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David Mitchell on Pascal's Wager
May 7, 2010 By 27 Comments
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I’d take the cream cakes. Politeness never hurts…
Sod off!
Yah, no kidding! Why pass on the cream cakes? :-)
That was phenomenal.
No one actually uses Pascal’s Wager with any seriousness anymore, do they? I think this humorous response is the only way to treat it.
Pascal didn’t take Pascal’s Wager seriously. He thought it merely a silly exercise that would not convince anyone not already convinced.
Yes, lots of people take Pascal’s wager seriously. I’ve seen it in the comments of this very blog a dozen or more times, always with an air of superiority that you know the author believes they’re the first person to ever think of it…
@Tobytwo I’ve heard several people use that argument before, both online and in person. It’s frightening how little people know or how much people seem to think they know.
Does anyone know which season and episode of Q.I this clip is from?
Hilarious as it is, his response was correct. If we are willing to entertain the unlikely possibility that only theists get to go to heaven, why not also entertain the equally unlikely possibility that atheists get to go? The whole idea of being concerned with infinitesimal probabilities becomes obviously bogus at that point.
And why not entertain the possibility that God wants us to meditate on the sacred number 42, and that everything we do that is not directly and immediately towards that end is counted against you? There are an infinite number of possibilities, each infinitesimally likely, and no way to choose between them…
But only a few possibilities have books written about them. I think this is pretty much the believers’ justification.
Is it a fluke that all my favorite comedians are atheists? Mitchell and Webb are great – It takes some finding them in the USA, but their stuff from the UK is awesome. Come to think of it a lot of my fave current comedians are from the UK…
All I know is this show is great. QI it’s called and Stephen Fry hosts it.
I’m going to use this as an excuse to post my two favourite clips of David Mitchell, both dealing with religion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkObvXY24tk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ndkz7HTjc8
Stephen Fry (and his partner in crime Hugh Laurie), Graham Lineham, Mitchell and Webb, David Walliams and Matt Lucas (Little Britain), Tim Minchin, etc… all these great UK comedians and writers.
QI is a great show. Would never survive on US TV.
Graham Linehan is Irish and Tim Minchin is an aussie and as much as we would like to claim them as our own we have to give credit where credit’s due.
To your list of English comedians I would just add Marcus Brigstocke, and, although I would be proud to call him a countryman, Tim Minchin is actually an Australian (I’ve always thought of him as God’s way of balancing out Ken Ham)
oops… I’ve been on a Minchin kick lately with the Storm “movie” in full swing and the recent “Pope Song” stuck in my head.. and ignorantly, in my Americanism, lumped him in the UK.
Thanks for the link to Marcus – I have never heard of him before.
IIRC, he’s a British expatriate living in Australia.
Last night on twitter he said he has dual citizenship. Though his parents and siblings live in AU.
In Australia, that means he’s Australian until he does something embarrassing in public, at which point he will immediately become British again.
Vive le diference between UK and US telly!
I watch more BBC (I’m in USA – New Jersey) than my boss who is right outside of London. Can’t stand 95% of US TV.
Don´t confuse UK tv with the BBC. There´s a hell of a lot of crap on UK tv. There are some British sitcoms that make the writers of “Spin City” look like Oscar Wilde and Jonathan Swift combined. The BBC work so well because of the way it is funded. For example, a comedy might be allowed to run for a couple of series before finding an audience. Currently, the Murdochs and the rest of the reactionary press are waging an all-out propaganda war to bring the BBC down.
Exactly! It seems to me that if there WERE a gOd, then he would be a secular humanist, not a blood thirsty monster.
Good argument!!!! LOL very good
Hi,
Feel free to delete my post but if you’d like to know more about David Mitchell, his comedy partner Robert Webb and related artists, I co-run a forum especially about them and their work. We even have downloads of non commercially available programmes so you can see even more of David on QI, plus (TV and Radio) panel shows and even documentaries.
We’re here: http://www.thatmitchellandwebbspace.com/forum
and we also update on Twitter: @mawtweets
Coincidentally, David is recording his first of three episodes for the new ‘H’ series of QI today!
Thanks for reading :)