Pascal's Wager is Bullshit

First, an apology for the fonts of the last post. Copying and pasting into Blogspot isn't really all that smooth, and I'm too lazy to actually fix it.

Now: Pascal's Wager:

Quick summary of Pascal's Wager:

Either the Christian God is true or He is not true. Also, total payoff of any action = payoff in this life + payoff in the next. Payoff in this life is finite - let payoff of belief be a, and payoff of non-belief by b in this life. Now suppose He is true with probability x and not true with probability 1-x. This means that belief will have an expected payoff of x*(infinity) + b, while non-belief will have a payoff of a - (x)(infinity). Clearly, no matter x, the expected payoff is infinitely high for belief and infinitely low for non-belief - thus belief is the logical choice.

There are several problems with this argument. The first (and already fatal) error is that x could easily be 0 (very common in probability functions with infinite possible outcomes), in which case payoff for non-belief is a and payoff for belief is b, and it's easy to see that it's possible that a > b. The second is that the Christian God would probably not take kindly to belief based on "cowardly bet-hedging" (a Richard Dawkins quote) and probably still send you to hell if this was your basis of belief. The third, and, I believe, most fundamental is that it is assumed that belief is neutral if God doesn't exist - but I counter that this is false since there is the possibility of the anti-Christian God who does everything the Bible says except He sends only Christians to Hell and only non-Christians to Heaven. In this case, non-belief will pay off infinitely and belief will cost you infinitely. In reality, religion is based on non-logic, so there's no solid 'evidence' for any religion, so the anti-religions must be weighted the same as the religions of the world. This means that it's a toss-up whether any belief will cost you or pay off - so there is no indication whatsoever about next-life payoff, so it cannot be accounted for in our strategy considerations.

Also, I have an offer for any and all who are convinced by Pascal's Wager. You send me $10,000 today and when I receive it I'll send you infinitely much money. Not only that, I'll guarantee that you go to heaven when you die.

Now, obviously I could be lying about the infinite money and the guaranteed heaven thing, but hey, if there is the slightest chance that I'm right then probability theory says you should send me my check. I'll be looking forward to receiving yours.

Essentially, Pascal's Wager rests on (a) bullshit ideas about probability, (b) the idea that God likes it when people believe in Him for selfish and conniving reasons, and (c) the idea that either the Christian God exists or no God exists - a false dichotomy.