this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2025
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Pascal’s Wager states that reason cannot determine which, if any, god(s) exist (although it’s commonly simplified to just the Christian God), so it is best to choose to believe in one particular arbitrary god on the off chance that that one particular god is real (and behaves like the Christian God). If by some fluke chance your guess is correct, you get eternal paradise in the Good Afterlife; if your guess is wrong, which it probably is if you were to forego any logical deduction in selecting from a vast pool of hypothetical gods and an infinite pool of gods that nobody has yet to even ideate of, then you would eternally suffer in the Bad Afterlife if the Other God exists, and you would experience no harm in the absence of an afterlife if no God exists. Pascal argued that the risks of reward vs. punishment meant that believing in God was the logical choice to for one to benefit oneself, rather than a belief in God being a logical choice of reality.
My rebuttal to this is that hypothetically only those who believe in an afterlife will necessarily go to the Bad Afterlife and suffer forever, whereas disbelievers in an afterlife will either go to the Good Afterlife or to no afterlife at all. This scenario may sound arbitrary and made up, but I don’t make the rules of the universe— that’s on a hypothetical and mysterious God to decide, if such one exists. The existence of a God/universe with rational or irrational motives to decide that those who believe in an afterlife must go to the Bad Afterlife forever… is as unknowable as the existence of Pascal’s God. Personally, I don’t believe in an afterlife since I wouldn’t want to take my chances with a belief in an afterlife dooming me to the Bad Afterlife, but my disbelief doesn’t make the hypothetical any less true. You may consider the possibility of such afterlife criteria to be an illogical assessment of reality, but Pascal also acknowledged that his wager is contingent upon foregoing a logical assessment of reality in favor of what would logically benefit oneself.
Pascal's Wager, as well as other "logical proofs" for God like the Kalam Cosmological Argument, never get Christians or other religious people anywhere they want to go. Even if we accept their conclusions as given, it tells us nothing about the nature of that god. They want their god to be the one, and that doesn't follow from any of these. Which is what the comic in OP is getting at.
As far as the conclusions go, worshiping the Flying Spaghetti Monster is as good as any.
You’d find out you were in the bad place in like 5 minutes tops
This has multiple inconsistencies. First of all speaking of "Christian God" is ignoring the Abrahamic Faith existing well before Christianity and the prophethood and message of Mohammed peace and blessing be upon him, clarifying a lot of the positions that contemporary Christianity got wrong from the Islamic perspective. Now whether you believe in it is a different question, but evidently Christianity is only a part of the Abrahamic Faith.
Second of all, if there is only one God, which i am convinced of, there cannot be praying to "the wrong one". In that sense also the comic is falling short of basic logic. It does not matter in which language you say "God" if you believe in his oneness.
Third of all, if you accept God as the creator of everything, his promise of the afterlife and his expectation of worship, then you have to accept the existence of Gods messengers and prophets. Now there is the risk of following a false prophet, but by learning about the messengers and prophets you have the ability to discern false prophets and false teachings.
Finally your argument is based on assuming God to not have given you the means to know, thereby you would not be judged if you choose to stay ignorant, however the opposite is true by the scriptures. Seeking knowledge of God and his message and being sincere in your efforts will be rewarded and your mistakes will be forgiven if you sincerely repent for them. You know about God and evidently have some concept of his promises and warnings. Thereby you cannot claim a lack of knowledge as you have the duty to learn and build a correct understanding.
If you say you don't believe because that is what is in your heart that is one thing, but claiming to not believe based on that being your "best bet" will not work.
Wheeeee mental gymnastics.
Why?
Which one? And why would I believe some random thing about that god
If there is only one God, the question of "which one" is obsolete. The question becomes, what your understanding of God is.
For an overview of arguments see: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/monotheism
Monotheism is the most consistent with the attributes of the divine.
