No, of course not! But then, I apparently know more about religion than the religious types do.
They're stuck in their theology, so they make the same mistaken assumptions as creationists do. They assume it's a question of
their god vs no gods at all. Not true. There are many different gods to choose from, so if it's a question of picking the right god, then picking theirs has a very low probability of being the right choice.
Plus, they assume that choosing "God" means choosing their own particular theology. Pascal was a
Catholic so he was talking about choosing to be Catholic; those fools you heard on the radio are damned for being heretic Protestants! They chose wrong and lost their wager and they don't even know it! Plus they're trying to damn everybody they proselytize to with this worthless wager.
Nor does it cost you nothing to believe. What if your religion forbids you to pursue your dream profession? Or marry your true love? And what about some religions' requirement for you to hide fearfully from the truth? Or forebad you to provide medical treatment for a treatable disease?
About 15 years ago, I was only familiar with Pascal's Wager academically. A creationist hit me with it presented as a car insurance analogy and my response is reported on my "after-life insurance" page at
No webpage found at provided URL: http://members.aol.com/dwise1/cre_ev/wager.html:
quote:
So I told my after-life insurance salesman that his after-life insurance was a rotten deal (unfortunately, I didn't think of that name for it until the next day, but that poor guy was already hurting too much). We had to pay an exorbinant price for a policy that would only pay in the most restricted and oddest of circumstances. By the car insurance analogy, it would only pay if you were hit by a green Edsel -- on the northbound side of the Santa Ana Freeway -- while it was exceeding the speed limit -- backing up -- at night -- with its lights off -- being driven by a one-armed Lithuanian midget.
And here's a take on it as a crooked casino that promises sure winnings but instead takes everything from its victims:
"Pascal's Casinos Under Fire" at
No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.catalaw.com/detox/reverse/18.shtml
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