Pascal claimed a profound encounter with God. Yet he invented an argument based on bargaining. Apparently that was the best he could do for his nonbelieving friends with his clever mind. If it brings you closer to God then it’s worth something.
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It’s just basic logic. That is why the Wager is so successful.
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How do you measure success?
That entirely depends on the circumstances. In this case, success would mean 1) became a legendary well-known philosophical idea and 2) cannot be logically refuted (or at least it would be difficult to do that, and so far I’ve not seen any such refutation).
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Critics just say there are too many religions to choose from so Pascal’s Wager is bunk.
I believe atheism and agnosticism are wagers, too.
I already addressed this. Someone needs to properly evalute and analyze the options, create a list or matrix out of that.
Only then can we determine the logically obligatory outcome.
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Did you read “Pensees?”
Pascal wrote 200 pages why Christianity is the one true religion. The wager is like the cherry on top.
Literally no one cares. The issue is logic and phenomenology. Not religious fanboy-ing.
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Yep.
Critics don’t believe we can. You and I know we can. 
No one cares about what?
Your ideological cultism.
We were talking about logic. Try to keep up.
Mentions phenomenology. Accuses of cultism.
If what you are asking about is why Christianity, and he proposes a short essay from the originator of the wager, that seems relevant.
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What’s my ideological cultism?
I posted about Pascal.
I read it years ago. I remember it mainly for the wager and its bleak characterization of man’s place in the material universe. I think Pascal was mistaken about Christianity being the only true religion. Viewed as an external phenomena Christianity itself is not a unity. Roman Catholicism itself has factions. A case in point—Christianity as Pascal portrays it is a variety of Catholicism that was condemned by a Pope. I don’t doubt the genuineness of the experience of God that changed his life.
In part Pascal’s bleak view is based on creation ex nihilo—the centuries old doctrine that God created the universe out of nothing. It makes more sense to me that the universe is an emanation of God. What do you think?
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Great questions.
Pascal was a Jansenist which was condemned by the Pope and Pascal left before he died and united under the Pope.
The Wager is simply about logic. I already explained it cannot be reduced to any one religious take. That is obvious. So quoting stuff from Christianity isn’t going to shed any light on the issue.
Since this is about logic we need to do what I already proposed and which no one has bothered to take up, namely create a most-possible comprehensive list of all possible forms of deities/afterlives and what constitutes requirements under each of them for entry into heaven after we die. Once we have that list we would be able to evaluate the likelihood of each approach and how much work it takes, and notice any overlaps between different items on the list. By doing that we could optimize for the solution, namely we would be able to determine the statistically most likely behaviors or beliefs we should have that will lead us to heaven after we die. That’s all the Wager is saying anyway. You can live your life ignorance of deities and religions and ideas of afterlives, but if any of that stuff actually turns out to be real then you may be shooting yourself in the foot when it comes to being your turn.
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That’s true and its also important to remember that Pascal wrote 200 pages why he thought Christianity is true and other religions are not.
So Pascal tried to make a list, as you stated, of all religions.
Pascal also wrote “You must wager. It is not optional.”
Atheism is a wager, too.
Sure, but since nobody knows which religion is true (or if any are true, or if more than one might be true) there’s no point arguing which religions is the best. We might establish by some criteria which religion is best, but that doesn’t shed any light on which religion might actually be true. Therefore in the Wager all theoretically possible religions should be considered regardless of how we feel about their being good or bad religions, and we should attempt as much as possible to theorize as to the likelihood of each religion being true or not (which is, probably for the most part, practially impossible to do but I would still like to see someone objectively and logically analyze it all).
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.
…but the wager was not about any one specific religion but about whether or not a person would choose to bet that god exists, bearing the thought that a person would have nothing to lose if they chose that there was a god, in mind.
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What does your list have to do, with that?^
No idea. That wasn’t relevant to what I was saying, as far as I can tell.