I've rebutted pascal's wager more times that I care to count.

My points come down to this:
1. Which religion do you wager on, and which doctrine do you follow? There are hundreds of mutually exclusive subsets, each of which will send me to hell for not believing and following their particular version.

2. You can apply pascall's wager to any potentially dangerous endeavour, including not driving to work today because of the chance of getting killed on the road (biggest risk for under 30s). And then you'd be dead for eternity, which is not a real good outcome for an atheist. I'd rather take a day off work than be dead for eternity.

3. Would God, who knows all your thoughts, really reward someone didn't really believe in his heart, but went through the motions to assure his spot in heaven?


As for worth it, if people are going to willingly delude themselves, then they may as well be dogs for all they're worth as humans.

Sorry for the hijack, any mention of Pascal's wager pisses me off, because it's just so dumb. There are some good arguments FOR religion, pascal's wager isn't one of them.[/rant]