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Young Sheldon’s Mistake
                            
Much ado about nothing:
I watched the third episode of Young Sheldon last night:
Sheldon debates the relationship between religion and science with Pastor Jeff Hodgkins, his family’s pastor.
His father suffers a mild heart attack, so his mother takes him to the hospital after calling his grandmother to watch the children.
In the hospital chapel, Sheldon prays to Blaise Pascal for his father’s recovery.
Unfortunately, the episode contained massive error of logic that both disappointed me and made me feel proud (for having noticed it).
The pastor says that God either exists or doesn’t, and that therefore there is a 50/50 chance that He exists (it’s definitely a “he” in this context :-)
Sheldon correctly points out that the fact that there are only two choices implies nothing about the probability of one or the other.
His example is that there is either a million dollars waiting at home on his bed or there is not, but that only a fool would presume the money is waiting for him.
The story goes awry when Sheldon later evokes Pascal’s Wager:
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, whereas [if God exists] they stand to receive infinite gains ( eternity in Heaven) and avoid infinite losses (eternity in Hell).
Sheldon prays to Pascal for the health of his father, reasoning that if God exists, Pascal can pass along the prayer.
Sheldon’s refutation applies to Pascal’s wager as much as it does to the pastor’s argument.
The fact that a Christian God either exists or doesn’t implies nothing about the probability of His existence.
It is much more likely that Sheldon find a million dollars on his bed than that a Christian God exists as Pascal imagined.

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