I think of our cousin fish community's perception of what's beyond their water world, as I also look and wonder, in humbling realization of our shared dilemma of limitation, as we are all fish in a bowl .... where blind ignorant arrogance abounds.      

"The being we call god is merely a pawn working for a powerful and rational force in some far-off galaxy.  This force is trying to weed out people who are irrational by seeing who would be stupid enough to believe in his god illusion so easily.  Those that believe in this illusion, he will send to eternal damnation and he will deliver the rational beings, those who stoically refused to believe in a god, to heaven." - Nicholas Yee

So, as per Pascal's Wager, one should clearly be an Atheist just in case this belief is correct.

Poe?  Anyone?  I'm having a hard time telling the difference anymore.

Well, I suppose his other posts do seem sincere...

"Many people do not make a religious commitment because they are waiting for an answer.  But chances are, the answer is not going to just come to you. 

Well it should...."

To put it one way, If God actually existed, that existence would be clear and obvious to all. It is NOT clear and obvious to all, so.....

Pascal has a good point, but it doesn't mean much. However, he is calling out all non believers.  Although there is no truth in chance, there is an underlying truth that can be seen from it. Simply that no man in his right mind should refute God so readily.

   So why are atheists doing exactly that? I can only suspect that it is something outside of persuing truth. I think any man who really is looking for answers might see the deception in "no faith". It means your nothing. And if you don't feel like nothing, then the best place to look would be in God, who would best explain what you really feel. 

   But if you do choose to deliberatelly refute the Creator of the universe, there is only one way to do it. And that is through dust science. There is also only one way to justify it. And that is because you are a soldier of truth. How can you be a soldier of truth? Through evidence of course.  How can evidence explain my belief of nothing? . By humbly confessing that you don't know the answers to everything, and your ok with that because your a truth soldier, not a fairy tale fanatic.  How can you get away with hiding your soul? Other dust scientists telling you that you are a truth soldier. Its a viscious cycle of lies.

    Now that takes a lot of digging to get you out of that mess. think of all the atheist friends you made.. So the only thing that can be done is to keep on finding answers to your pre-conditioned assumptions. Any time a theist comes by to knock your wall down, you better give him a mouth full  of dust science to show how little he knows. This same argument can go for anyone who makes false assumptions, that is why there is a word called religion.  Religion and atheism seem to have similar motives, none for which is truth oriented.

    So here comes little Pascal, giving you a wager. He says why be a "truth soldier" when  you don't have a uniform. Why pursue this when you can equally pursue that.   I think his intentions were fine indeed.  If I'm not mistaken, Pascal put a disclaimer on his wager by saying there is no spiritual value in his binary wager. So perhaps his wager was just a neat observation that made undecisive people veer towards the truth. 

Moral of the Story

Pascal the Rascal has rolled the dice. He threw cheese towards the theist for all the undecisive mice. The cheese wouldn't last for eternity, but the truth that did was not far from the cheese.

Jesus Christ should be the only one to trust. Don't trust me. for the love of everything that is good in this world, dont trust me.  

Why not- I'm sort of bored and feel like getting a bit aggressive- going over the extra-Biblical 'proofs' of Jesus' existence does that to me.

No, he doesn't.

His wager assumes a binary: Pascal's God or nothing. It skips over the possibility that there are, say, lots of gods who are competing for humanity's worship, that there's one god but it's the god of the Ophite Gnostics, that the Jews are right, that the Muslims are right... etc. These are competing claims that have dire consequences for the unbeliever. If you're going to look at the Wager, you at least have to consider ALL the options- not just the options that would have been known to a Renaissance humanist Deist like Blaise Pascal.

No 'man' in his right mind who only believes that there is Pascal's God or nothing, yes. Again, Pascal missed a *few* of the options potentially open to his Wager.

What, refusing to hold onto societal assumptions and incomplete arguments based on potentialities? I fail to see how that's an insult.

.... Seriously? You're coming at me with neo-Platonic 'faith' with no evidence beyond personal claims and hearsay (what others have written or claimed to have seen) and you're calling *me* the one 'outside of persuing truth'? 

How about this: Religion, mysticism, spirituality, whatever you want to call it, has added NOTHING to the sum of human knowledge for HUNDREDS of years. Scientific and social advances have had to fly in the face of almost all religious authorities for centuries. It is thanks to science that I can lambast you for being so wrong-headed and feeble-brained about liking the fact that religion/spirituality/mysticism has been hanging around- like unto a parasite, in lots of cases- and can tell you that, if you want to talk about being outside of the 'persuit' (SP) of truth, you can look no further than the spiritual descendants of Blaise Pascal.

