Do you agree with Pascal's Gamble?

Question

* You may believe in God, and if God exists, you go to heaven: your gain is infinite.
* You may believe in God, and if God doesn't exist, your loss is finite and therefore negligible.
* You may not believe in God, and if God doesn't exist, your gain is finite and therefore negligible.
* You may not believe in God, and if God exists, you will go to hell: your loss is infinite.

Answer 1

Pascal's argument is seriously flawed. The religious environment that Pascal lived in was simple. Belief and disbelief only boiled down to two choices: Roman Catholicism and atheism. With a finite choice, his argument would be sound. But on Pascal's own premise that God is infinitely incomprehensible, then in theory, there would be an infinite number of possible theologies about God, all of which are equally probable.

First, let us look at the more obvious possibilities we know of today - possibilities that were either unknown to, or ignored by, Pascal. In the Calvinistic theological doctrine of predestination, it makes no difference what one chooses to believe since, in the final analysis, who actually gets rewarded is an arbitrary choice of God. Furthermore we know of many more gods of many different religions, all of which have different schemes of rewards and punishments. Given that there are more than 2,500 gods known to man and given Pascal's own assumptions that one cannot comprehend God (or gods), then it follows that, even the best case scenario (i.e. that God exists and that one of the known Gods and theologies happen to be the correct one) the chances of making a successful choice is less than one in 2,500.

Second, Pascal's negative theology does not exclude the possibility that the true God and true theology is not one that is currently known to the world. For instance it is possible to think of a God who rewards, say, only those who purposely step on sidewalk cracks. This sounds absurd, but given the premise that we cannot understand God, this possible theology cannot be dismissed. In such a case, the choice of what God to believe would be irrelevant as one would be rewarded on a premise totally distinct from what one actually believes. Furthermore as many atheist philosophers have pointed out, it is also possible to conceive of a deity who rewards intellectual honesty, a God who rewards atheists with eternal bliss simply because they dared to follow where the evidence leads - that given the available evidence, no God exists! Finally we should also note that given Pascal's premise, it is possible to conceive of a God who is evil and who punishes the good and rewards the evil.

Answer 2

Pascal's Wager is one of the first things that helped to solidify my faith... however, its use in modern evangelism is minimal... perhaps only once the seed has been planted, and there is evidence of hope.

The average line of reasoning an atheist tends to go with is akin to, "And what if your God is not the right one?"... something that Pascal's Wager does not take into account.

So, I'd like to revise the Wager....
* You may believe in God, and if God exists, you go to heaven: your gain is infinite.
* You may believe in God, and if God doesn't exist, your loss is finite and therefore negligible.
* You may not believe in God, and if God doesn't exist, your gain is finite and therefore negligible.
* You may not believe in God, and if God exists, you will go to hell: your loss is infinite.

Seraphim's Addendums-
* You may believe in another god, but if the Christian God exists, you will go to hell: your loss is infinite.
* You may believe in another god, but if the Christian God does not exist, and the other one does, your gain is finite and therefore negligible (as no other god makes the promise of ridding all evil within all mankind, to the point that there is no sorrow, pain, or self-destructive behavior, *and* gives the promise of immortality to all believers)
* You may believe in another god, and if neither the other god nor the Christian God exists, your loss is finite and therefore negligible.
* You may believe in the Christian God, and another god exists, then your loss is finite, and therefore negligible (no other concept of hell is as intense, or as permanent as the Hell described in the Bible).

Answer 3

No!... I don't agree with Pascal's Gamble, it only works if you already hold previous biassed assumptions about an essentially Christian God and the Christian notions of a Heaven & Hell...There could as easily be millions of Gods and many millions more options of where we might spend our time other than Heaven or Hell as well as the more likely option of no Gods and no afterlife.
The whole thing is too flawed with too many possible variables ignored to accept this as any kind of meaningful logic.

Answer 4

In as much as most gods demand to be worshiped in a proscribed manner or suffer eternal damnation, it is unlikely that even if you chose the "correct" god to worship, you might not choose the correct way to worship it and end up damned anyway. Pascal's gamble is a bad wager and an incredible waste of time. Investing that much energy in something that nebulous is a fools errand.
In as much as I was not around to see how everything came into being (and neither were you),I say, "I don't know ..... YET!" To assume that some god, my less than intellectual ancestors made up, instantaneously farted the universe into being, is absurd

Answer 5

In theory I agree with Pascal. In reality, my faith or lack of faith is more dependent on this world than on the odds of an afterlife. It's hard to choose to believe anything. Many times I would love to have a deep faith that would sustain me in this life and into the next. Instead, I am a wishy-washy agnostic and can't point to a good reason why. I know many arguments for and against God but they have very little to do with my beliefs.

Answer 6

I suppose i'd have to first believe in heaven or hell to agree. Also, believing in a god doesn't necessarily mean that you believe that god will punish you if you didn't believe in it. Maybe the god you believe in doesn't give a sh*t one way or the other what you think.

It seems Pascal didn't like to think "outside of the box".

Answer 7

All based on faulty logic... Sorry, but Pascal was not the sharpest tool in the shed.

You may believe in God and live your one and only life in delusion... your gain is zero, your loss is total.

Answer 8

I believe Pascal was passionate about it at the time, only because no-limit Texas Holdem had not yet been invented.

Had he been around a while later, he would have been extolling the virtues of betting on a draw, rather than putting one's faith in the high pairs.

Answer 9

No, if God exists and is really all powerful and all knowing, he would know you are basing your belief on this stupid Pascal's Gamble. Thus your belief is NOT based on love of him or sincere to begin with, but in fact through faulty logic. Hence you STILL go to hell.

Answer 10

* You may believe in a god but choose the wrong one, and end up in a different god's hell, because the real god is offended by people who believe in the wrong gods but unconcerned about people who believe in no gods at all: Your loss is infinite.