Atheist Meme of the Day: Pascal's Wager Continues to Suck

Today's Atheist Meme of the Day, from my Facebook page. Pass this on; or don't; or edit it as you see fit; or make up your own. Enjoy!

"Believing in God is a safer bet" is a terrible reason to believe in God. "Believing" for this reason would not be sincere belief, and even if God existed, it seems unlikely that he/ she/ it/ they would be fooled by it. Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.

Comments

[Robert Madewell]

Here's my thoughts on Pascal's Wager. Pretty much the same as your's. Just passing in on.

[tonyf]

In Pascal's wager it is generally assumed that the belief has to be genuine. Of course that makes great practical problems to try to use the wager, but things like being in (in Pascal's case) christian environments and then just assume that that would increase the probability that you would eventually become a genuine christian believer, I think is what is often proposed. The fundamental problem with the wager is another: How could we know, or more importantly; even reasonably assume, that a genuine belief in any given particular belief would make a possible god or similar supernatural force more symphatetic toward us? As of today we have no signs whatever of the existence of any such supernatural being of force, and with this comes also that, should surprisingly enough it exist anyway, we do not know anything about its preferences. It could be that it treated belivers in some particular faith (christianity or whatever) better than other people, but it could just as well be that it treated people of that particular faith worse. Thus from our best knowledge of today there is no difference in the statistically expected benevolence from a hypothetically existing supernatural being or force towards believers or nonbelievers in any particular faith.