Oh my, where to begin. Well- let's begin at the beginning. I get the sense that you're trying for the 'everyone has faith' argument, but didn't quite get it out right. Let's start right now by saying this: So.... fucking... what. Yes, everyone has 'faith' that the sun will rise, that the earth won't stop rotating the sun and shatter into thousands of pieces, that we feel what we feel... blah blah.

That's a totally different thing than the faith you're talking about. You're talking about a faith in something that cannot be seen, measured, quantified, or even explained satisfactorially. The last bit essentially means you're making shit up- but you call it the 'mystery of God' and tell us that ends the discussion. When it comes to the other things- if you can show me something that can't be measured or quantified, not even indirectly (no, "Look around you" doesn't work, because ANY OTHER RELIGION can do exactly the same thing) THEN I'd say you at least have a starting case for the existence of some sort of god.

You're also confusing 'atheism' with 'nihilism,' which truly *is* belief in nothing. Additionally, you're making this illogical leap from nihilism, to saying that someone with 'absence of belief' is empty, to stating that god (your god, I suppose- to which a question arises, "Which god?" And don't say "The God," because that just makes you a monotheist) Lastly: God can't explain anything. God is silent. Meaning, at the very least, the deity or deities in charge here are indifferent.

Ah, now we're getting to the crazy nougat at the core of your entertaining post. First point: Can't refute what wasn't proven in the first place. The 'creator' was simply assumed. Also: 'dust science'? Does that mean geology? If you're trying to say science is weak, I'd tell you 'good luck.' There are lots of people around here with all sorts of science knowledge; it's not even close to my field, so I'm not going to go into that.

Now I've got it. Protestant. Probably Baptist, or, judging by the poor spelling and pseudo-military imagery, Pentecostal or evangelical of some sort.

Which your religion has given us in spades, right? Christianity has brought us all the medical advances, mechanical advances, expansion of knowledge? It *didn't* dominate until the mid-to-late 1800s, ruining the lives of anyone who didn't bow and scrape to the will of the religious groups in charge? There were no ecclesiastical courts, no highly public and powerful religious press? No?

Not nihilism, remember? One must at least believe that one's senses are reasonably accurate (note that I didn't say 'completely accurate,' as that's impossible and a pointless quest anyway) to get anything done. YOUR religion, however, posits an existence that has no evidence; something we can't experience until we die- and then, conveniently, we get no messages from anyone from beyond... except, of course, in god's little PR book. Truly, god is miraculous.

You don't need to 'confess' anything. We all know we don't know anything; even as a species, we don't know much. But we don't need any god to tell us that. We only need to *learn* more- which is hard enough, when we're constantly on our knees, with some 'wise man' telling us that we need only pray to get god's 'revelation,' that actual inquiry is a sin, and that there's nothing to discover anyway- it's all a matter of revelation. Please excuse me if I'm not impressed.

Also- second sentence: Projection much?

The soul hides itself pretty good. There have been attempts by science to find the soul- which actually caused YOUR people to move the goalposts. Instead of figuring out where the 'seat of the soul' was, an obsession for centuries in the West, we now talk about the soul being unmeasurable since it's part of that mystical lands of elves and fairies- sorry, god, angels and demons- that we can't find until we die. Gosh, how convenient. Again- please excuse me if I'm not impressed.

All this projecting you're doing- a movie theater should hire you.

Which would be true if A) Atheists congregated together a la religious folks in a self-reinforcing metaphorical echo chamber (some gather for social events, but I've seen few who gather like religious folks) and B) We had anything in common besides absence of a belief in a god of some sort. Neither are true, hence your point is flawed, severely.

It also assumes that we sequester ourselves away from theists. We don't. Some of us are very vocal about our beliefs, others are not, but I've never heard of any atheist shutting out old friends or family members because of their new beliefs. You're projecting again, dear grass.

Oh, if ANYONE knocks my wall down- assuming I didn't get fair notice of the impending demolition by the authorities- they would be getting more than a 'mouth full of dust science.' I have no idea what this means anyway- please don't explain it to me, your explanation will probably just be more crazy talk.

