Hey everyone. This is my first post here, but I've been roaming the forums and watching some of the shows for about a month and a half. I am, by the way, and Athiest. In that time here, and even time long outside of here on Youtube and such, a very common argument/point from Theists is Pascal's Wager. In al lmy viewings and readings I haven't seen the point that first comes to my mind made much, if ever, so hopefully this is "new"!

A quick google search gives me the following wording for the Wager: "If you believe in God and turn out to be incorrect, you have lost nothing -- but if you don't believe in God and turn out to be incorrect, you will go to hell. Therefore it is foolish to be an atheist."

 Usually, it seems particularly around here, the biggest argument against the use of Pascal's Wager is the simple concept of "what God", as evidenced by the sticky at the top of this forum. And probably just as common, the response is usually "The Wager was created by a Christian for the purpose of refering to the Christian God, so thats what I'm talking about", or something on those lines. I'm not here to talk about that part of it, I"m sure you all know all this and someone will find something in the above statments that they will tear apart, but I'm simply trying to lay a basic foundation on which I lead up to the rest of this.

 So, given the above, I want to look at it in a very simple form, which is perhaps the way many Christians would with they had worded at the time of its presentation in an argument:

 "If you believe in the Judeo-Christian God that Jesus is your savior, and it turns out to be incorrect, you have lost nothing -- but if you don't believe in Judeo-Christian God that Jesus is your savior and you turn out to be incorrect, you will go to hell. Therefore it is foolish to be an athiest". 

 I prefer this wording when talking about Christianity, because it isn't just the belief in the Judeo-Christian God that gains you access to heaven, it's the belief the Jesus Christ was God and died for your sins. If it wern't for the "Jesus Clause" then (unless I'm mistaken) Jews and Muslims would also go to Heaven because all 3 of these religions are based on the same texts and therefore the same God. I dont believe that this is new news to anyone but the clariffication is important I feel.

 Now then, to my main point and issue to Pascal's Wager. It is not, as I said before, the idea of "which religion to follow" because here I want to just focus on Christianity, but it is with the word  Believe.

This word, IMO, is the greatest flaw in this argument. This was a link I saw in another thread and I would like to at least refer to the top potion that metions belief for my definition: http://www.atheistnetwork.com/viewtopic.php?t=19807

 The author defines belief to be

He creates justified and unjustified beliefs, both of which are based on the evidence available. At this point, I'm not even going to make the argument that believing in God is an unjustifiable belief, because I think most people here would agree that different people view the evidence differently and some people may truely believe the evidence points towards God.

What Pascal's Wager is asking people to do, is to take the same evidence, and asking athiests to come to a different conclusion! Heres an analogy I would like to make, recognizing that it isn't perfect, but I think this illustrates the point well enough:

Evidence:  Hitler commited genocide on a scale never before seen in the world. 

 I would like to think that everyone on this forums will agree that Hitler was not a "good" person based on this evidence. They hold it to be true that hitler was a bad person because his actions went again the moral values that almost all societies hold, and thus they believe he was a bad person. 

MY wager to you is this: After 1 year, I may give you $10,000,000 if you believe that Hilter was a great person, and by great I mean morally good, caring, kind, etc. (not "great" as in powerful). But, if you still believe that Hitler was a bad person after that year, I may beat the living snot out of you and probably hospitalize you for the rest of your life! Here's the REAL catch though, I've developed a device that can read your mind. I'm not going to ASK you if you believe he was a great person, I will just KNOW. So you can't lie to me, and in fact, you can't even lie to yourself because this machine knows EVERYTHING in your mind, both realized and known to you! If you wind up believing it, well, what have you lost? Worst case you don't get the money, but if you don't believe, I may choose to make your life miserable! In either case, if you can really believe, you come out ahead. Thus it would be foolish to maintain the belief that

Now ask yourself, with that kind of proposal, what do you have? If it wern't for the device you could just say "yea, you know, you're right, Hitler was a pretty damn good chap." and make a bold face lie. Or Hell, you could try to brainwash yourself into believing it but even your subconcious would still know what you REALLY think (just like the sins "known and unknown" to us!). I doubt most people could be able to take the evidence and come to a completely different conclusion that they TRUELY believe just becaues there's now a reward in it.  

The problem here is that you can't just "make" yourself believe it. Belief comes from interpreting the evidence. The Judeo-Christian god knows everything about you, even what you don't know. Humans also have the ability to change their memories and what they think even if it's just to serve a purpose.

So unless you can actually take the same evidience and go "you know, I really dont have anything to lose. Let me see this evidence again. You know, you're right. There IS a God and Jesus really was my savior!" then I would almost bet that no conversion based on Pascal's wager is a TRUE believer, and thus they still would not recieve the heaven they were promised by the Wager. True belief can't be won on a "what do I have to lose basis", it has to be gained on the evidence, and Pascal's wager is asking the impossible, take the same evidence you drew one conclusion from, and draw the opposite. Going back to the definition of belief, does this really lead to 'holding that concept to be true'?

 If you go back briefly to my Hitler analogy, be sure that the ONLY evidence you use it that which is given. To use any evidence otherwise negates the concept of the wager. Many athiests don't disbelieve out of stubborness, but out of lack of evidence, but if new evidence shows up, I know I am always willing to reevaluate a position. If you use the fact that Hitler cared for his family, then you have changed the evidence, and thus, the rules of the game. Pascal's Wager isn't telling you to find more evidence to support your claim, it's telling you that your current claim is pointless and thus you should simply change it based on nothing more than what you know now! (which is at less stupid than the "Athiest Challenge" which proposes that you change your view based on what you DONT know....)

If this is confusing, it's because the desire of Pascal's Wager is to get people to succumb to a 'pseudo-belief', one that isn't actually belief,but just the appearance of. Thus the minimum belief that Pascal's wager is trying to achieve is not actually true belief, which would seem to me to a huge flaw. The rewards that Christianity in general claim require a form of belief that goes beyond this 'pseudo-belief'. 

I would like to address one argument that I'm sure will come up now and that is that it IS possible to take the same evidence from which you beleived God did NOT exists and then look at it and truely believe that God DOES exist, because someone will probably claim that it did happen to them. To those people I ask: What made the difference? Was it a different way of interpration of what is in the Bible?Metaphor vs literal? Because I would argue that that change your evidence because to take a metaphor is different than a literal statment.

It never happened to me so I dont know all the different things that could spark belief necessarily, but I am inclined to believe that SOMETHING changed, even if it was just viewing something in a different light, because that would change the nature of one piece of evidence. Which means you're no longer using the same evidence. A loved one becoming healthy? You over coming a major obstical in your life? All different pieces of evidence. In every case I can think of, something will have changed in your evidence, even if it's as small as looking at a capital 'A' and seeing it as 'a' instead. Two different people can view the same evidence and get different results, but the same person, I don't think, can look at the same evidence and get two directly opposing results.

If you believe you fall into this catagory of "evidence = X" to "evidence = Y" then, please tell me what it was that convinced you, because I would like to know how NOTHING changed to produce this change in you!

Please feel free to tear this apart, since I know it will happen anyways . If parts sound confusing, let me know and I'll try to fix it to make sense. Or even just offer better ways to defend this position, or even if I made stupid contradictory mistakes, let me know and I'll try to fix it. (Also, if you're going to comment on a specific part, I suggest that you quote that part because I'll probably edit the main post and your comment will be lost and not make sens. Just a personal thing I hate when reading posts and half the comments dont make sense anymore )