Why is Pascal's wager crap? Please explain thoroughly!?

Question

Looking for the most complete and sound explaination... I have my own but I would like to see the reasoning of others.

Answer 1

Because there are more than two choices when it comes to religion, and all of them claim to be the right path. So in order for Pascal's Wager to make sense you would have to follow each and every religion just to be on the safe side.

Answer 2

First, Pascal's Wager says that a person should believe in God because 1) If God does exist, he will be punished unless he believes and 2) he loses nothing if God does not exist.

There are several things wrong with this. The most obvious is that it doesn't dictate WHICH God to believe in. For example, if you choose to believe in the Moslem God, then if Christianity is correct, you will be punished. While is you believe in the Christian God and Islam is correct, you will be punished. This suggests that you should believe in the nastiest God around just so you avoid the nastiest punishment.

Next, the wager says, but does not demonstrate that nothing is lost in believing something false. It is possible that believing will mean that you forgo any number of meaningful and important experiences just because the God you chose to believe in forbids them.

Next, it assumes that whatever deity you choose to believe in isn't able to tell that you really don't believe, but that you are simply hedging your bets. Why wouldn't the deity punish you for such behavior?

Finally, the wager takes an incredibly amoral stance. I doubt that we should encourage people to submit to fear and force rather than figure out for themselves what is right and wrong.

Answer 3

Because it's a wager you could never really make. For example Christianity and Islam are mutually exclusive, you would have to choose one, not both, so what if Islam is true? It's incredibly narrow-minded to think that the two choices are Christianity or atheism! Plus, assuming there is an all-powerful God, do you truly think He would be impressed that you 'bet' on Him? It's narrow-minded, lazy, and cowardly. Yet many people, whether they know it precisely, base their belief of God on this!

Answer 4

Pascal's Wager is an attempt to make a logical argument that one should believe in God. It works like this:

1. First, assume that everything that Christians believe about God is true, except that He may not exist.

2. Under those assumptions, if you don't believe in God, and He does exist, you spend eternity tormented in hell. Under those same assumptions, if you do believe in God and He does exist, you spend eternity in paradise.

3. If God does not exist, nothing is implied in the argument about what happens after you die.

The believer takes this as a logical argument for belief, and as we've seen, there's an apparently endless supply of believers who think that it is, and post it here.

What we learn from those postings is that there's an apparently endless supply of believers who never consider even the possibility that anything that they believe about Gods and heaven and hell could be false (see #1 above). For example, what if believing in gods is what gets you an eternity of torment? Or if not believing earns you paradise? The argument assumes that those are not the case, but of course they're every bit as likely as the assumptions that belief leads to paradise and disbelief to hell.

In short, Pascal's Wager says

First, assume that Christians are right.
Now watch while I wave my hands a bit and prove that Christians are right.
Ta da!

Answer 5

I am a Christian, and I find Pascal's Wager downright offensive. Faith is not something you can fake just in case God really exists. And God is not so stupid as to be duped by people just pretending to believe in him because they're afraid of the afterlife.

It's also offensive that my fellow Christians would try and use this argument against atheists who genuinely don't believe God exists. Why would they care? It just makes us all look stupid.

Answer 6

It makes two assumptions that are false.

The first is that there are two mutually exclusive options - believe and be saved, or disbelieve and perish. In fact there are many options, all mutually exclusive. Follow the wrong belief system and you perish as surely as if you disbelieved.

The second is that belief has no negative consequences, and so is always the safe option. It clearly does have negative effects though, and can constrain opportunity and even survival chance (people die for their belief all the time).

Answer 7

1) It presupposes that believing in God incurs no drawback or cost - when in fact it may be very hard and take up time, money, effort and unpleasant acts.

2) Which god? Why assume that worshipping the Christian God will actually avoid damnation? The 'real' deity might be Zeus or Yash Kukmo, and you will have gained nothing by your piety.

3) How can you *choose* to believe in something? If you just pretend, surely any deity worth his salt could see through your pretence?

CD

Answer 8

fear the cut and paste response

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 [2], 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.

Thus Pascal's call for us not to consider the evidence but to simply believe on prudential grounds fails. As the atheist philosopher, J.L. Mackie wrote:

Once the full range of such possibilities is taken into account, Pascal's argument from comparative expectations falls to the ground. The cultivation of non-rational belief is not even practically reasonable

Answer 9

The way I see it, and it maybe totally incorrect, is that Xians 'love' their InvisibleSkyPixie only because they feel they ought to/have to because if they don't they'll go to hell.
'Love' under duress or threat is FEAR.

Consequently Xians think it's much safer to believe in the Pixie rather than take the risk because they lack courage, like being enslaved and don't like to think or take responsibility for their own lives.

I, and maybe other Atheist, reckon that if the Pixie really existed he would show us real evidence of his existence and not expect us to believe the flashy over-the-top showmanship of SpinDoctors like Hinn, Dollar, Robertson, Falwell, Copeland, et al.

Answer 10

In theory, it was good, basically, most of the other religions, you either cease to exist, or, go to heaven or cease to exist. Others if your a good person, then you go to a level of heaven, however, the Christianity was the best choice, as it gave you a good life, and if other religions were right, you'd either go to heaven, or cease existing. However, if you didn't choose Christianity and it's correct, then you are eternally punished.