Why Pascal's Wager Sucks
Posted on: December 21, 2006 - 10:49pm

Why Pascal's Wager Sucks
A friend forwarded a message received from a xian attempting to use Pascal's Wager. The reply is classic.
The message:
Quote:
Someday, you'll understand. I feel sorry for you. Just promise me one thing, IF you were to hypothetically end up burning in hell or something, don't curse the religious for not saving you int time. Just consider that if my beliefs are wrong, so what, I'm worm food or whatever, no big loss. But if you're wrong, you're screwed. But you still have tons of chances to get it. Believe it or not, God loves you and when you meet your maker, you'll remember this and regret not taking it seriously. Good luck on your road of life, maybe our paths will cross someday.
My friend's reply:
Quote:
Hey, Bud! Thanks for your thoughts. When you sent your notice of pity, it would have been a lot more helpful had you mentioned which God I should avoid being screwed by.
There’s Allah whom the Muslim vehemently deny is triune; who say that Jesus is just a prophet, who say your Bible has been corrupted and so on. They give evidence from ancient history, science, archeology, Greek and Hebrew, Christian scholars, the early church fathers and the Bible itself to support their claim.
www.answering-christianity.com
www.muslim-responses.com
http://www.islam-guide.com
Or, how about the Jews. They say that Jesus at best was a good (if not problematic) Jewish Rabbi, but not the Messiah and certainly not God. They give evidence from ancient history, science, archeology, Greek and Hebrew, Christian scholars, the early church fathers and the Bible itself to support their claim.
www.jewsforjudaism.org
www.messiahtruth.com
Or, how about the Mormons who say that there are a multitude of gods and we can become one through acts like believing in their holy books and that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. They give evidence from ancient history, science, archeology, Greek and Hebrew, Christian scholars, the early church fathers and the Bible itself to support their claim.
www.farms.byu.edu
www.fairlds.org
Or, how about the Jehovah’s witnesses who deny the trinity also. They say that Jesus was just a man and that the holy spirit is Jehovah’s active force. They say he is not omnipresent, that we are annihilated and not condemned to Hell and that Jesus has already come secretly. They give evidence from ancient history, science, archeology, Greek and Hebrew, Christian scholars, the early church fathers and the Bible itself to support their claim.
www.elihubooks.com
www.jehovah.to/index.htm
Even the Roman Catholic Church, who while saying they have the same God as you, say also that you can by God’s grace (through the sacraments and other good works) earn salvation. They believe such go to Purgatory when they die and one should do nearly every act of worship toward Mary that you do to Jesus, just don’t call it worship. They give evidence from ancient history, science, archeology, Greek and Hebrew, Christian scholars, the early church fathers and the Bible itself to support their claim.
www.catholic.com
www.catholicapologetics.org
www.envoymagazine.com
It seems partner that “god” has “left you without a witness.” Anyway you slice it, you are just as screwed as I am! But don’t worry! Look at these passages:
Deuteronomy 20:10-17 "When you draw near a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. And if its answer to you is peace and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labour for you and shall serve you. But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it; and when the Lord your God gives it into your hand you shall put all its male to the sword, but the women and the little ones, the cattle, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourself; and you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemy, which the Lord God has given to you. Thus you shall do to all the cities which are far from you, which are not cities of the nations here. In the cities of these people that the Lord your God gives you an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes but you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittites and the Amoriotes, the Canaanites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded."
Deuteronomy 7:2 "and when the Lord your God gives then [the enemies] over to you, and you defeat them; then you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them..."
Numbers 31:7, 17 They warred against Midian, as the Lord commanded Moses, and slew every male…[Moses said to them] "... Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man by lying with him..."
I Samuel 15:1-3 And Samuel said to Saul, "The LORD sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel; now therefore hearken to the words of the LORD. Thus says the LORD of hosts, `I will punish what Am'alek did to Israel in opposing them on the way, when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and smite Am'alek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.'"
