LINK My quick blurb on Pascal's Wager (one side of the argument)
Pascal's Wager is an argument in philosophy presented by the seventeenth-century French philosopher, mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal (1623–62). It posits that humans bet with their lives that God either exists or does not.
There are several arguments to the effect that morality requires you to wager against God. Pascal himself appears to be aware of one such argument. He admits that if you do not believe in God, his recommended course of action “will deaden your acuteness” (This is Trotter’s translation. Pascal’s original French wording is “vous abêtira”, whose literal translation is even more startling: “will make you a beast”.) One way of putting the argument is that wagering for God may require you to corrupt yourself, thus violating a Kantian duty to yourself. Clifford 1877 argues that an individual’s believing something on insufficient evidence harms society by promoting credulity. - Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.If this in any way was credible, you would have to believe in EVERY god/godess that has ever been alledged to exist, because simply applying this to the biblical god gaurentes you nothing, if that is the wrong god and the one true god is actual for example Loki.
LenHazell53
Level 9
Apr 11, 2018
0
I think if there truly is a God ( which I personally do not believe) then just believing in him for the sake of insurance against going to Hell is a false faith and would be quickly noted by said deity so theres no point in telling yourself you believe of you truly dont. I truly don't and there is nothing I have ready, seen or heard that will change my mind, if nothing else it has deepened my own non beliefs.
misstuffy
Level 7
Apr 11, 2018
2
My reversal of Pascal's Wager is this:
If there is no God and you believe in him, you'll have wasted the only life you'll ever have in a fantasy world of mystical nonsense and arbitrary guilt-trips and you'll get squat-all at the end of it.
If there is a God and you don't believe, and he's just as much a jerk as the Bible says he is, well you'll get eternal life at least, and even if you have to dodge a few pitchforks on the way, you'll make the best you can of it, just as you do here on earth. Of course the Christian thinks that you will be sore thinking about him sitting on a cloud sipping ambrosia but the truth is you won't give a monkey's about that smug tosser.
Gareth
Level 7
Apr 11, 2018
2
There is NO evidence whatsoever to support the conclusion that there is either a heaven or a hell, so such a wager as that suggested by Blaise Pascal is absolutely unnecessary even to entertain.
EduardoVallejo
Level 5
Apr 10, 2018
2
Surely the real test a God would set (if such a beast could exist), would be to see if people would be stupid enough to follow a requirement to believe in a vicious beast that sends people to hell if they don't believe in it rather than standing up to that beast and saying, "there must be something more moral than you, Devil, and I would rather answer to that." It is only by rejecting the fake God that you would get access to the real thing.
David_Cooper
Level 7
Apr 9, 2018
2
To me it is a cowards way of viewing the afterlife. There are few rewards for cowards (except if you have a gun(s). Then you get to kill people with impunity.
JackPedigo
Level 9
Apr 9, 2018
2
Ultimately Pascal is an argument from greed and self interest, it does nothing to establish the existence of the fiction, and it could be seen as antithetical to various interpretations of the Christian dogma it purports to support.
WileEQuixote
Level 7
Apr 9, 2018
1
As others have said, belief is not a choice and which god would you need to believe in?
Any all knowing god would know you are lying, so lying about belief is not an option.
However, I can take this fantasy one step further. If we use christian doctrine, we know that god is not all powerful - otherwise he would have got rid of satan in the same way he wiped out whole human civilisations. Once dead, if I'm still alive, I will also be supernatural, so will soon be in league with satan and other ne'er do wells to gang up on god and kick his ass.
Or at least have fun making midnight raids on heaven and causing mischeif!
Uncorrugated
Level 7
Apr 9, 2018
3
So I'll lie and pretend to love the all knowing all seeing magical sky being that punishes liars for eternity or I can be honest about not believing. If I lie about loving/believing in the sky father and its real he'll for sure send me to hell. If I don't lie about loving/believing in the sky father and it's real they'll send me too hell but at least I don't have to listen to those damn songs every Sunday morning and can sleep in, wake up, and have dirty sex with my atheist girlfriend. I also don't need to eat sister Louis's casserole.
GrantSmith
Level 6
Apr 9, 2018
5
Even Homer Simpson has a solid rebuttal for Pascal. Pascal's wager looks very good to Christians, as they are very focused on their god, and don't consider the idea of others very often. To atheists, it should look ridiculous.
Drewesque
Level 6
Apr 9, 2018
5
@TheMiddleWay It counters the 50/50 nature. The wager claims it safer to believe. If you look at the number of gods, it is clear that believing in any one god does not give you appreciably better odds than disbelief.
