How do you cope with death?
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- It's actually a really bad argument, since if there isn't a god, then you lived your life rejecting skepticism and acting upon the false belief, likely resulting in foolish or even evil actions.
- It assumes that God is easily fooled.
- It falsely suggests that a god that would condemn those who don't believe in it to hell is deserving of worship.
- There are a lot of contradictory religions with contradictory gods, and Pascal's Wager seems to apply to them all equally. Which do you choose?
- When there are two options, that doesn't mean you have a 50/50 chance. I might win the lottery or not, but that doesn't mean there's a 50% chance I will.
- Most importantly, the consequences of belief are not evidence for or against that claim.
Yes, a 50/50 chance assuming that only one specific god could ever exist and assuming that their existence is exactly as likely as their non-existence, which is hardly the case.
First of all, people have worshiped tens of thousands of gods over the ages and most of them will send you to hell or an equivalent fate for worshiping any of the others. If we cut that number down to only ten gods for simplicity's sake, that means that when you choose to worship only one god, all of them being equally likely, there's a 90% chance that your choice will land you in hell. Better to suspend judgement, so at least you can tell whichever god is correct when you meet them that you did the best you could given your lack of information.
Second, having two possible outcomes doesn't make them equally likely. For example, every time I go out with my car, there are two possibilities: Either I will run over exactly three people and die in a horrible crash, or I won't. That doesn't make the odds of my killing three people and then myself with the car 50/50 every time I go out to buy milk. I may be a bad driver, but I'm not that bad. Gods like Pascal's are very contradictory entities. They demand that you worship them, yet refuse to give you any proof of their existence. Pascal's God is allegedly an infinitely wise being, but making such unreasonable demands seems very unwise to me. For this reason alone, though there are many others, the likelihood of such a god existing, even in the absence of other possible gods, is way lower than 50%.
Pascal's Wager, as it came to be known, was a childish attempt at getting on the Cathoilic Church's (and their specific god's) good side in his old age. It basically came from a fear of death and hell, not of any actual conviction. In all likelihood, Pascal himself was painfully aware that it was complete and utter bullshit. The real wager was whether or not it would help his chances of getting into heaven if his argument managed to convince enough people to follow his god - assuming, as he did, that he had picked the right one.
I like looking at it this way.
Based on what we know and understand, energy cannot be created nor destroyed, only transferred. Therefore, the same kind of intelligent energy that sparks our self-awareness and fuels our consciousness both existed before we were physically alive, and will still exist and simply disperse elsewhere once we pass away.
Like a caterpillar blooming into a butterfly, death is not an end but simply a change of state into a new, different existence.
Based on what we know and understand, energy cannot be created nor destroyed, only transferred. Therefore, the same kind of intelligent energy that sparks our self-awareness and fuels our consciousness both existed before we were physically alive, and will still exist and simply disperse elsewhere once we pass away.
Like a caterpillar blooming into a butterfly, death is not an end but simply a change of state into a new, different existence.
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