The Problem with Pascal's Wager

[Magilla]

I understand. If you were forced to believe it is true, then you have to believe that you believe it is true because it is true. If you didn't believe that you believe it is true because it is true, then you don't believe it is true and haven't been forced to believe it's true.

Well... I could believe something was true without it being true, of course.

The point is that whether it's logical or illogical reasoning that compels me to believe... reasoning compels me to believe.

Not in God of course. In that argument against free will I was talking about. Or anything else I believe to be true or false.

And... when I was younger I used to think that if God was real then as an atheist I'd be going to hell. But I don't believe that anymore. And despite the fact I would have happily believed in God just to avoid hell... I didn't because I couldn't force myself to believe. But thankfully there was also the anti-pascal's wager: I'd be wasting my life if I believed in God because there's a 99.999999999% chance that God doesn't exist and that there is no afterlife so to spend the one life I have wasting all my time praying to something that doesn't exist would be wasting my whole life away.

Of course, that anti-wager is just as useless... because even if I chose to pray that wouldn't make me actually believe.

Pascal's Wager is not about force. His theory is that it's a good bet to back belief, because if "God's" true you win, and if "God's" false, you don't lose.

The confounding problem is twofold.

1. You can't just say: "OK, I'll believe". You either believe or you don't. Pretending or claiming to believe is not the same as real belief.

2. The wager is set up as a dichotomy: It's either  "God" or no "God". But it presumes the god of Christianity, (I think). What if some other god is the true god? What if there is a god, but the truth is that the god will punish people who simply plump for claiming belief, without good reason. In the latter case, the faithful may be the ones who get punished. There can be a myriad of possible wagers to take on, and many of them may be incompatible with some or all of the others.

Your best bet, IMHO is to go with evidence*, reasoning and logic, (* = good, check-able evidence, valid reasoning and logic which takes you where the evidence leads). Your conclusion may have to be: "I don't know", but that's better than saying: "I do know", if you don't. Pascal's Wager is a philosophical proposition, and as such, all possibilities should be considered and weighed up. As a probabilistic question, the ratio of probability of "God" or no "God" being a good bet, is not 50:50, but is surely quite unknowable.