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this is just to elaborate on the following arguments

"If you believe in God and are right you get heaven. If you are wrong you get dirt.
If you don't believe in God and are right you get dirt.
If you don't believe in God and are wrong you get hell.

Clearly +EV to believe in God."


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I have thought about this for a long time, it's pascal's wager, right? If so, the Pascal is skewing the logic, IMHO. The question needs to address the value of life on earth with and without a god. Also, consider that just believing in God is usually not enough. The religions I am familiar with are very rigorous. Church one or more times a week and numerous examples of self-deprivation are necessary.

So...

If there is no God, then life on earth is all that you have, or it is of infinite value, in other words we would say without a god then life on earth has a value of +infinity. If there is a god, then your life on earth will be worth less, but still has value, although finite. We can refer to this value as "x". If there is no God, then your life after death is worth zero. If there is a god, then your life after death will be worth either +infinity (b/c you go to heaven) or -infinity (b/c) you go to hell.

No god.

Sacrafice portions of life and get no return. As we say our life is all we have we assign it a value of infinity. Now lets say we devote 1/15'th of our waking hours believing in god, and depriving ourselves of things. We lose -1/15infinity and get 0. Our net loss is -1/15infinity. Anyone know what 1/15 of +infinity is? I would say that:

1/15 of +infinity = +infinity. For instance if you walk forever, when will you get there? Never. When will you get half way there? Again, never. You will never get there so 1/2 of forever has to equal forever. What this means is that if we believe in god wrongly, the value we lose is infinite!

Now we accept that there is a god, a hell and a heaven.

To get to heaven, we spend (or lose) 1/15 of our waking hours believing and depriving (or lose -1/15x), and expect to receive heaven (+infinity). If we do not, then we gain 1/15x of waking time and receive hell (-infinity). Comparing the two means, that

-1/15x for +infinity; and

+1/15x for -infinity.

This means the choices we have are:

There is actually no god, but we choose to beleive just in case: we spend -infinity for a return of 0.

There is a god:

We either spend 1/15x for a return of +infinity, or we gain 1/15x for a return of -infinity.


With what I believe are the correct assumptions, belief in god has -EV if there is even the remotest of possibilities that god does not exist. This is because without a god, the value of life on earth is much greater than Pascal gave it credit for.