lying was actually good because the lies were “directionally true”, but maybe just not overly bad stuff about the cancer.
The cancer prodded him to actually break with trump on the specific matter of being mean to Biden over the same cancer Adams had.
Congrats to those who are still alive and not a racist piece of shit.
1 Nazi down, 77 million to go.
Do you really think the number is that low? I’ll bet lots of Nazis have died.