No, why there's a word called 'religion' is that someone came up with the idea of cashing in on the explanation of 'the gods did it.' And they made money, hand over fist, for ages. 'Atheism' is not a unified doctrine; it's the absence of belief in a god. Atheists, for the most part, end up where they are because of their search for truth. Things just don't add up with religion- any religion- or any spiritual belief, actually. It all comes down to 'god/the gods/faeries/angels/devils/daevas/yamas/rakshas/ghosts/spirits/elves did it.' When you ask for evidence, they inevitably fall back upon personal experience (useless as an objective measurement of the veracity of spiritual belief), miracles/magic (none of which are repeatable, hence, again, useless for truth purposes) or some book or another (all spiritual systems have their own books, though, each with competing claims- so we go back to 'where is your proof?') So who's being untruthful here?

And misses *lots* of possibilities. Giving us a false binary that's weighted heavily, and unfairly, to his side.

Certainly, his intentions were good. But his logic was severely lacking- it's why Pascal's Wager isn't used in logic classes as an example of a good logical problem. Introducing a false binary of any kind immediately and irrevocably invalidates your argument, no matter how frivolously the argument-maker may frame his argument.

Not even close. His wager is flawed.

So I should trust in a 2000 year old Jewish zombie who can't even keep a promise (changing his own everlasting Law, not coming back when he said he would- within the lifetime of the Apostles) and curses fig trees that are out of season for not giving him figs?  Oh yea, that sounds like a real reliable guy. Count me in.

I'll say what I say to all Christians- If you're right, and the god of the Bible is THE god, I will GLADLY go to hell and curse his name for all eternity. The guy's an asshole, and, as a father (our 'heavenly' father) he should have a permanent court order that keeps him at least 500 feet away from us at all times; he's a TERRIBLE role model and doesn't love us, because he's offering us the free choice between eternal slavery (glorifying him in Heaven) or eternal suffering (in hell- though if you believe what Cathoiics believe, hell is merely the absence of god.... how that would affect us, when Catholic doctrine also says we can't know god that well anyway- hence, why care if he's not around? and when there's not really any evidence for god anyway, I don't know.)

Anyway- it's been fun, my little chewtoy. We should do this again some time.

Did you not read my post?  Pascal's wager doesn't even work in a theism > atheism context because of my post.  Pascal's wager can be used equally well as a PRO-ATHEISM argument.  Any argument that works just as well for you as against you gives you no ground.  Pascal's wager, in working identically for all religions AND FOR ATHEISM, is overall neutral.

 Probably not a good idea to have your email address in a post like that (if, indeed, that is your email address).

Also, "will to resist"? That's creepy. What truth were you given that we weren't? Did I not get a memo?

@butterbattle: I understand your confusion. My chewtoy was referring to me.

S.O.D.: Your post is pure gold. And not in a good way.

I would agree with you here- except all you started doing was throwing around crazy stuff about 'dust science' and making blanket statements about atheists. Science has several hundred years of reliable methodology and data. Atheism is a reasonable and logical conclusion drawn from the immense silence of supernatural beings directly to humanity (barring a few outliers- generally debunked or seen as insane nowadays), the scale of the universe versus the scale of the planet (though many 'believers' simply shift their focus from a geocentric world-view [remnants of it were still around until astronomers learned just how vast the universe is- and our knowledge about it has only grown, massively] to something akin to 'we're special because we're the only planet we know of with complex life,' or 'it's amazing that god made all this empty space- kinda hefty on the hydrogen and helium- and here we are, still special! Wow!), the number of living and non-living things that can harm or kill us versus the number that we can actually use (or god REALLY loves beetles and bacteria.... I mean, *LOVES* them), and the fact that the times in which the mythologies of the surviving religions (and, in fact, the dead ones as well) were written were times when humanity thought they were far more important than they were- hence, all the talking to gods, hence all the world is made just for humans, etc. 

All this makes atheism absolutely not 'crazy.' It makes it sane; it makes it reasonable.

Though if you're just referring to my final paragraph, I can understand why that may seem insane. I'm standing with Milton's Satan, though; send your links to your personal blog or preferred Christian Web site elsewhere, I am not interested in what you're selling- it is a revolting belief system rife with moral cowardice (you depend on what you think god wants, not enlightened self-interest or some sort of sense of reciprocity to figure out what's right), and egotism (the Abrahamic monotheist's cry of 'But I'm a sinner, we're all sinners' is the pathetic bleating of the masochist.) I know, had I been alive at the time and place, that I would have joined the Roman plenum in ridiculing and reviling your beliefs. I would have been on the wrong side of history, but I would have been right (want to read some *really* unpleasant stuff? Go dig up some of the so-called 'early Church fathers;' Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria are a good place to start.)

