I have seen a few variations or counter-wagers to Pascal’s Wager lately. As you may have noticed, I have argued that Pascal’s Wager is not as bad as people make it out to be because either they don’t really understand it (when criticizing its morality) or they simply use faulty logic (when criticizing its soundness).
First, there is this wager found at this rather depressing site:
Whether or not you believe in God, you should live your life with love, kindness, compassion, mercy and tolerance while trying to make the world a better place. If there is no God, you have lost nothing and will have made a positive impact on those around you. If there is a benevolent God reviewing your life, you will be judged on your actions and not just on your ability to blindly believe in creeds- when there is a significant lack of evidence on how to define God or if he/she even exists.
It has no teeth. It not only fails to understand Pascal’s Wager (“blindly believe in creeds”), but also assumes the opposite (a pluralistic God who cares not about truth values) of the Christian God (or the God of most religions I suspect) which one would think is a major contender (has an awful lot of historical legitimacy). This warm and fuzzy bet is a great example of how moderns take the god-concept and leave it as a black box for which any attributes can be given it.
And then there is this so-called anti-Pascal wager from Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion:
“Suppose we grant that there is indeed some small chance that God exists. Nevertheless, it could be said that you will lead a better, fuller life if you bet on his not existing, than if you bet on his existing and therefore squander your precious time on worshipping him, sacrificing to him, fighting and dying for him, etc. I can decide to go to church and I can decide to recite the Nicene Creed, and I can decide to swear on a stack of bibles that I believe every word inside them. But none of that can make me actually believe it if I don’t. Pascal’s Wager could only ever be an argument for feigning belief in God.”
Dawkins has described what may be one of the more damning criticisms of Pascal’s Wager. It is an interesting question that I do not know the answer to: Can you force yourself to believe something?
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Pascal tells us this:
if you are unable to believe, it is because of your passions, since reason impels you to believe and yet you cannot do so. Concentrate then not on convincing yourself by mulitplying proofs of God’s existence but by diminishing your passions.
The Thinking Reed 