medium | Symmetry, symmetry everywhere — Belief and worship requires an entry fee — The Gods do not like cheap signaling.
Note:
I am posting these excerpts from SKIN IN THE GAME as I am ending the
grueling Greek-Orthodox lent period which, for the most part, allows no
animal products. This diet is particularly hard to keep in the West
where people use butter and dairy products. But once you fast, you feel
entitled to celebrate Easter; it is like the exhilaration of fresh water
when one is thirsty. You’ve paid a price. Your holiday is different
from that of others who stole it.
Fasting
is one of the human sacrifices that make like different from an
experience machine — or, worse, a hedonic, pleasure-seeking mercenary
pursuit. Recall our brief discussion of the theological necessity of
making Christ man –he had to sacrifice himself. Time to develop the
argument here.
The
main theological flaw in Pascal’s wager is that belief cannot be a
free-option. It entails a symmetry between what you pay and what you
receive. Things otherwise would be too easy. Accordingly, the skin in
the game rules that hold between humans also hold in the rapport with
the gods.
To
summarize, in a Judeo-Christian place of worship, the focal point, where
the priest stands, symbolizes Skin in the Game. The notion of belief
without tangible proof is not existent in history.
The
strength of a creed did not rest on “evidence” of the powers of its
gods, but evidence of the skin in the game on the part of its
worshippers.[1]
