This is for Christians and non-Christians. For non-Christians, let this serve as a guide to dismantling an argument that you no doubt here as often as I do. Take your pick of my disputations, because any one of them is more than sufficient to bury the feistiest of Christians. For Christians, I'm going to show you why even you should reject this steaming pile of an argument, because it's not helping you and I'm tired of hearing it. No reasonable person of any faith should accept this argument in any form.
Pascal's Wager, named for 17th Century theologian Blaise Pascal, is the proposition that one should believe in God based on the idea that if God does not exist, the believer has lost nothing from his belief, but if God does exist, the believer gains eternal salvation and the atheist has earned himself eternal damnation. As dumb as this sounds, I hear this argument more often by far than any other argument for the existence of God, even if not especially from my more intelligent, reasonable Christian friends.
There's more than one way to skin a cat, and there's much more than one thing wrong with Pascal's Wager. I'll start by examining why reasonable people are suckered into this gamble, then move on to it's obvious flaws, and finally to a refutation allowing even the most generous theistic view.
First of all, the Wager is not an argument for the existence of God. It presupposes an agnostic view that we cannot know whether God exists, and does not seek to prove the He does. Instead it is an argument for the belief in God, aimed at agnostics. It suggests that this belief will do good things for your life, and even if it a false belief, you will have lost nothing. I think this attitude is at the heart of why relatively liberal, intelligent Christians maintain their commitments to their religion. They know that they can provide no actual evidence for God in the face of scientific knowledge, so instead of going for a teleological or ontological argument, they seek to justify their belief in this way. That makes Pascal's Wager parachute apologetics at its worst. So what's wrong with that? A lot.
1. The most glaring problem is that the Wager assumes several false dichotomies. Pascal would have us believe that the only two possibilities are for the Christian God to exist or for no god to exist. This is a problem because the Wager can be equally applied to any set of religious beliefs. Suppose some other god, or some other religious belief is correct. You must believe it or face eternal damnation. Which do you choose? And of all the thousands upon thousands of possible gods, what more evidence is there for one than another? Do you simply worship the one who's hell is the most horrible? That seems to be what Pascal wants to propose. The other false dichotomy is that there is only eternal salvation or eternal damnation. Even within the Christian traditions, there is disagreement on this. Perhaps God allows multiple paths to righteousness, perhaps there is a purgatory of sorts, where sins are paid off, and then grace is attainable. There are any number of possibilities, not the least of which is that it's all made up. Pascal's argument is already self-defeating, as he proposes at the beginning that we cannot fathom the nature of God. If we cannot fathom the nature of God, how can he declare that we are safe wagering on one set of practices and not some other? Replace God with any other mythological creature and you expose the absurdity of this scenario.
2. The Wager is an appeal to fear. As I said, it is not actually an argument for the existence of God, only for justifying a belief in Him. But whether we fear the myths about hell has no bearing on whether they actually exist, and whether we believe in them has no bearing on whether they are actually true. It also presupposes that God's existence is subject to some kind of spectrum of probability. This is just wrong. The reason god exists or does not exist is not based on probability. The reason square circles do not exist is because they cannot, by definition. This is a priori and tautologically true. The reason God does not exist is the same. If he did exist, it would not be due to probability, but some kind of reason. Since there is no such reason, we can conclude, without invoking chance, that He does not exist. The Wager is irrelevant. All that matters is reason, and Pascal's Wager gives us none, and worse, it promotes a dangerous superstition.
3. Oh, it's wrong by the way. It's wrong and really, really bad for you. God doesn't exist. Hell doesn't exist. And Pascal was horribly wrong in his assessment that belief loses you nothing. He imagines that religion, even if it is false, has done the world much good, and has done individuals much good. He couldn't be more wrong about this. You only need to look around you or open up a history book to see that. This wager has destroyed us. This wager loses you everything that could possibly matter. You lose your freedom, your right to dignity, your right to free inquiry about the world. And worst of all, you have lost your right to the truth. What does this wager allow you to gain? Absolutely nothing but a dangerous, lethal superstition. Call this the atheist's wager, but it is an empirical fact that we stand to lose infinitely more by taking the Christian bet, and we lose nothing by taking the atheist's bet. Worst case scenario, we reject the wager, allow ourselves free inquiry and find out that it's all true. At least know we have learned this to be true, rather than taking the bet out of fear alone.
4. Christians, this one's for you. Even the most devout Christian should reject Pascal's Wager outright as absolute nonsense. To demonstrate this, I will give it it's best fighting chance. Let's assume that you're absolutely right. Let's assume that God exists, more specifically, the God described in the Bible, and Jesus, and all of that is true. If we do not believe in him and worship him appropriately, then we will indeed face eternal damnation. Pascal's Wager is still bullshit. Why? Because belief is not, and cannot be, a choice. People believe things or reject things for reasons, not because of emotions. Only a Christian can choose to ignore obvious evidence and choose to believe in God. If God exists, it is surely an insult to him to believe only out of fear. I would imagine that any genuine belief is preferable to going through the motions simply because of fear. And I take it that God knows whether your belief is genuine. So Pascal's Wager is useless. If that is what convinces you to worship God, without genuine belief, you're going to hell anyway. If you believe, you don't need the Wager to tell you why, and if you don't believe, the Wager is only going to piss God off. So the Wager is irrelevant, no matter who you are.
So even if you are a Christian, Pascal's Wager should not be the reason for that. If Pascal's Wager is the best thing you've got to throw at me, that tells me right off the bat that you have absolutely no empirical reason for your belief, and that your belief is motivated by fear alone. If Pascal's Wager is the best you've got to throw at me, I've won before you even spit it out. The funny thing is, with most of the Christians I deal with, Pascal is the best they've got. So please, for the sake of my sanity, stop it.
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