You're already in the prison, my fellow primate. You just refuse to see you're inside; you're calling out to me but all I can see is someone saying I should join them in bondage.

Not really. I've backed up my arguments re: Pascal's Wager with facts. Or at least with the very basics of logic. I will admit freely that I'm not the most logical person on the planet- but it takes a real wrong-headed person to think that Pascal's Wager makes any sense.

To repeat my argument (not even close to original, but the Wager's old too):

Pascal's Wager assumes a binary- Pascal's God or nothing. It begins with an erroneous assumption: One God or no God. This stacks the deck, so to speak, far in the favor of the Wager, because, yes, assuming that there is only one god, and that Pascal's right, we have nothing to lose. However, if Pascal is wrong- and not in the sense that the Wager says he's wrong; like say there are a bunch of gods, or Allah is the true god, or the Jews are right, or it's the Ophite Gnostics or the people who wrote the Vedas or the Zoroastrians, etc, etc.- then the claim is incomplete... These are all competing claims that Pascal did not, and could not, have known about. Hence, his logical problem is flawed from the start.

So please explain to me how my refutation of the Wager is not valid. I'm really curious as to where I went wrong.

I'm only guilty of being a little pissy in my first reply to you, nothing more. And I gave the disclaimer at the top of the post. I'm already 'tlk'(ing [SP]) truth. No need to take it to e-mail. That's what this board is for, after all.

Not really. I see what you are- you're a neo-Platonist in denial. Now, now, I know what you're going to say- Christianity came from Judaism. Not quite. It tacked on Judaism because Judaism gave early Christianity the legitimacy it craved without it being beholden to the 'pagan' philosophies that were all over the place. The author of Mark most likely was a Hellenized Jew- but that's only one bit of the pre-100ish puzzle. The epistles have been LONG known as being written earlier, and if we compare the philosophy of Paul and his followers to the Jesus of Mark, we're left with a bit of a conundrum: What did God want with the Law anyway?

Paul says it doesn't matter and that we're saved by grace. Jesus says the Law does matter (while apparently conscientiously breaking it, which is beyond weird.) However, that doesn't really matter anyway: ALL the Jewish sources agree, the Law was for ALL TIME. What varied from time to time and place to place was whether or not it was for all people or whether those whom the Jews conquered had to convert; this is what happened with the people in Galille.

Going back to my earlier point about c. 100, that's a really important time. The gospel of Mark may have been around for about 30 years at that point, and the followers of Paul might have still been around (or maybe the remaining followers started to reformulate their beliefs about what 'the Christ' was). About that time, many Jewish rabbis of the Diaspora came together and denounced heretical Jewish sects- which meant, basically, the Essenes, the Markian Hellenistic Jews, and quite a few Messianic groups. This split was one thing that made Christianity Christianity, and which brought an about-face (at least somewhat) for early Christians on 'pagan' learning.

After that point, we see a lot of cribbing of Plotinus, rather a lot of outright stealing of Stoic moral philosophy (sans the rigor- who needs reflection and virtue when you've got faith and grace, right?) and some elements of earlier narratives creeping in to the latter gospels (such as the more extended tempting of Jesus in the desert story, lifted almost word for word from the story of Horus' temptation by Set).

Let me say, at this point, a bit about the Gnostics. According to 'mainstream' Christianity (oh you crazy Nicenes, you!) they attached themselves to 'true' Christianity and caused trouble by promulgating 'heretical' teachings and practices. That's not entirely true, however. Gnostics were pre-Christian, by several hundred years. BUT, they have no less a claim to being 'true' Christians than the amalgamated Mark/Paul group. In fact, there were some in leadership positions. Valentinius, for instance, who used his relatively greater wealth to build the foundations of the Vatican. He was passed over for the position of bishop, his followers denounced and slaughtered. Some thanks, yes?

The Gnostics were, for the most part, annihilated from history. Had it not been for the sheer dumb luck of the Nag Hammadi libarary finds, and the presentation of Jesus in the gospel of John, we would still be relying upon Plotinus and the Christian apologists for Gnostic beliefs. Which is somewhat like relying upon Aristotle for a fair assessment of Zeno or Democritus.

