How would you counter Pascal's Wager?
Pascal's Wager is quite obviously foolish.
He suggests that there either is or is not a God, and so therefore the consequences of not believing in God if there is one are too horrible to ignore if God is real, so the safe bet is to believe in God.
I could counter that any number of different ways.
There is a Great Fire-Breathing Leprechaun in the sky, who is insanely jealous and hates all other gods. Every day I worship the wrong god, the Great Fire-Breathing Leprechaun adds a billion years to my punishment, which is being forced to watch the Teletubbies. Sounds ridiculous? So is the argument that I must
pretend to believe (yes, pretend, because I don't seriously believe) in God so that I won't be sent to his personal Nazi death camp for all eternity.
It's an
argument from absurd consequences, which is EXACTLY what Pascal's wager is. Frankly, Pascal's Wager makes sense only if you don't think about it for more than a second or two. One bad argument is defeated by another, but how about a more plausible argument?
To believe that there is a being which will burn you forever simply if you don't believe in this being, and if you don't believe in this being, you don't believe he/she/it will burn you forever, means there is a false choice.
- A believer will already believe in this being, therefore they have nothing to lose, but may be compelled to continue to believe out of fear of consequences.
- A non-believer doesn't buy the threat anyway, and cannot be forced to believe in something.
I cannot choose to believe in something I don't. I either do or I do not. So threatening me with Hell is rather stupid, because you'd have to override logic and free will in order to make the threat reach me. If that's the case, God would have to undo some of the decisions he's made when 'creating' me.
The only reason why there is even mention of hell is to keep the faithful from doubting, and the purpose for that is so that the church can continue to make money by tithing the faithful. It's simply a money-generating device.
If God is all-powerful, and God is absolutely good, and I am his creation, why did he make me atheist? Why did he give me the free will to examine the evidence or lack thereof and allow me to make up my own mind?
I'm not born with a belief in God. And, belief in God does not naturally follow, or else every tribe on Earth would believe in God. In fact, there are many tribes which don't believe in this particular god or any gods, really. Why would God damn them all to hell simply because he didn't allow them to know about him?
Seems rather arbitrary and spiteful for a supremely wise being.
All the arguments one makes to scare people into believing in God only work when people ignore critical thinking and common sense. Further, I don't believe a perfect being would incinerate his creations for all eternity. That sounds exactly like something ancient men would say in order to get more people to believe what they believed. And it worked on ancient men, who couldn't think properly. Now, the reason why people believe is because they're taught to at a young age, most of the time, when they accept whatever an authority figure says as the truth. And anyone who questions that truth is questioning their personal authority figure, and so they are emotionally defensive and find it insulting. Not only does the opinion become so ingrained, and not only does the fear of challenging that opinion become so overpowering, but I can't even respectfully disagree and say why without it being a personal attack on your mother, father, kindly old grandmother, or pastor.
Of course one might feel defensive. People have difficulty openly discussing religion, even among the religious, it's like politics. Don't discuss religion or politics in the work place. Don't criticize someone's religion or political views if you want to be their friend. They often take it personally. It's not like science, you can talk about science because science is an evolving mechanism which changes as new data comes in. People are familiar with what they used to be taught as being possibly wrong, and accepting new ideas. There's a tradition of being un-traditional. And ideas are considered fair game in science.
Religion, on the other hand, is not open for debate, because it involves belief; beliefs are often so deeply rooted and personal that they cannot withstand criticism without provoking an emotional response. Further, many of these beliefs are attached to fear; don't you dare think about not believing in God, or you'll burn in hell. So, avoid thinking about it.
There's a fear of actually examining one's own beliefs and criticizing them, because of a fear of consequences. That doesn't sound like free will to me, or even honest belief. It sounds more like people have been frightened into thinking a certain way and are frightened of thinking any other way. That doesn't sound like freedom. It doesn't sound like an honest, loving belief in a higher being. It sounds more like how a person who is beaten every day would 'respect' the person who beats them.
It's damaging, in my opinion, to not only be afraid to be tortured by someone, someone who cannot be stopped, cannot be reasoned with, and will get you when you're dead and helpless, but not only this, this person is imaginary, and I can prove it.
The god you imagine is different from the god that others imagine. Some think he sits on a golden throne with a flowing beard with angels singing, others think he takes a different form. Some think hell is a metaphor for being distant from God, others think it is a literal place of burning, and even then, the ideas of heaven and hell and angels are not the same from person to person. We each imagine these things differently, and we have to imagine them, because we've never personally seen any of it. And that's within a religion, and there are thousands of those.
This fear paralyzes people, and removes some ability to rationally question God, and yes, questioning God is considered evil by certain folks. I don't know about you all, but whenever I am told not to question an authority figure, the reason is, that authority figure is afraid of what might happen if I question them.
God should not be afraid of my questions.
Organized religion, and members thereof, may have reason to be fearful of my questions. They have something to lose if I question them; Money and power.
God, on the other hand, should be a being without fear. Jealously, in fact, does not become a being as powerful as God, with billions of followers and billions more that are dead. It does not make sense to me that God would allow free will, and suggest that I can choose to believe or not believe in him, and then turn around and say No, I was not allowed to choose not to believe in him, and the consequences are to be punished forever and ever.
That sounds like man-made fearmongering to me. Only man could come up with such implausible threats, and only man would believe them.
Getting back to Pascal's Wager, it's a bad enough argument as it is, but when the only source of 'information' about God is people in ancient times wandering the deserts with the sun baking their brains, many of whom hold contradictory accounts, and many of whom we do not believe, how do you choose which 'revelation' to believe in?
What is simply the most popular? Or how about the one that is most popular in your location?
Seems quite arbitrary to me. If you were born in the middle east, you'd be a Muslim, not a Christian, most likely. The reason is societal pressure, parental authority, and cultural norms.
Pascal's Wager breaks down at the slightest examination. It's wrong, and it was even recognized as such by his peers at the time. It's just horrendous logic. It's an attempt by an otherwise brilliant man to reason people into faith, but the reasoning he used was far from brilliant.
