Pascal's Wager

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I believe that if you believe in God, you will be sent to Hell by Satan when you die. And if you do not believe in God, then Satan will admit you to Heaven. In other words, only Satan exists, there is no God, and Satan is angry about belief in God, hence he punishes people who believed in God by sending them to burn in Hell.

Therefore, if I follow Pascal's advice and believe in God, I am risking Satan's wrath, risking burning in Hell for eternity. Therefore it is not the least bit true to say that the only rational choice is to believe in God. Believing in God carries the grave risk of incurring Satan's wrath.

WHAT WE CAN CONCLUDE FROM THIS USING LOGIC:

Pascal's Wager is what is known as a "false dichotomy", which is a kind of broken logic. 2 extreme points of view are presented and assumed to be the only options, when in reality there are more than 2 options. More information can be found at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dichotomy

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/eitheror.html

Pascal's Wager, although on the surface it appears to have validity, it is actually quite unintelligent and flawed.

Furthermore, and I mean this quite literally and seriously, debates about God are no less ridiculous, absurd, and childish than debates about Batman.

Where the heck did you get that idea?

False dichotomy pretty much dashes the argument, yes, but Batman is real! I've seen him in a dream ... after watching too many Batman movies, admittedly, but still...

By the by, increasing population isn't necessarily a proof against reincarnation since I don't think all theories of reincarnation are linear in time. Someone might reincarnate back in time. Or to put it another way, ignore time, imagine a list of every life that will ever be lived in the universe, take a number of colours, each representing a different soul, and colour in the lives. If you use any colour more than once, that's reincarnation.

Or maybe not. I need to stop talking.

Pascal's wager assumes something about the nature of God. It assumes that God will like and reward people who believe in him. We have no reason to believe this. Just because a human would do that if a human being was in the God's shoes (I am using this expression ironically). does not meant that that is what God will do. There is no basis for an anthropomorphic god, a god similiar in nature to a human being. To quote Pascal himself, "God made man in his own image and man returned the complement." We make many assumptions about God that have no rational basis. If God was omnipotent and infinitely benevolent, why would evil exist? Thus, he must have motives that may be completely unknown or perhaps incomprehensible to us. If God exist, we know nothing about Him (or Her, or It), except through blind faith.

It is possible to argue, that given the evidence available to us, one who uses reason would conclude that God does not exist. Therefore, God may reward those who use reason and punish those who are illogical. Or perhaps people who have orange as their favorite color will be sent to heaven.

In addition, how do you know that a particular religion (such as Christianity) is right? Perhaps, God/gods will reward only those who believe in some other religion and will doubly punish those who believe in a false religion.

I'm surprised theists anywhere still use Pascal's Wager. It essentially turns faith in God into nothing more than an insurance policy.

Pascal's wager is based on bad logic to some extent because of competing beliefs, however, at the time there were probably considered to be less competing beliefs at the time and with 2 major alternatives Pascal's wager does make sense. It does reduce Christianity to an insurance policy to some extent and Pascal even recognized it, however, he stated that by attempting to be christian a person will eventually become christian, which makes logical sense, the brain will try to correct the difference between the thoughts and actions by becoming christian. Pascal was a very intelligent man and his faith in Christianity was understandable as he did at times suffer and converted after coming close to death. Such would shake anyone's confidence in material living as death is not a pretty thought and promises of greater existence are very tempting in face of that as it is not very comforting to view yourself as a speck of dust on a speck of dust in a large universe and as being only pushed forward by physics and chemistry, because that has absolutely no romance at all.

"...and when he finally died and came to the afterlife, all the gods were waiting for him with bats and clubs and one god went up to him and said 'We don't like smart-asses here'" paraphrasing Terry Pratchett.

Pascal's Wager fails because:

1. It doesn't consider the possibility of other, even more vengeful gods who might be extremely annoyed if someone worships the Biblical god instead of them.

2. It attempts to make a virtue out of fear-based and probability-based belief. "You mean, the only reason you believed in me is because you were afraid of going to Hell?" *punt*

Putting aside for the moment the very big question of whether or not one can actually "choose" to believe.

A fun book on this topic is "The Paradox of God" by Clifford Pickover. Examines a lot of these ideas with a slant towards logic/math.

Hey, who says it's Christianity that got it right? For all we know, after we die we go to the banks of the Styx and need cash to pay the ferryman, or have our hearts weighed against the Feather of Truth. That, IMO, is one of the biggest flaws in Pascal's Wager.