Pascal's Wager

[KrIsP!]

For those of you who don't know, the philosopher Pascal proposed an idea that essentially boils down to that it is harmless to believe in a higher power simply because if there is one could benefit from not being atheist, however if there is not, one will not be treated any differently from everyone else.

Basically I am asking if you think his wager holds any truth and what your stance is on this idea. Personally, I believe if you were to believe in something simply for a possible benefit rather than genuinely believing in it, you're simply cheating yourself and that may result in an empty feeling from which you simply cannot commit too. If it's not what you truly believe you cannot trick yourself into believing in it, and thus it becomes a pointless effort.

What is your take on this idea? Note that this is not to simply state what you believe in, simply what you think of Pascal's wager and your reasoning behind your opinion.

 

[rvkevin]

This is what I have written elsewhere:

"Suppose we’ve chosen the wrong god. Every time we go to church we’re just making him madder and madder!" – Homer Simpson

This is exactly why Pascal's Wager fails. It sets up a false dichotomy between atheism and a specific deity with eternal hell for nonbelievers, such as Christianity. It goes something like this, if Christianity is true and you believe, then you earn everlasting life, if you don't believe, you earn eternal punishment. If Christianity is false, inferring that if there is no god, then nothing happens after death. Given the expected return of our options, we should believe even if we think it is extremely unlikely to be the case.

In this formation of the argument, the inference that Christianity being false leads to no gods is false due to the false dichotomy, it could easily be the case that Islam is true or an unidentified deity would reward the atheist (no doubt for valuing rationality) while punishing the believer. Considering more options of this type where non-belief is preferred by the deity rather than belief, Pascal's Wager can be easily turned in the atheist's favor. The number of deities this could be applied to is endless. For this reason, Pascal's Wager has been portrayed as trying to pick a winning horse out of an infinite number of contestants, trying to do so without an epistemology that gives reasonable results would be a futile pursuit.

 

[GofG]

Pascal's wager is widely regarded as being laughable by Christian apologetics and atheists alike for the reasons above.

 

[Nicholas1024]

I think rvkevin's right and has pretty much blown up the argument. Wthout using a meaningful argument as to why Christianity is more probable than the hypothetical god who hates Christians and rewards honest atheists, the wager gets stalled out. Once you use other arguments to show that there's a reasonable chance of Christianity being true (as opposed to the above hypothetical), then the wager has merit, but until then it's incomplete at best (although it does raise a valid point that even the smallest differences in the quality of your eternal life after death are more important than anything you enjoy/suffer in this life).