The perfect allegory for the Pascal wager

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You probably all know what the Pascal’s wager is; however, for clarity’s sake i’ll add a resume below. Today I feel too much of a diva to write the resume myself so i’ll just delegate it to my virtual secretary while i’ll write the allegory:

  • The Wager: Pascal suggests that individuals have two choices: to believe in God or not to believe in God. This is a wager because the outcome is uncertain, and the stakes are infinite.
  • Possible Outcomes: There are four possible outcomes based on the existence of God and one’s belief:
  • God exists, and you believe in God.
  • God exists, and you do not believe in God.
  • God does not exist, and you believe in God.
  • God does not exist, and you do not believe in God.
    Infinite Gains and Losses: Pascal argues that if God exists and you believe in Him, you gain infinite happiness (heaven). If God exists and you do not believe in Him, you face infinite loss (hell). If God does not exist, the gains or losses are finite and relatively insignificant.

Now here’s the allegory:
Let’s just say that in front of you there’s a door, sooner or later you will have to pass through that door, it’s inevitable that at one point in your life that door will open and you will have to enter inside no matter what’s on the other side.
But that scares you: you don’t know what’s behind that door, sure, there could be nothing as much there could be a huge ass-kicking machine that kicks your ass or a huge gold reward.
A guy appears in front of you and makes an offer: he will sell you a ticket that will grant you a 100% assured chance of receiving the gold reward in the case it happened to be something there instead of nothing, every possibility of there to be an ass-kicking machine is completely made void and null.
“what a good bargain” you would think, but wait! It’s not so easy, he can’t just sell you a ticket: you need to choose one ticket between thousands upon thousands of different tickets, each one of these tickets also has tens of thousands of sub-tickets that you need to choose; if you choose the wrong ticket then it’s the ass-kicking machine and same applies if you choose the wrong sub-ticket, so you have one possibility upon thousands to choose the correct ticket and one possibility upon tens of thousands to choose the correct sub-ticket wich means that even if you choose the right ticket you can still get the machine if you choose the wrong sub-ticket.
Mind you, none of these tickets or sub-tickets actually gives any kind of credible evidence that it is the correct one, each one of them; however, claims to be the only correct ticket to receive the gold reward, the one and only and all the others are either wrong or fake.
“fine”, you say: “i’ll just choose the one that makes more sense to me” and choose one random ticket and sub ticket, congratulations? Not so fast, because these tickets have a price: you’ll have to pay a good chunk of your earned money to the person selling them, you’ll have to obey him for the rest of your life and obey extremely specific and sometimes even nonsensical rules; if you don’t do any of these the ticket is invalidated when the door opens and you could be exposed to the ass-kicking machine.
Now, here comes the thought: why should you give this person your money, your obedience, your dedication and basically a good part of your life in exchange of a reward that you don’t even know if it exists? What tells you there’s actually something beyond that door? The salesman seems to be pretty convinced of its existence, but is it really worth it? Besides, there is absolutely no guarantee that you have chosen the right ticket and sub-ticket upon hundreds of thousands and there’s as many chance that there’s something beyond that door as much as there’s nothing and this entire ticket selling scheme is all a farce.
Wouldn’t it be better to just enjoy life without worrying about something we have no control on, instead of living out of fear of something that probably doesn’t even exist in the first place?

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To me the big hole in the Wager is that any god worth the label would instantly know that you are pretending to believe “just in case” so it wouldn’t even work if you happened to have the correct understanding of the correct god. True belief isn’t something you offer up “just in case”. It is something that arises from being convinced by actual evidence.

It is also a false proposition, as it states that if you’re wrong in hedging your bets you’re not out anything. In fact, you are out your tithe, your Sunday mornings, and your intellectual and often physical freedom which you’ve given up to those who claim to be god’s representatives. And other things like peace of mind, freedom of association, and so on.

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I really like the euphemism “ass kicking machine”. That cracked me up LOL I appreciate the analogy, I think you hit the nail right on the head.

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A lot of Christians have told me to try out Pascale’s Wager in the past in a half ass attempt to convert me. Yeah… how about no? :joy:

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I hit the breaks there everytime, as it demonstrates one of the major flaws of the argument. It is a begging the question fallacy, that assumes without any objective evidence that a deity, and therefore any risk exists at all.

In your list you also missed out the “I don’t know if a deity exists” option.

Same error different wording, your allegory implies there is something “behind the door” as you put it. Why would i belive that?

Demonstrate something approaching objective evidence that any deity exists, or is even possible, then we can assess what risk might attach itself to belief or disbelief.

How are you measuring probability here?

Another of the flaws in the wager.

The third and final one for me, is the assumption that all risk is assigned to atheism, when humans have imagined countless deities to be real. NB the “risk” of getting that “wrong” is not limited to subjective imagined risk, but has been very real throughout human history, and countless people have been killed for making the wrong choice.

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There are more than four.

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My take on Pascal’s Wager is as follows:

  1. God may or may not exist, but:
    a) How do we know this God is the Abrahamic God of Christianity? Maybe this God is Odin, Shiva, or Osiris.

  2. If we do what we define as good to the best of our ability whether God exists or not, then it’s hard to believe that this would displease God (if He exists), and if God doesn’t exist, then we just spend our lives as good people. This is why I believe that God would give us a pass in the afterlife for our disbelief if God is reasonable.

  3. If God is unreasonable, then we’re all screwed anyway whether we believe or don’t believe, and all of the religious belief in the world doesn’t make a difference one way or another.

So why be concerned about the afterlife?

This is what I call the “Reverse Pascal’s Wager.”

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I like how anyone could think that believing in God would somehow vindicate the believer of his inherent evil and vindicate a predestination in Hell. God doesn’t care about us. He wants us to burn in Hell. He doesn’t care that we’re predestined for Hell. Believing in Him only makes it more inevitable.

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“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities”

Voltaire…

I’d have to believe a deity existed, or were even possible, before I could start to try and understand it’s nature. Until then such claims might as well be explaining the diet and breeding habits of unicorns.

FYI, the same applies to imaginary posthumous torture chambers.

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