II Kings 2:23-24 He [Elisha] went up from there to Bethel; and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, "Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!" And he turned around and when he saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. And two she-bears came out from the woods and tore forty-two of the boys.
Looks like we didn’t have to worry about God being all that loving after all.
I hope that the Pascal Wagerer felt that bitch slap!

































You should have thrown more religions at him/her.
Maybe it's best for the next response.
Rational Responders - atheist, atheism, agnostic.
This is fantastic! I've heard the basic refutation before, but not only is this well presented (the repitition of "authority" is beautiful) but citations abound! Thank you very much for posting this!
Well, just because there is disagreement among believers as to which religion is the best one does not mean that there is no best religion. You are just being lazy by not investigating these faiths carefully and making your own conclusions.
At any rate, Pascal's wager is not meant to be used in decisions as to which religion to follow. It is supposed to be a tie-breaker for any person who has examined the evidence for Christianity and is still not fully convinced. If he thinks the probability of Christianity's being true is ~50-50, then Pascal's wager may be of some use to him to clinch his choice toward belief.
Actually if you give all religions plus ones never invented, not to mention atheism, it comes out to near 0. Picking Christianity vs Everything else at 50/50 is a flase dichotomy.
Science works whether you believe in it or not.
Actually if you give all religions plus ones never invented, not to mention atheism, it comes out to near 0. Picking Christianity vs Everything else at 50/50 is a flase dichotomy.
Science works whether you believe in it or not.
This is true, but best from whose standard? Even if we try to objectively measure the worth of a religion, we're going to have to pick a god so that we can have a standard by which to judge the religions. If you want to say that we have intrinsic knowledge of what is best, then we don't need the religions anyway, and the point is moot.
And you are being dishonest by not admitting that you don't have intimate knowledge of every religion that exists now. Your choice was as lazy as any other theists.
We like sources around here. Would you mind citing your source for this assumption. First hand evidence, please.
Secondly, the point is somewhat irrelevant. Even if this is how Pascal intended us to use his wager, it doesn't mean that his intention corresponded to the actual degree of use the wager has. If it applies to one religion, it applies to all of them unless you can demonstrate that one religion stands separate from the others. Since you have to presume that one god exists before you can do this, you're just running in circles.
If he believes Christianity is a 50/50 proposition, then he needs to take a class in logic.
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo. -- H. G. Wells
What I find interesting is that those who buy into Pascal's Wager assume that a person can force him/herself to believe something they know is untrue.
Rational Responders - atheist, atheism, agnostic.
To be perfectly fair, I can see the logic where Pascal's Wager would be the "tipping point." A theist could say, no, you can't force yourself to believe, but Pascal's Wager is the last piece of the puzzle for some people, and they believe because of the perceived logic of the statement.
Weak argument, I know, but I'm sure it's worked that way for lots of people.
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo. -- H. G. Wells
I've seen this before somewhere.
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Rational Responders - atheist, atheism, agnostic.
My cousin threw Pascal's Wager at me when we were 14 or so (before I knew what it was,) and I was just beginning to doubt. My first thought was, "but wouldn't god know you were faking it?"
LV
"The time appears to me to have come when it is the duty of all to make their dissent from religion known."
- John Stuart Mill
I recently watched this video, which retaliates with a Pascal's Wager of its own:
I thought this was both witty and wise.
We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins
I enjoyed reading this, thank you.
"It is interesting to ... reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and so dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us." --Charles Darwin
I like Homer Simpson's Wager:
"But Marge, what if we picked the wrong religion? Every week, we're just making god madder and madder!"
LOL
Wow that person was crazy owned. lol
Pascal's wager doesn't work because is assumes the choice is binary, which it isn't. It's pretty obvious to those of us outside the paradigm of theism, but hardcore Christians do see it as binary. That's the problem. They see the world as being made up of two types of people: Christians and non-Christians. They barely acknoweldge the distinction between different types of non-Christians. For someone stuck in that mindset, Pascal's Wager seems to make sense.
