[Pseudoscience-is-malarkey (OP)]

The argument is that believing in God, no matter the evidence, it is a good bet because if you're wrong nothing happens to you. If you're right, it argues, you've saved yourself from eternal damnation or whatever. I have to believe that if the "Great Architect" (as George Washington called him), is indeed real, wouldn't "He" know what your thoughts are? You can't force yourself to believe in something no matter how hard you try. If your brain is telling you that the evidence does not support something, deep down, you're going to believe otherwise, no matter how much you try to pretend. Perhaps Pasqual's Wager should be redefined as living your life observing Biblical practices, regardless of your belief in it. Or something.

[Bored chemist]

That's one of the big problems.
The other big problem is that nobody actually knows what God wants you to do.
Simplistically, do you worship Him (or Her)  on Saturday or Sunday?
In Latin, or in English?

(Given the way in which God rewards greed, it seems that we should all be utter bastards.)
With thousands of different faiths and Gods to choose from, it's almost certain that you wood choose "the wrong one"
Pascal never considered this because he simply assumed that his view of what God wants was "obviously" correct. That was probably understandable in his day.

Churches today do the same thing. It's less justifiable, but they are more evil.

[Halc]

You can't force yourself to believe in something no matter how hard you try.

I agree with this logic, and I wonder how Pascal would reply. As BC pointed out, there wasn't much of a choice presented to him at the time.

Try forcing yourself to stop believing in something that you know is not true. Sounds contradictory, but the the rational part of me that knows certain things are not true is not the part that is in charge of beliefs, so the belief endures.


If there is this so call 'Great Architect'  that has some requirement of us upon which some future reward/punishment is based, then it would seem logical for the architect to make this requirement known, not to a couple people, but to everybody. If that was going on, all the religions would independently come to the same conclusion and have a unified 'scripture'. They don't, so they're all obviously just making stuff up.

I have serious doubts that the criteria is belief or not. If my country has a requirement of me, it is typically to obey its laws, with punishment for those that do not, coupled with the existence of 1000 contradictory law books and the country giving no indication which book has the actual laws that apply.. Never heard of a reasonable system that requires only belief in the existence of the authority, but not obedience to it.

[alancalverd]

Science: acceptance of robust explanatory hypotheses that have not been disproved by experiment

Belief: acceptance of hypotheses in the absence of evidence

Faith: acceptance of hypotheses in spite of evidence to the contrary

Does Pascal's god really approve of those who don't seek evidence, or are unconvinced by evidence to the contrary? Seems  unlikely, given that the species was created to "Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground." (Genesis 1:28).

Flight PK8303 killed around 100 people last summer. One of the survivors said "God saved us."