(August 1, 2012 at 6:47 pm)Simon Moon Wrote: Pascal's Wager fails on every level.
Not every god believed to exist by humanity punishes disbelievers. The Hindu gods for example.
Not to mention, that even if a god does exist, it may not be any of the gods described in any of the various religious texts. Just because there is a text written about a particular deity, or there is a large population of people that believe it exists, doesn't offer a shred of evidence that it does exist.
What if the god that does exist, rewards those of us that use the mind 'he' gave us to determine that there is insufficient evidence and reasoned argument to justify belief 'he' exists? And 'he' punishes those gullible enough to believe in one of the various Bronze Age tribal deities (Yahweh, Ahura Mazda, Shiva, Allah, etc)?
Why would a deity value most those that worship him? What a silly attribute for a deity harbor.
Pascal formulated the wager within a Christian framework.
1."God is, or He is not"
2.A Game is being played... where heads or tails will turn up.
3.According to reason, you can defend either of the propositions.
4.You must wager. (It's not optional.)
5.Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.
6.Wager, then, without hesitation that He is. (...) There is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite. And so our proposition is of infinite force, when there is the finite to stake in a game where there are equal risks of gain and of loss, and the infinite to gain.
Atheism is a non-prophet organisation. - A dusty old book that I found that must be completely true because someone wrote it down.