You are not forgiven. And you were not given truth. You were given hand-me-down stories that people have believed unquestioningly, upon pain of pariahdom (had to look that one up) or worse, which has strangled societies since the moment it became the official religion of the dominant Western state at that time, and which continues to reinforce these horrible ideas about the inherent worthlessness of human beings. I believe you are ignorant, and moderately crazy, but not lying. You believe what you believe. That means you are not a liar, only mistaken.

And I've seen your 'right crowd.' There are good Christians, but they are far and away the exception and not the rule; that goes for any and all denominations. I don't care about that. I don't care about if you're one of these new 'kinder, gentler' Christians who go on and on about Christ's love and forgiveness- your religion will rear its ugly head again, and all those who are kind and gentle and forgiving will be pushed aside or forced to acquiesce. Your religion- all religion- is dangerous precisely because it sets up a situation where this is possible.

Give someone the right weapons, and fill them with the idea that some sort of deity is on their side, and nothing good will come of it. I (and others) thus say: Toss it all out. Let religious belief die the death it should have died years ago; we're better off as a species without it.

And I'm surrounded by theists every day, and have theist friends. Your point?

Let me make this clear: I am attacking BELIEFS, not PEOPLE. Which actually makes it harder- if I just made blanket statements about *all* Christians, or *all* Muslims or *all* Jews, I'd be dead wrong. Instead I have to look through the complicated mess of beliefs each religion has (usually Christianity, because that's what's all around me, for the most part), figure out which sub-set of belief I'm looking at, refute that, and watch the goal-posts move out the door and into the street. I can sit here for ages pointing out the history of the Christian church(es) and how, for instance, Apostilic descent is pure pseudo-historical bullshit, and then someone will come back with 'oh, I don't care about that- all that matters to me is that Jesus died for all our sins.' GAH!

I don't care what other atheists who don't know you think, and I am not offended. You do not offend me; your *beliefs* both sicken and sadden me, and the fact that you hold on to these patently illogical beliefs with no other 'evidence' than 'I had a personal experience,' 'a book told me it's true,' 'very wise men who know a lot about this book told me it's true,' or 'things look so ordered- there had to be something to order it; and this book I've got explains what the orderer is and what it wants me to do' really makes me feel sad.

I want you to see that, at the very least, if there is some sort of deity, that it, or they, at the very least are indifferent. There's just too much hydrogen in the universe (versus the stuff we even need to survive), and far too many harmful or deadly bacteria, plants, insects, arachnids, etc, here on Earth versus how many an even semi-benevolent god would 'give' us to believe in a god like the god of the Bible. (Or Bibles- 'whose Bible?' is always a good question to ask; Catholic? Lutheran? Some sort of eastern Orthodox? Ethiopian Orthodox? Coptic?) Sure, you can say it's due to the Fall or some such, but that doesn't really make any sort of god that may be out there more just- it merely makes that god or gods arbitrary. If the deity or deities are arbitrary, they are at the least not worthy of worship, and perhaps even non-existent.

And now you've just gotten a peek into one of the threads of thought that brought me to where I am today. It's not even close to all of them, but it's one.

Honestly (you can probably tell from my LONG post) I love a good intellectual scrap. Gets the blood flowing and the brain working. Sure sometimes I get really worked up and have to settle down by watching some comedy or doing some meditation (hey- partial materialist Buddhist, guilty as charged), but overall, I really like this sort of thing.

CM

I love a good discussion, but at this point, I think a conversation with my cat would be more intellectually stimulating. 

Okay, since your entire post is a mishmash of insults, naked assertions, and meaningless drivel, I'll just ignore it and make my own comments.

#1

- Pascal's Wager contains no logical argument for God's existence. It encourages people to believe in God based on the premises that Christianity holds better consequences than atheism. Thus, it is an appeal to emotion.  

- Believing is a state, not a choice. Thus, Pascal's Wager cannot make people believe in God. It can only make people want to believe in God.

- Pascal's Wager is a false dichotomy. It proposes a dilemma between Christianity and atheism, ignoring the thousands of other organized religions, as well as an infinite number of possible hypothetical belief systems. 

- The possible consequences for each choice in the dilemma are completely unjustified. Unless you presuppose the Christian worldview, an atheist is just likely to transcend to a "heaven" as a theist, and a theist is just as likely to be cast down to a "hell" as an atheist.

#2 

Why do you believe in God?

http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/sapient/philosophy_and_psychology_with_chaoslord_and_todangst/5652

what do I have what you don't?

a need for Jesus Christ.  That is all. Thats why Im given truth. I didn't really do anything spectacular like juggle 5 watermelons at the same time. No all you need to do is have a need for Him. But you dont need anything, right. You already have what you need.  