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now look at that. i wanted to link to wikipedias "atheist's Wager" and find some short cut merge and attempts to delete and miscredit it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Atheist%27s_Wager&redirect=no
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Atheist%27s_Wager&oldid=107691048The premise of Pascal's wager works though, doesn't it? I'm not sure but I think that Christianity is the only one that condemns you to hell for not 'accepting Jesus into your heart' and most other religions let you in based on 'a good life'. Granted, i'm just thinking of the major ones.
The really tricky part of christianity is that they can't even agree amonst themselves. Baptists are ok with living a good life and getting a ticket in; Catholics have changed their minds a couple of times and for a while they just made up a whole separate place in between; Lutherans say you have to do both so they are all pretty much going to hell for sure. Those are just three under "christianity"; why didn't god, any god make this more clear?
It is all a giant pile of poo.
That was great. Old Blaisey was a fruit. I think I will accept them all and include the tooth fairy and Santa, just in case...lol
Atheist Dave
When people give me Pascal's Nonsense, I return with this
http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/sapient/philosophy_and_psycholog...
And since none of them take logic, they are struck dumb as their ignorance falls spectacularly.
Give that to your wager-loving theist. See what he thinks.
True virtue is life under the direction of reason
-Baruch de Spinoza
It is the mark of a reasoned man that he can without problem separate what he can deduce as true from that which he wishes to be true -Me
Sacrafice the only organ more important than my penis or accept religion and be a jackass and not be able to use either? Hmmm.
Atheist Dave
Islam sends you to hell if you are not a Moslem.
Science works whether you believe in it or not.
All Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Rastafari, Baha'i, and probably a few more) condemn you to hell for not believing and being bad. Hinduism condemns the atheist as well, claiming that none can be virtuous while not believing in god. Sikhism also condemns us. I'm not sure about the other major religions (there are 22 "major" world religions of 500,000 followers or more, though this includes non-religion, Unitarian Universalism, Juche, and Scientology, which has been accused of inflating its numbers)
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for clarification's sake abrahamic religions are grounded on traits of punishment and fear of hell, whereas dharmic religions (including hinduism, buddhism, and sikhism) do not condemn anyone to hell. even "karma" is impersonal (karma just means action and reaction).
friendly reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinduism
Ethics and aesthetics are one
-Wittgenstein
Actually Sikhism does teach that no matter how good the person is, all atheists will be cursed with reincarnation, and all theists (no matter what religion) will merge with god. So it does condemn atheists to a different idea of hell.
(Edited for confusion with doctrines.)
"The issue is always the same - the government or the market. There is no third solution." - Mises
The same goes with Hinduism. Theists can potentially reach brahma-nirvana eventually, but atheists can not, and will not until they embrace some form of theism. Interestingly, many christians and moderate muslims believe in the same sort of hell nowadays
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this is incorrect. brahman/nirvana is a state of being, not a person. brahman is not a deity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahman
hinduism posits that suffering is bad, and that ignorance leads to suffering. deities are not required. in fact many people call hinduism "pantheistic."
the terms theist or atheist don't make much sense in the narrative tradition of hinduism or other dharmic religions. (rather, dharma and adharma) admittedly, i have not read anything deeply about sikhism, but here is a general article on dharmic religions (as opposed to abrahamic religions). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharmic_religions
the basic assumption of dharmic religions, is that there is such a thing as "truth" and one can find it. truth also would not be considered supernatural or separate (like a divine deity). and, there's no punishment for not finding it.
can i ask both of you what your sources are on your understanding of hindu metaphysics?
[edit: forgot a link]
Ethics and aesthetics are one
-Wittgenstein
Sikhism is, in essence, a blending of Islam and Hinduism (according to a hindu friend who used to live in India, in an area with a large Sikh