- The philosopher Pascal believed that humanity should live as if (a) God exists. That way, if God(s) don't/doesn't exist, you have only a finite loss (pleasures, luxury, etc.). While if God(s) do/does exist, then you have infinite gain (everlasting life/Heaven) and avoided infinite loss (everlasting torture/Hell). I feel this is a logical conclusion, as we all have a 50/50 chance of being right or wrong.
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.