You seem to have a loose grasp of the definition of 'logic’, my friend. I refer you to the answers below for more explication.

Please don’t post a question that includes a demand that it not be answered in a particular way, because if it is as easily answered or irrelevant as you believe, you wouldn’t need to say it. It makes your argument seem 'easily answered and irrelevant’.

Posted: March 24th 2011

See all questions answered by Blaise

Pascal’s Wager? Really? That’s been answered literally millions of times.

You’ll need a more original argument than that to sway anyone.

Posted: March 24th 2011

See all questions answered by Dave Hitt

Two big problems with your approach.

First, you have to choose the right god. I can assure you that Odin will not look kindly on your lack of belief when you stand at the gates of Valhalla, Nor will Osiris.

Even if you limit yourself to christianity, you have to choose the right sect.

Second, you seem to think that belief is a choice. Belief is a conclusion.

Try to believe (not imagine what it would be like, believe) that god doesn’t exist for 5 minutes, and then you’ll understand how silly your line of reasoning is.

A secondary concern is the time wasted if you are wrong. If god doesn’t exist, you will have focused your life on something that isn’t really there.

Posted: March 24th 2011

See all questions answered by Eric_PK

For every religion that says I’ll go to hell unless I do X and never do Y, I can invent a religion that says i have to do Y and never X. Is there any reason I should pick the “real” religion instead of the one I just invented?

Unless you can convince me that your religion is more likely to be true than something I pull out of a hat, Pascal’s Wager doesn’t work. Unfortunately, the whole point of Pascal’s Wager was to sidestep the issue of whether your beliefs have any basis in fact.

In case the above isn’t iron-clad enough for you, let me spell it out. Pascal’s argument went like this: if religion were true, then there would be infinite rewards and punishments, whereas if it were false, rewards and punishments would be finite. Therefore, any non-zero likelihood of religion being true implies that it’s a safe bet to behave as though religion were true.

But there have been innumerable religions, so how do I pick which commandments to follow without some way to tell if a religion is likely or not? If I assume that they’re all equally likely, then I might just take the most common commandments. But if all religions were equally likely, even the ones I fabricate, then I could invent a religion to oppose any commandment, so there would be no “most common commandments”. This brings us back to square one: is your religion true or not?

Anyhow, isn’t it kind of depressing to force yourself to believe something that makes no sense?

Posted: March 24th 2011

See all questions answered by George Locke

Pascal’s Wager is important historically because Pascal admitted there could be no proof of God’s existence, but he then gave his famous risk-based analysis, concluding we should believe because it’s the safest bet.

There is no safe bet.

Pascal misrepresented our choice. It is not between believing in God or not believing in God. We still have to settle on which god to believe in. A Christian can end up in Muslim Hell or reincarnate unfavorably. The only reason believing in the Christian God seems reasonable is ethnocentrism. There is no reason that the gods of our local culture and time should be more likely to be true than any others. The real God could be Quetzalcoatl or one that is worshiped by no religion yet devised on Earth.

Pascal also misrepresented the risks. He made it sound like we lose nothing by believing in the Christian God. We lose a lot:

1. We are guilty of faith. If our accountant used faith to fill out our tax forms, he could go to jail. Faith is a form of lying, because it suspends the normal, agreed-upon, scientific standards for justifying knowledge.

2. We worship a god that is weak, cruel or imaginary. Given the fact of human suffering, God either can’t or won’t reduce human suffering. Those are the only two options.

Finally, there is the question of whether we even can believe something because it’s a safe bet. I couldn’t believe in Vishnu if I was tortured. This highlights the most venal aspect of Pascal’s Wager. It reduces to the idea that we should believe in the God who has the worst punishment for disbelief.

Without the threat of Hell, what we believe wouldn’t be an issue at all, and why should it? What human, moral concern is violated by merely believing something? This leads to the moral necessity of atheism: even if Yahweh were real, we would have to rebel against him out of concern for each other.

Posted: March 24th 2011

See all questions answered by donsevers