Pascal's Wager makes one fundamental assumption that is incorrect. It assumes that the choice is between not believing in god and believing in god. It assumes one description of god.

There are MANY gods that have been, and currently are, followed. If we add each god into the wager, we soon run into thousands of options, and they cannot all be followed. It follows that the only choice is to believe in the god with the worst punishment for disbelief, or to totally disregard the wager as flawed and irrelevant.

Also, there's the fact that it is not free of cost to believe in God. First, whatever religion you decide to participate in due to the wager will have rules and restrictions for you to follow, actions you must take, and the like. You will end up spending time for religious rituals that you could be doing other things with. You may spend money that may be better donated to charity that will help people, or spent improving yourself (especially in the case of Scientology). And you'll suffer intellectual costs, as some things you'll disbelieve due to religion, or the like.

There are religions, if we are to call them that, which may make it very disadvantageous to believe in a deity.

If Buddhism is correct, and we must become enlightened in order to reach nirvana and stop the cycle of rebirths and there are no deities, it seems likely that figuring this out, on some level, may well be a part of enlightenment. And I think it would definitely be a sign of being far from enlightenment to try to "trick" oneself into thinking that one believes something which one really does not, especially for reasons of trying to get the most comfortable spot in the afterlife, brushing away principles. What could be further from realising one's buddha nature?

(Plus, don't you think an omniscient deity would have figured out your little scheme?)

Check out what Paul says about Pascal's Wager (well, not exactly -- he's talking about whether Jesus was resurrected rather than whether God exists, but I think it still very much applies):

1 Corinthians 15
12 Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?
13 But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen:
14 And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.
15 Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not.
16 For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised:
17 And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.
18 Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.
19 If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.

So those of us fundamentalist Christians who take the time to read our Bibles are just as leery of the wager as atheists/agnostics.

Probably the biggest flaw in Pascal's wager is that it does nothing to actually suggest that God exists.

Ignore for the moment the other problems already noted: the vast quantity of gods to choose from, the possibility of a rationalist god who punishes irrational faith. Accept Pascal's argument as valid. What does it show? That belief in God has, mathematically speaking, a positive expectation. That is all. A skeptic, who thinks that the balance of evidence is that God probably does not exist, has been given no basis for honestly revising that opinion. "I wish I believed in God," he might say, "because of the reward that would bring me in the off-chance that He exists."

Sincere belief cannot be simply conjured out of thin air by an act of will. As an experiment, try to believe, sincerely believe, something that you're pretty sure is false: that 2+2=5, say, or that you're Napoleon Bonaparte. Can you do it? Probably not. At best, you can pretend to believe that 2+2=5, or entertain the hypothesis that you're Napoleon.

Pascal's Wager does not promote sincere belief. At best, it promotes a desire to believe, which can lead people to pretend that they believe when they actually don't. This may be sufficient for the purposes of the church, but it serves neither truth nor God.

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