Expert: Austin Cline - 11/27/2009

Question
QUESTION: Is pascal's wager a valid reason for an agnostic/athiest to reconsider his beliefs? Expand on why or why not? I want to know because I bet that there are a lot of people that are non-churchgoing people of faith that are 'on the fence' if you will that stay religious because they see pascal's wager making so much sense and being too risky

ANSWER: No, in fact Pascal's Wager is about the worst apologetics argument ever devised. I critique it here:

http://atheism.about.com/od/argumentsforgod/a/pascalswager.htm

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Yes, I have already read that article along with many other articles. The heart of the matter is that I am afraid, and I am looking for critiques of the wager. If you know anyone else that has any particularly well written critiques of it I would be happy to read it.

Also-I have a follow up question: what are your beliefs?
After reading a lot of your writing I get the impression you seem to be a agnostic atheist.

Again, thanks for your timely response to my first question and I respect the time and effort that you put into this.

Answer
I will admit that the critique could be expanded and made more detailed - it's on my list, but there is always a lot to do. I'm not sure exactly what you are afraid of, though. In principle, you could create a wager for absolutely any "god" your imagination can come up with. You can't avoid the "hell" of every theoretical god that might not like what you're doing.

Yes, I'm an agnostic atheist - agnostic as a general principle, though not with some specifically defined gods. I'm not agnostic about Apollo, Odin, or the traditional Christian god.