Revisiting pascal's wager?

God is Perfect and Requires Perfection to get to Heaven. NOBODY that is not PERFECT will be allowed in Heaven. Jesus is God INCARNATE, Meaning that Jesus IS God. Jesus was Perfect and He Died for our Sin as a Substitutionary Sacrifice for Our Sins. And when we Trust God when he says that the Death Penalty that Jesus Paid on the Cross is All that is needed then That Alone is what Saves a person and gets them into Heaven. Pascal's Wager falls short in explaining that Religion itself does Not Save Anyone. The Only thing that Saves Anyone is If that person Believes (Trusts) in Jesus Christ. Since Atheists do Not Trust or Believe in Jesus, there is Absolutely NO Chance of getting into Heaven.

Pascal's wager is a classic logical fallacy.

At the very least, it's an appeal to ignorance and tradition.

To accept the premise of another long deceased human's scribblings as somehow valid hundreds or thousands of years hence, is a sad foolhardy debasement of one's own ability to handle the simple mental construct of everyday life without using false authority crutch of religious "certainty" to prop up one's own control freak agenda.

When something's totally made up you can propose whatever you like; theologians have been doing it for centuries and still are. So it makes as much sense as anything else to say that maybe God is testing people by seeing who will be good without the threat of the hellfire punishment- which would be some atheists. The only verification that anybody has for their religious views is the appeal to some kind of "authority" in my humble opinion.

Actually, a God who prefers Atheists is just another option people don't consider when using Pascal's Wager.

Pascal's Wager is that even if there's only an infinitely small chance of there being a god, a heaven and a hell, you should choose religion because the possibility of infinite heaven versus infinite hell, as a weighted probability, outweighs the inconveniences of believing in this short life. What people who use it do is only consider two options: their religion, and atheism. They do not consider different denominations, or Islam, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or a god who lets everyone into heaven. Maybe there's a god who'll take you as long as you can justify your beliefs using something other than Pascal's Wager.

And how, might you judge the Mormons' probability of being right over Islam's and do it rationally without disbelieving any of the tenets of the belief system you choose? Then, if you get to the core of the argument, you must also consider that "playing the odds" goes against the fundamental beliefs of every theistic religion out there. You can never be a true believer if you make that choice based on cost-benefit as per Pascal's Wager, unless you sign up for a lobotomy and some brainwashing until you actually believe what you think has the best odds.

You might even argue that using Pascal's Wager to choose your beliefs automatically results in you losing, no matter who is right and what you end up believing.

give that same tiny chance to a car salesman supposedly telling you the full truth and get back to me with your overall results. You might begin to understand why I entrust my possible life in eternity to no fool or his religion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtFG1Bvvzz8 This kid has some good ideas on religion

Pascal's Wager fails on a number of counts. First and foremost, it doesn’t take into account the apostle Paul’s argument in Romans 1 that the knowledge of God is evident to all so that we are without excuse (Romans 1:19-20). Reason alone can bring us to the knowledge of God’s existence. It will be an incomplete knowledge of God, but it is the knowledge of God nonetheless. Furthermore, the knowledge of God is enough to render us all without excuse before God’s judgment. We are all under God’s wrath for suppressing the truth of God in unrighteousness.

Second, there is no mention of the cost involved in following Jesus. In the gospel of Luke, Jesus twice warns us to count the costs of becoming His disciple (Luke 9:57-62; 14:25-33). There is a cost to following Jesus, and it is not an easy price to pay. Jesus told His disciples that they would have to lose their lives in order to save them (Matthew 10:39). Following Jesus brings with it the hatred of the world (John 15:19). Pascal's Wager makes no mention of any of this. As such, it reduces faith in Christ to mere credulity.

Third, it completely misrepresents the depravity of human nature. The natural man—one who has not been born again by the Holy Spirit (John 3:3)—cannot be persuaded to a saving faith in Jesus Christ by a cost-benefit analysis such as Pascal's Wager. Faith is a result of being born again and that is a divine work of the Holy Spirit. This is not to say that one cannot assent to the facts of the gospel or even be outwardly obedient to the law of God. One of the points from Jesus’ parable of the soils (Matthew 13) is that false conversions are going to be a fact of life until the time Christ returns. However, the sign of true saving faith is the fruit it produces (Matthew 7:16-20). Paul makes the argument that the natural man cannot understand the things of God (1 Corinthians 2:14). Why? Because they are spiritually discerned. Pascal's Wager makes no mention of the necessary preliminary work of the Spirit to come to the knowledge of saving faith.

Fourth and finally, as an apologetic/evangelistic tool (which is what the Wager was intended to be), it seems focused on a risk/reward outlook, which is not consistent to a true saving faith relationship in Christ. Jesus placed obedience to His commands as an evidence of love for Christ (John 14:23). According to Pascal's Wager, one is choosing to believe and obey God on the basis of receiving heaven as a reward. This is not to diminish the fact that heaven is a reward and that it is something we should hope for and desire. But if our obedience is solely, or primarily, motivated by wanting to get into heaven and avoid hell, then faith and obedience become a means of achieving what we want rather than the result of a heart that has been reborn in Christ and expresses faith and obedience out of love of Christ.

In conclusion, Pascal's Wager, while an interesting piece of philosophical thought, should have no place in a Christian’s evangelistic and apologetic repertoire. Christians are to share and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, which alone is the “power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16).

It really doesn't matter. I'm sure that if there is a god he would be able to figure out I was just saying I believed in him as insurance. However, I'm not too worried about it as I'm pretty sure the bible is as silly as it sounds.

What if, perhaps, the One True God created the universe, only to find souls capably of thinking for themselves, dooming all others to eternal damnation for being stupid?

Can't disprove it, so it must be true!

Checkmate theists!

I think if you do the best you can & not hurt others, then it doesn't matter what label you want to stick on your shirt.

Havent you got a new year to celebrate of or something