I have received in response to my essay emails telling me how wrong I am. But they don’t tell me where I am wrong in my facts or my conclusions, just that I’m wrong. Really?
I especially like this one, “If I’m wrong about Christ then I lose nothing. But if you are wrong then you lose everything.” Meaning I suppose I go to hell. Unfortunately for this person, they are dead wrong, sorry for the bad pun. This argument is a variation on Pascal’s wager. Pascal stated his wager this way:
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. (...)
I suspect this is how most people see the wager. All win on one side with no loss. This isn't logically true. There are actually several practical and logical problems with Pascal’s wager.
Item One above; the biggest problem with his wager is that you cannot bet on ‘Theism’ that is belief in God. You have to chose and bet on one of the thousands (millions?) of possible Gods people have believed in. In fact, you can logically posit that we humans don't even know the name of the 'true' God. There are an infinite possible number of Gods just as there are an infinite number of possible universes. So you do run the risk of betting on the wrong God if you chose one specific God like Jesus. If you bet on Jesus as the one true God out of the millions of possible Gods, it gets worse. There are 30,000 different Christian churches of Jesus in the United States alone, all asserting that the other 29,999 are dead wrong. There are three different Semitic gods and each is jealous as all hell. Choose the wrong one, Yahweh, Jesus, Allah, or the wrong Jesus church and you go to hell anyway. You made Pascal's bet that God did exist but chose the wrong one and got busted anyway. Your odds of winning the bet aren’t statistically much different than betting on no God. If there are a possible 1,000,000 Gods (a lowball estimate) people could worship, then your odds of picking the right one is .0000001. Statistically, it's the same as not betting at all. Pascal's Bet assumes the God he believed in is the only possible God, the only possible bet. This just isn't true nor is it logically defensible.
Two above; this bet isn’t a fifty-fifty chance, it isn’t a coin flip. The problem of course, is we have no way of objectively rating the likelihood of either premise being true. So we don’t know which one is the better bet, no way of knowing the odds. And even if Pascal was right about the logic being fifty-fifty, as shown above the odds are not in your favor anyway. As an example, if Calvin was right about the Christian God you are already damned to Hell or predestined for Heaven. Your bet or your belief has nothing to do with which way you go. Calvin has you sinners already sentenced to Hell. Why bet if the game is rigged to come up snake eyes everytime?
Five above; This is the biggest lie of the whole bet. In order to 'bet' on God as a Christian you have to join one of those 30,000 Churches, but only one. These churches are as jealous as the Gods they worship. You join a second and you get kicked out of the first. This requires you to conform to whatever nonsense that narrow sect says is the truth. You must give up your self-determinism, your ability to challenge nonsense to a rigid and powerful hierarchical institution, one that wants, no, requires, you to fork over your money in exchange for the bet. You must have 'faith.' And what is faith? It is an assertion of truth contrary to the evidence. The facts say baloney, faith says hand over the money sucker. You actually lose a lot by betting on any one of the 30,000 Christian Gods or any God which has a church to skin the suckers.
Six above, the final conclusion is logically flawed. Would God want to reward a non-believer who bet on a coin flip about His existence simply to avoid punishment? So if you win your bet you still lose, especially if you bet on a jealous homicidal maniac like John Calvin’s Christian God.
Taking Pascal’s wager doesn’t make you more likely to win than not taking the bet. In that case, I’d rather stand on principle and not be a rat begging for scraps of cheese from the table. As Jefferson said, “Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.”
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