Unit 4 Additional Content: God, evil, and decision theory

Here are some additional resources on this week’s Unit on philosophy of religion and….behavioral economics. Funny how those two things intersect.

Problem of Evil

The problem of evil is a very old topic that goes all the way back to the book of Job in the Bible, at least in terms of written records. A few months back I made a video going through the history of the problem of evil and a bit of the history of Christianity as well. Enjoy!

Pascal’s Wager

This classic argument for the existence of God is associated with the 17th century mathematician and philosopher, Blaise Pascal. There’s a wealth of knowledge on the Internet and in various online resources, but I”ve taken the liberty of creating my own resources. These two shorter resources come courtesy of Google Notebook LM. Again, it’s a custom made podcast and video.

The other resource is another video I did, but a very long one, with a video about an essay called “The Will to Believe” by William James. Put it on in the background for some educational background noise!

Decision Theory

A key part of the argument of Pascal’s Wager is an idea called decision theory, which comes from behavioral economics. The whole idea is about making rational decisions under conditions of uncertainty, where we don’t have all the information but still have to make a choice.