Nobody needs Jesus specifically.

Maybe they have a need for some psychological support, which belief in some version of the Jesus narrative may meet. There are almost certainly a whole range of beliefs which would help to a similar extent, if they could accept them.

The idea of blood scrifice to appease the angry gods is an ancient theme, so it must provide some sort of psychological relief for a certain class of life anxiety, even in the re-jigged version we get in the Xian crucifiction story.

Obviously wrong, Bob. As stated above by a piece of sod, we all need Jesus. It logically also follows that you need Jesus. As do I, and especially all the people who are worshipping the wrong gods. Oh, when will all those wrong-god-worshipping bastards get it right? Clearly, Jesus was the god you were looking for. How did you get it so wrong?

As for you atheists, all you have to do is add the one god, and you'll be fine. Just the one. How hard is that? You guys don't even need to replace a god, you just need to pick one up!

LOL Surely he must know... He can also answer all of our questions about QM.

You could have made a better argument than that. That is actually pretty shabby.

Only when using your faulty formula. Also requires the assumptions that the god is:
A: Unforgiving.
B: Unmerciful.
C: Unaware or uncaring that its message has been polluted and unable or unwilling to fix it.
These criteria write off every religion on Earth which believes in mono-theistic tenets, reducing the probability of picking the right god to 0.

Welcome to the forum.

Of course. It's five pages long and spans more than two and a half years.

I disagree.

Pascal's Wager is still invalid because you assumed that atheists cannot enter heaven; this is another hidden premise that the atheist has not agreed to. For example, what if the creator of the universe actually champions reason and created religion as a test to decide whether people go to heaven or hell? In this hypothetical scenario, the religious would go to hell and most atheists would go to heaven. Also, you cannot only count every established belief system concerning what happens after death, but every possible scenario, including those that have not even been imagined. This would add up to a nearly infinite number of possibilities. So, even if we disregard my first point, the choice would be more like zero out of infinity or a few integers out of infinity, a completely negligible disadvantage for the atheist. This would be like claiming that you're better off because you live in a universe where Quantum Mechanics is true while I don't, and thus, you have a chance of walking through the wall while I do not.        

Furthermore, Pascal's Wager is an appeal to consequences anyways; implying otherwise commits a logical fallacy. It is completely irrelevant to any realist, to anyone who would have taken the red pill in the Matrix because it doesn't actually support the existence of God in any way. It's more like a threat than an actual argument. Pascal's Wager can scare stupid people into wanting to believe in God. It can even scare them so much that they delude themselves into believing in God, but it establishes nothing.

I didn't read all the responses, 5 pages of um, so maybe it has been said already, but I would simply have asked what if HE was wrong, the only life he had would have been lived as a lie.

For me, if I were on the fence and couldn't decide, the introduction of Pascal's Wager would make me reject Christianity because of it's coercive nature.

I agree with this. There is no way you can possibly be saved (according to the bible's requirements for salvation) just in case.

I think it was on the Mummy movie that one of the guys had tons of religious paraphenalia (probably didn't spell that right), and he would pull one out at a time, and kiss a cross, then a star of David, then this, then that. It was funny, but that is exactly what Pascal would have us do. If you are going to be a Christian just in case, then you'd better be every other religion just in case too. Unless you believe Christianity is the one true religion, in which case you aren't using Pascal's wager anymore, you are a full-fledged Christian.

You can't believe in something as a precautionary measure. You either believe it because you believe it, or you don't believe it at all.

The only reason that can cause true belief, is that you are convinced something is true. It may take less or more to convince different people, but the convincing needs to happen for belief to even be a possibility.

I can honestly say I've never used Pascal's Wager as a motivation for someone to get saved in evangelism, or in debate or otherwise. It's ridiculous.

I can see how Pascal's Wager might be a good reason to look into Christianity. But it's not a reason to believe in Jesus Christ.

That is a pretty ridiculous reason to choose hell over heaven. Of course you don't believe in either place, but if you were truly on the fence, you would have to believe a little.

Maybe they just mean the nature of a theist pushing a 'loving' God who is threatening you with damnation shows a contradiction.

               I love both songs you mentioned but  "What condition My condition was in." was recorded by 'Kenny Rogers & the First Edition'  Not dimension.

              Has for Blaise Pascal and his ninny-assed wager.  I wonder if he believes his omnipotent all-knowing  god is so easily fooled by such a pretence.