Pretty much everyone in Christendom has heard it.
If the non-believer is right, the believer loses nothing by
believing
If the Christian is right, the non-believer loses everything by not
believing.
This simplistic line of thinking is not only logically flawed, but it is morally insulting to any person who cares to expend a little thought on the subject. Let's break this down a little
The basic assumptions behind the Wager are pretty thick and questionable. First, the Wager assumes that a religious believer loses nothing by believing in God. I beg to differ. A believer builds a view of the world around the belief in God, a set of assumptions that answer many questions to the satisfaction of the believer. Once those questions are accepted as "settled," no further questions are deemed necessary. If such assumptions are wrong, a life based on those assumptions can be less than fulfilling.
For instance, if one believes that life is controlled by God and that everything will work out for the best for those who believe, there's a lot less incentive to struggle to improve one's lot in life. Living in poverty complacently, waiting patiently for a being that doesn't exist to "make it better" helps no one. If one believes in this "helper god" and it doesn't exist, there is definitely a down side to belief in a non-existent god.
Another basic assumption of the Wager is that Christianity is the only possible religion to consider. In fact, if one is trying to consider the question logically and dispassionately, there are thousands of possible religions to look at, each one holding its own set of consequences for the decision of whether or not to follow it, each one holding a different set of ways to follow it. The 4-cell logic diagram of the original wager is expanded a thousand-fold.
Looking even further into the Christian bias of the Wager, we see that a big assumption here is that God prizes belief over the use of the rational mind. This is an interesting paradox - that a person should be encouraged to determine a belief in a god that requires blind, unreasoning faith by the use of logic.
I often think that Christians who try using Pascal's Wager have a pretty low opinion of their religion. After all, the very nature for the Wager is as a benefit/risk assessment. In other words, it tells people to decide what they believe based on the benefit or risk to themselves. The heck with searching for the "truth." I can't help but wonder what God, if it existed, would think of people who converted simply to keep from ending up in hell? Yet, this bit of reasoning encourages this thought - becoming a Christian merely as a matter of "fire insurance."
Of course, considering that the Muslim version of hell is far worse than the Christian one, and the Muslim version of heaven is frankly more attractive - at least, for men - it seems that the logical conclusion to draw from Pascal is that Islam is the way to go. One can't help but wonder what Pascal would have thought of that. {;-)
Another angle to consider is this business of assuming that god actually values faith above all other things in humans. This is not necessarily a safe assumption to make. Considering that if a creator god exists, it has made evidence of its existence and nature pretty darned hard to come by. In fact, there is no evidence that points exclusively to an intelligent creator. That being the case, it seems odd that a creator would give its most intelligent creations the ability to use their minds in a rational manner, then turn around and value those who shut off that process.
Instead, it seems more reasonable that such a creator would value (and possibly reward) those creations who followed their reasoning ability and did not believe in it. In this scenario, a god would exist, but disbelief results in the greatest beneficial outcome.
All this taken together shows that Pascal's Wager as a tool of philosophy is deeply flawed. As a tool for proselytization, it is dead on arrival. I receive many notes from believers that carry this argument with them, and this article is my summary of reasons why I view it both as an annoyance and an insult. There is no hope that it could be used to convince any thinking entity. In my opinion, the fact that so many Christians think it's so terrific an argument shows the state of their thought processes - flawed and superficial to say the least.
