Paschal's Wager re-formulated mathematically: why being Christian is Rational.

[Angrboda]

Will be back after work to respond in more detail later on, but for those of who you know the Mathematical Theory of Expected Value, you know that the argument works when the Reward is extremely high, as Eternal Reward, unless in fact the risk outweighs the reward and the probability is exceeding low.

Let me explain Expected Value with an example. You have a 50% chance of gain $100, but a 50% chance of losing only $50 in a game. Would you play? Maths says you should, as Expected Value is positive.

1. Expected Value is calculated like this: 50%*100-50%*50=50-25=25>0. Since EV is positive, then you should play the game with these odds.

What if it was something like 40% of winning 100, 60% of losing 50. You should still play. Why? Because EV is still positive.

2. EV in this case would be: 40%*100-60%50=40-30=10. Which is a lower expected value than the above, but is still positive.

This is a well known concept in Mathematics and Probability used in various fields.

Now, do understand the argument before strawmanning. I'm not claiming, even if Christianity has no probability of being correct, we should still be Christian. Rather, if from the other arguments, Cosmology, Contingency, Fine-Tuning, the Moral Argument, Messianic Prophecies, Evidence for Christ's Resurrection, 2000 years of Miracles by Lord Jesus in scientifically documented Eucharistic Miracles, the Shroud of Turin, Mother Mary in Her Apparitions like Gaudalupe and Fatima and Medjugorje more recently witnessed by 1000s, of Christian Saints in Evangelism like St. Patrick did in Ireland etc and what's happened in more Africa more recently, if all these put together bring us to even 50% certainty that Christianity rather than Atheism could be true, it then logically follows that being a Christian is the most rational choice given the risk and reward on offer in these circumstances. For the same reason as in the above game.

This is very obvious, but jff let's plug in the figures with what I mentioned earlier to see the result:

3. EV in the case of Christianity and Atheism, where other arguments have shown each to be at least equiprobable:

And we'll continue to go with Eternal Happiness being like +1TN dollars, and leaving aside the risk of Eternal Loss, Atheism being like 1000 dollars, because of Sundays Free, or whatever else Atheists think is good about Atheism.

50%(1 TN)  - 50% (1000) = 500 BN-500 ~500 BN. So since Expected Value is positive, of course the conclusion follows. It is mathematically inescapable. If you knew what Expected Value was, you'd know this. Anyone who knows it or reads about and researches it is more than welcome to challenge me if he thinks otherwise. The conclusion is certain, dead certain.

I'm familiar with expected value. What you fail to realize is that there are more fundamental problems, the most salient being that your equation representing expected value is woefully incomplete. An actual complete equation of expected value for this would have an infinite number of terms and be incalculable. You represent the equation as simply as you do either out of incompetence or some other source of error.