Way of the Mind

Your question is, in essence, what is known as Pascal’s Wager. It was first suggested by Blaise Pascal, a 17th century French mathematician, and keeps being repeated (over and over) by apologists, many of whom, apparently, believe that they are the first to come up with it…

At first glance, it seems to make sense. After all, a believer who’s wrong, apparently, doesn’t lose much, but an unbeliever who’s wrong goes to hell — infinite punishment, and, so, infinite loss. To “hedge one’s bets”, then, might make sense… right?

Not quite. Remember that Pascal suggested it about 350 years ago, a time when there was, basically, one single religion around him: Catholicism. It’s not exactly like that today… there are hundreds, if not thousands, of variants of Christianity, most of which say that they’re the only valid version, and the believers of every other version are damned. And that’s just Christianity; many other religions, such as Judaism (with all its variants) and Islam (with all its variants) also have similar exclusive claims. Precisely because they’re exclusive (and their gods are “jealous” - their own words!), you can’t pick several of them at the same time, for “safety”.

In fact, if you go by Pascal’s Wager, the chances of picking the wrong religion, and therefore be damned, with so many of them available, are above 99%, and not much different from the chances of going to hell if you’re an atheist (again, according to Pascal’s Wager).

Or, to put it more simply: say you are a Christian. Now, any Muslim will tell you that you’ll go to hell for not believing in Allah. Isn’t it safer to believe, just in case? By not worshipping Allah, aren’t you taking a huge gamble?

There are more problems with Pascal’s Wager. For instance, can you actually choose your beliefs? Could you decide, tomorrow, that, for safety reasons, you don’t believe in Yahweh anymore, and that you believe Allah is the true god? Would that belief be sincere? And if it wasn’t sincere, would any god worthy of that designation actually be fooled?

It’s also not necessarily true that a believer who’s wrong (that is, if it turns out that there is no god after all) doesn’t lose much.

For a more detailed discussion of Pascal’s Wager, please see this thread at the Way of the Mind Forum, especially posts #1 and #5.

(Note: please keep any comments related to the above question / answer, and not to other subjects, such as whether God exists or not. Thanks.)