Pascal's Wager

"If you believe in God and turn out to be incorrect, you have lost nothing--but if you don't believe in God and turn out to be incorrect, you will go to hell. Therefore it is foolish to be an atheist."

This argument is known as Pascal’s Wager (as the title indicates…) however it has several flaws which I will explain.

For a start, Pascal’s Wager does not indicate which religion one should follow. As many religions are mutually exclusive religions and religions which contradict each other. This argument is generally described as the “avoiding the wrong hell” problem. If a person is a follow of one religion, he may end up in the version of hell from another religion.

If we are to assume that there’s a God, that must imply that there’s only one unique God and therefore only one religion is correct. We would also have difficulty believing in all religion, as previously stated some contradict each other and others are mutually exclusive, and there’s the issue of which commandments to follow.

Secondly, the statement “if you believe in God and turn out to be incorrect, you have lost nothing” is not true. What if you believe in the wrong God? Wouldn’t the correct God punish you for being foolish.

A third flaw in the argument is that is is based on the assumption that the existence of God, and non-existence, are equally likely – or they are at least of comparable likelihood. If the existence of God is closer to zero, the argument becomes much less persuasive. So the argument is only for believers who are attempting to fool less non-believers without explaining the full concept, if they understand it themselves that is.

We assume the argument consists of the following four statements:

1.One does not know whether God exists.

2. Not believing in God is bad for one’s eternal soul if God does exist.

3. Believing in God is of no consequence if God does not exist.

4. Therefore it is in one’s interest to believe in God.

There are now two further approaches to this argument. The first is viewing Statement 1 as an assumption, and Statement 2 as a consequence of it. The problem is that Statement 2 doesn’t logically follow Statement 1.

The alternative approach is to claim that Statement 1 and Statement 2 are actually both assumptions. The problem with this is that only Christians will agree that Statement 2 is an assumption, as it is a Christian position.

Also, we don’t know the actual consequences of not believing in God, if there is one. So Statement 2 we can certainly assume is an assumption, because there is no evidence, nor anything pointing toward, the existence of a soul. Except religious peoples explanation for avoiding the obvious case that the human body is still present after death and does decay.

And another argument is that believing in God for the simple reason that you are scared that there is a God, and not believing, will result in bad consequences. Christians believe that God requires an element of trust rather than belief due to the belief that it is a better choice.

Finally, religious people like to say that God is a far and just God, surely he will judge people on their actions rather than what they believe in? A God who sends people to hell, who instead of praying for people, they provide support and aid, and therefore are considered a good person, are still sent to ‘Hell’ due to not believing in God is not a religion which would appeal to irreligious people.