So it is a rebuttal.
@TheMiddleWay But in roulette, you know one of the numbers will be rolled. And there are not a variety of contrary results for choosing various options. If your number comes up (and we will pretend you can't choose color or ranges for this example), you win. If it doesn't, you lose exactly how much you bet.
Pascal's wager forgets that religions typically demand more than mere belief, that some religions believe that practitioners of other religions will be condemned worse for their beliefs in false gods, and that various actions could be considered as sinful or godly, depending on religion.
In the context of all of that, belief in a particular god is a wager with terrible odds, and the belief in no god may or may not be as good or better.
Combine that with the idea that believing only as a safe bet would likely not fool an omniscient god, and a truly benevolent god should understand disbelief when not giving any indication it exists, and you find that the wager is not nearly as positive as Pascal presents.
In short, you risk making any god angrier and angrier by choosing to believe something patently untrue.
@TheMiddleWay also, please note that Pascal's wager indicates that the "safe" bet is choosing belief. In your example of roulette, I remain wealthier by never betting on a number.
@TheMiddleWay again, the point of Pascal's wager is that he frames belief as the "safe" bet. It is not. If it were framed as long odds, we would be in agreement.
@TheMiddleWay But he is very specifically indicating that we should take the wager. He indicates that it is better to believe than to not. In his reckoning, it is the best bet to believe, rather than disbelieve. Which is still patently untrue once you take into account the number of gods humans have created over the course of history and their contradictory natures.
Pascal frames it as 50/50 with a prize for belief and no prize for disbelief. In reality, given the many religions to choose from and the cost of belief, you are far better off choosing disbelief. If there is a god, it obscures itself very well and would likely respect disbelief more than believing simply for the potential reward. And most religions restrict you, want money, and recommend attendance, so you wager far more in belief than disbelief.
With all of that in mind, our odds seem better on disbelief, which is the contrary position to his wager.
@TheMiddleWay I quite understand that atheists, theists, and agnostics view things differently, but that does not make Pascal's view correct, nor counter the idea that some gods are depicted as "jealous" and would be more angry at a worshipper of another god than a nonbeliever. All I am saying is that Pascal's interpretation (basically the assumption that you would be choosing between the right god or no God), is flawed.
You are right that certainty of odds is impossible in a game in which we actually can't see the playing field. What I would say is that I can determine a few things: the Abrahamic traditions depict an omniscient, omnipotent god. If that god exists, but allows children to die painful deaths that are entirely outside their control, refuses to reveal to the world to stop holy wars and other nonsense, and requires blind faith...not only would I not want to worship that god, that god would know I did not truly believe. Hindu traditions actually do not require people to believe, though certain rituals are supposed to purge some of your negative karma, so you could be at a disadvantage. Shinto, similarly, does not require belief. A lot of ancient religions believed appealing to the gods helped them in this life, but had no specific requirement for entry into an afterlife.
You are right to say that I cannot know the odds. I can, however, know enough to say that the "coin toss" Pascal describes is inaccurate and that the rewards and losses vary greatly from one god to the next. Pascal's wager, as he presented it, is highly flawed.
To take the gambling analogy one step further, the likes of Franklin Graham and the prosperity pastors are the equivalent of the house. And the house always wins.
Pascal’s Wager breaks down in so many ways. It assumes there is a binary choice of belief vs non belief. There are many gods to choose from, which one do I believe in? Believing in one can piss of the real one. What if simply believing in one is wrong because polytheism is true?
Even if it were a simple binary choice, who’s to say that the one and true god is testing for gullibility and sending believers to hell for believing in something with no good evidence?
indirect76
Level 7
Apr 9, 2018
4
Yup. That's my "wager" exactly: if being committed to developing a spotless heart of compassion, practicing lovingkindness, and working toward liberating all being from suffering (Bodhisattva vow) lands me in hell, the god who sends me there is no god of mine.
If the above are not enough for me to be accepted by human society, that's no society of mine.
stinkeye_a
Level 8
Apr 9, 2018
4
Pascal's Wager is child's play to dispose of and an embarrassment to Pascal.
It's a simple false dichotomy: it assumes there's only one god to contemplate, when there are thousands. It also assumes that god is so stupid that he'll be fooled by you pretending to believe, just in case, or else so weak or indifferent that he won't sanction you anyway for being a dishonest poser.
mordant
Level 8
Apr 9, 2018
6
Savage! 
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