Do you believe in Atoms and the latest theory of how they are composed? Unless you have conducted all the experiments leading to that theory yourself, which i doubt, because you don't have particle accelerators readily available, you will have a basis of "scriptures" and "scholars" whose judgement you trust and follow.
Circular logic. That requires that you believe in some specific definition of “the divine”. And of course that divinity exists in the first place.
Discoveries in physics have directly led to applications that you can see with your own eyes. Hiroshima didn't happen because someone just happened to enrich enough uranium to create supercriticality.
That's nonsense. The difference is that you can conduct all those experiments on your own, and every further experiment is based upon earlier discoveries creating a chain of rationality. Also, if something is proven to be wrong or phenomenally unlikely we adapt our worldview to those facts, not the other way around. What's trusted is the scientific method, not individuals and what they wrote. Some scientists simply become more trustworthy as their track record for applying the scientific method is immaculate, both by making discoveries as well as happily accepting when their assumptions were wrong. A well educated and critical mind is absolutely capable to read most studies and get a general understanding of its quality (of course those about particle physics require more knowledge than those about homeopathy). Meanwhile with religious texts it's inherently impossible to come to any sensible conclusion that isn't derived from yourself and your own opinions and emotions.
tl;dr Science and Religion are inherently incomparable as one derives truth from systemic processes and measurable facts, while the other derives "truth" from everyone's worldview and emotional state of individuals. There's no inherent reason to believe the latter (some random thing about some god).
No you as an individual cannot. Starting from the mere exhaustiveness of all things to analyze, to the necessary equipment or police breaking down your door when it comes to nuclear physics.
And Jesus peace be upon him confirmed the prophets and scriptures before him and Mohamed blessings and peace be upon him confirmed Jesus and his mother Mary. So did earlier prophets confirm the prophets before them.
Can you point me to a specific part of Quran that is "proven wrong" as an example?
The scientific method that requires you to falsify the counter hypothesis.
Oh boy, you have a very naive idea of the reality of how academia works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle
In sociology of scientific knowledge, Planck's principle is the view that scientific change does not occur because individual scientists change their mind, but rather that successive generations of scientists have different views.
By this logic neither theology nor philosophy, music, arts, political science most other social studies and economics are sciences. Also theology precisely does not rely on scripture alone but contextualizes it with history and other sciences.
Again this evaluation denies anything but math, chemistry and physics to be sciences. Such a stance is deeply anti-intellectual as it reduces "scientific pursuit" to a fraction of human science.
This is all mega fallacious as it presumes what the rules a god may impose are. That is unknowable. You cannot make any claims either way. Either you or pascal.
If you choose to presume some of "the rules", like @Squorlple@lemmy.world does, you will have to look at them in their context.
You know, like how you cannot simplify a physical setup by looking at electricity without considering electromagnetism.
What rules did I presume that Pascal did not? My rebuttal to Pascal was crafted to highlight the errors in his argument by abiding by the same errors in such a way that reverses the conclusion
If we wish to be very pedantic on your first point. Judaism as seen at the time of Jesus Christ died out with the destruction of the second temple in 70 A.D. With only very few scattered communities remaining today. Rabinic Judaism as seen now and what many would consider Judaism is based on a series of works culminated in the Talmud written around 500 A.D. with old testament religious laws. Furthermore, since Mohammed lived between 570 and 632, Orthodox Christianity and Catholicism are the oldest Abrahamic religion. Also, Christianity has many more followers than Islam and Judaism, making the term Christian God not wrong.
If you want to be this pedantic, the basis for Christianity as we know it today lies in the First Council of Nicaea from 325 AD. Furthermore the Catholicism and Orthodox that we know today, relying heavily on iconography only came into existence with the Second Council of Nicaea in 787.
Finally Christian make up the majority of Abrahamic Faith at around 55% , however would you consider the Political system of say the UK to be a "Labour party system" because they make up the majority? Would the US political system be the "Republican party system"? Or would you say that the multiplicity in them has to be acknowledged?