Pascal’s Wager is my favorite argument because everyone risks having the wrong religion…even atheists and agnostics.
An eternity of bliss outweighs any worldy suffering during this brief lifetime.
So, start praying and hope for the best! 
What do you think it’s a good argument for? What would someone come away convinced of?
It’s good for agnostics and doubting theists to desire eternal bliss.
It’s an argument to convince agnostics and doubting theists about what they should desire?
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Everytime I’ve seen some using Pascal’s wager, I teach them my reverse Pascal’s wager.
If you have an atheist doing something pure of spirit in terms of the kindness of their hearts…
They are better than the ones who behave out of fear.
Thus atheists are gods chosen
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That and that they should attend Church.
Thats your wager then.
If you believe it’s an argument about what people should desire, I think you’ve misunderstood it.
How do you reason about the multiple infinities involved? If there is more than one religious sect who expect an eternity of bliss for members of their faith and an eternity of suffering for everyone else, and those sects’ faiths are incompatible (such that you can’t expect eternal bliss under both simultaneously), how does Pascal’s wager work?
One approach might be to seek the set of beliefs that satisfies the most sects’ minimum requirements for eternal bliss. But infinity doesn’t work that way, infinity plus infinity is infinity, and 10% of infinity is infinity. As long as there are infinities on both sides of the wager for any particular set of beliefs, the bet is equal.
Maybe it still works as an argument against atheism, since you need at least one infinity to balance out the many infinities of suffering. But if there’s at least on sect that believes good people will have an eternity of bliss regardless of their explicit membership in a religion, even atheists are covered. Hell, there are probably sects that don’t even need you to be a good person: religion-space is vast!
I’m not that confident in my reasoning here, because infinity and eternity and bliss are unintuitive categories. But I count that as a strike against Pascal’s Wager.
I picked Catholicism. It’s the original Christian church.
Most religions don’t condemn people of other religions but many condemn atheists.
But there might be a god out there that wants to torment Catholics specifically for eternity.
For all we know, there’s a god out there that specifically rewards atheists only.
Pascal’s wager… a forcing of the hand, to believe in [a] god.
…so
He wins / you lose.
Existence isn’t too complicated.
I’m not trying to convert people. I’m trying to get away from you.
Conversion is conspicuous consumption aggression.
While I’m here …
Back in my full powers. I want you to know that demonstrations of power keep you stuck here:
The Buddha was here. Known world wide. He used miracles to his disciples to teach them how silly miracles were.
That was a good teacher.
An atheist rewarding God seems less probable.
We don’t live in a bizarro world.
Pascal contends that a rational person should adopt a lifestyle consistent with the existence of God and actively strive to believe in God. The reasoning behind this stance lies in the potential outcomes:
If God does not exist, the individual incurs only finite losses, potentially sacrificing certain pleasures and luxuries.
If God does indeed exist, they stand to gain immeasurably, as represented for example by an eternity in Heaven in Abrahamic tradition, while simultaneously avoiding boundless losses associated with an eternity in Hell.
Obviously, there are problems with this, but there is another possibility.
If the ground of being is a unitive consciousness, and we are not so much physical entities who have consciousness but entities of consciousness with a temporary physical existence, the reunion with the unitive consciousness could prove traumatic.
Most spiritual traditions say that we have forgotten who we are, and we follow the illusion of physicality, which is a representation in our minds. It is in realising that we are part of something larger that we start to live in a new paradigm.
How’s that for a different take on Pascal’s wager?
If we live in a world where any of the religions are true, we ABSOLUTELY live in bizarro world.
I mean, we live in some kind of bizarro world either way, but Catholocism being the case is 100% bizarro world.
Yes it is a good argument, I agree. There’s no really good way to refute it. The problem is that we could make a list of all possible forms of afterlife and God that could exist, and we wouldn’t know which one to worship or believe in, which one to try and appease. Picking one would be logically better than picking none, but still.
Seems like the Wager needs to be updated to include analysis of the various possible forms of afterlife-God and what type of appeasement works for each of them. Then based on the outcomes of that analysis you could come up with the best form of worship-appeasement that is statistically most likely to get you into heaven. For instance, some ideas of afterlife-God don’t require you to worship or appease them in order for you to get into heaven, while others do; some require you to be a good person or do certain things that are considered good, others don’t. And the afterlife looks different in each different possibility.
Someone should comprehensively list and analyze all of that, then we would be able to calculate the logically best possible form of religious worship in terms of the Wager.
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“There are no atheists or agnostics in foxholes.”
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I’m an atheist and I’ve not only been in foxholes, I’ve been to the deepest pits of hell.
I know spirit exists. Everyone learns that in hell.
The question is what do you do with it?
Even going to hell proves god is not real.
That song is extremely wise.
It’s actually the wisest song I know.
Close the window, calm the light
Yep. Catholicism is good because it doesn’t require 100% true belief. It requires weekly Church attendance and actions.
And what if there’s a god that rewards all theists and punishes all atheists for not even trying?
Or one could choose the religion with the worst Hell.
Many religions either don’t have a Hell or it’s only temporary (Judaism, some protestants, Buddhism, Hinduism, Unitarians, Taoism, Jehovas Witnesses, Mormons, deists, Baha’i, pagans, Sikhism, atheism, New Age and Zorastrianism.)
The two worst Hells are Catholicism and Islam; both are permanent torment.
Then compare Jesus to Mohammad.
Jesus was a peaceful miracle machine and Mohammad was a warlord who married a 6 year old. So, Jesus wins. Now if one remains an atheist/agnostic, they would go to either Hell anyways.
By choosing one of these religions, one at least has a chance at avoiding the worst punishment.