Pascal's wager

[creature386]

I can't imagine that we don't have a thread about this one yet. It may not be the most logically sound case for God's existence (but to be fair, it isn't intended to be one), but it is a damn effective evangelist tactic (particularly common in "Fire and Brimstone evangelism").

The argument in a nutshell:
1. If God does not exist and I do not believe in him, it doesn't matter.
2. If God does not exist and I believe in him, it doesn't matter.
3. If God does exist and I do not believe in him, I have an eternal loss.
4. If God does exist and I believe in him, I have an eternal gain.

The argument in a nutshell:
1. Due to the possibility of God's existence, the most reasonable position is the one with the greatest likelihood of gains.
2. Believing that God exists is associated with the greatest likelihood of gains.
3. Therefore, it is most reasonable to believe in God's existence.

Or for those who have an allergy against syllogisms, the rapper Lecrae put it more simply:


Apart from evangelism, Pascal's wager is also a nice tactic to shift the burden of proof.
Consider the following conversation:
"Prove that God exists."
"Prove he doesn't."
"Prove that fairies don't exist."
"Irrelevant, the question if fairies exist has no bearing on your well-being, the question if God exists or not has enormous consequences and thus you should better be sure that he doesn't exist. Otherwise, this will have horrible consequences for you."

As Vodmeister usually does with apologist arguments, I only lay it out, I do not comment on it and it is up to you guys to discuss it.

One thing I would like to add to the discussion are the costs of faith, as apologists are divided on that subject:
-Lecrae thinks faith has costs.
-Blaise Pascal thought it has no costs nor benefits.
-Ray Comfort (who REALLY loves Pascal's wager) believes that the gains of faith outweigh the costs even if God does not exist because theists are generally happier than atheists (as far as I know, there are in fact studies confirming that).

[Infinity Blade]

My simple question to those who subscribe to this argument: even assuming the existence of a god, how do you know it's YOUR god?

[creature386]

Apologists would probably throw in some BS about how special Christianity is (remember, it's not even a religion ) and that all other religions/possibilities are not even worth consideration.

Anyway, Sam Harris reject's Pascal's wager:


And so does this cartoon:


Moreover, one can argue that it is unchristian. Even the fundamentalist ministry Got Questions rejects it:
www.gotquestions.org/Pascals-wager.html
Criticism from a Christian viewpoint:
-It makes agnostic assumptions about God's existence (I'm not sure if this is a good objection TBH, the spirit of the argument is to mediate between theists and atheists).
-The lack of costs of faith is unbiblical.
-Becoming a Christian to avoid punishment and get rewarded is dishonest.

[theropod]

So does this mean theists who use the argument admit that fearing punishment alone would be a valid reason to believe in something they have no reason to believe in? So in other words, we should believe just about anything, as long as believing that could hypothetically entail benefits, however unlikely?

But then, does believing in god really come without a cost?

[creature386]

To be fair, most of the time I saw it in action, it was not so much for converting infidels, but for motivating them to consider the topic to be of importance (usually in response to those who are not interested in the messages of evangelists) and to shift the burden of proof (as noted in the OP).

[theropod]

imo the burden of proof for a supernatural being rests on those making the claim for something not indicated by, or consistent with science and logic.
Whether believing in something could have benefits in the unlikely instance that it exists doesn’t have a bearing on my ability to believe it. You could take that as an argument for acting as if you believed in it, but actually believing in it is a different story. It just won’t work, believing in something you don’t think is real just in case you are wrong and would get punished for not believing in it. Not to mention I think it’d be pretty pathetic, even if it would work.

If god condemns people simply for not believing in him, then that’s not a god I’d want to believe exists. In fact, it would be terrible to imagine an entity like the biblical god existing.
But that’s just me.

[creature386]

Not to mention that you by this logic would need to disprove the existence of a dragon which burns you to ash if you leave your house tomorrow.

Coming back to the problems of the wager, another common objection is that it can be tricked (if applied to the Christian God, the objection won't work so well with Allah) by living a sinful live and repenting in the last 30 seconds of ones life to get in heaven.
Shelly Kagan used this argument in his debate with William Lane Craig and Bill's response was the following:
"That's what no real Christian would do."

…

Most fundamentalist churches are aware of this problem which is why they remind their followers that they can die any second and that Jesus can return any second as well.

[Infinity Blade]

So does this imply that WLC agrees with this flaw of Pascal's wager?

[creature386]

Kagan used this argument against the Christian foundation of morality in general, Pascal's wager was not part of the debate. I don't know what Craig thinks about Pascal's wager, but he wrote a little defense of it on his website, where he argued against the many-gods objection because gods other than the Christian are not even worth consideration, he didn't give a justification for that. He also replied to one of theropod's objections by saying you can give yourself the ability to believe by attaching yourself to a Christian community.
But I am still not sure if Craig actually stands behind the wager as he made clear that he doesn't think the goal of Christianity is to avoid hell.

[creature386]

Pascal's mugging, another illustration of the problems in the wager (i.e. when you make a promise that has a laughably low probability, it can pass the logic of the wager if it is a ridiculously high promise):
www.nickbostrom.com/papers/pascal.pdf