Pascal's Wager or The Best Bet

Has anyone heard of this? I heard this in philosophy. After you read it, if you want you can say which catagory you fell into.

You are living your life...

pretend now that there is a god: you can live your life two ways, with two results. Live as if there is a god, and there turns out to be a god, you lived a good life and then you go to heaven. Live as if there is no god, and there turns out to be a god, you lived an unrestriced life and then you go to hell...

on the other hand,

pretend there is not a god: you can live your life two ways, with two results. Live as if there is not a god, and there is no god, you lived a unrestricted life with no loss. Live as if there is a god, and there is not a god, you lived a good life with no loss.

there are four ways of living your life... what seems like the best bet?

are you saying that all u have to do is believe in god to go to heaven? or is repentance also mandatory? and do you have to live a "righteous" lifestyle? i find it amusing that ppl dont mind choosing how they restrict their lives, but simply not restricting themselves is for some reason out of the question...

best bet is to not believe in god and do whatever the hell you want. why? because theres no reason to believe in a god unless ur paranoid. or lonely. or maybe ur just generally lost in life and u'll accept illogical bs as long as it doesnt upset you too much.

for being such a smart guy, pascal sure was a dumbfuck. he viewed the world thru the eyes of a christian, of course it seemed "logical" to repent. the most important thing to do when constructing ur personal view of the universe is to get rid of all or ur previous assumptions. and believing that something "created" all this does not serve any purpose, other than complicating things to where an individual would have to sacrifice themselves to have a "healthy" life.

christianity is a pyramid scheme

What Pascal forgot to mention in his wager was that there are MANY gods to choose from. We have more than two choices (Christian God/ No God.) We have hundreds if not thousands of different spiritual beliefs.

For all we know you could live your life as the BEST Christian and find out when you die that it's really Zues who's running the show and now you're fucked in Hades! Aint after-life a bitch?

Also the wager assumes there is reward for the belief

Atheist's Wager

The Atheist's Wager is an atheistic response to Pascal's Wager. While Pascal suggested that it is better to take the chance of believing in a God that might not exist rather than to risk losing infinite happiness by disbelieving in a god that does, the Atheist's Wager suggests that:
A god may exist who will reward disbelief or punish belief. In the absence of clear knowledge of what if anything will benefit us hereafter it is better to concentrate on improving conditions here. [4]
You should live your life and try to make the world a better place for your being in it, whether or not you believe in God. If there is no God, you have lost nothing and will be remembered fondly by those you left behind. If there is a benevolent God, he may judge you on your merits and not just on whether or not you believed in him

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This is why I am still working it out in my head, I see some merit to the atheist's wager.....certainly if there is extant an omniscient, omnipotent divine being, he will surely know ahead of time what conclusions my puny little brain will reach regarding this very divine beings existence! So if the creator knows this all already, how can anyone be responsible for their thought processes or resulting actions?
My brain hurts!

pascal's wager is a pussy bet.

if you choose it, it basically means you can't imagine a world without god. so, you're going to bet on him.

there are far better & more logical reasons for the amazing universe we live in then god. and yes, by the way, the kicker...which god?

I didnt have any assumptions for any god in P'sW except that he be all powerful, all knowing and... omnipresent, benevolent? i cant remember if those were the god requirments.

Wavels said:

This is why I am still working it out in my head, I see some merit to the atheist's wager.....certainly if there is extant an omniscient, omnipotent divine being, he will surely know ahead of time what conclusions my puny little brain will reach regarding this very divine beings existence! So if the creator knows this all already, how can anyone be responsible for their thought processes or resulting actions?
My brain hurts!

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u dont have a puny brain, uve just noticed a huge flaw in the idea of the "allpowerful". this is all just a huge set of dominoes, everything that is done relies on what has already happened. so if choice is an illusion, how does anybody have the right to judge others? how can (and why would they) an all-knowing, benevolent creator punish folks for doing exactly what has been laid down for them.

is a racist evil? can u say that a boy who has learned throughout his whole life that (insert race) are disgusting animals that should be annihilated, is a bad person for killing a whole bunch of "innocents"? (dont misunderstand me, racism is a shitty thing, but the racist individual is no different than any other sheepish individual. anybody who accepts the logic of others without question, without strong interrogation)

what entropic posted is the only reasonable way to live life. as far as im concerned Xtians and the like are no different than Trekkie's.

ive thought about this too.

If there is a god i dont know if itd be so concerned with what a bunch of bacteria(humans) do in their day to day lives. But if for some reason it turns out that way id like to think that if you led a good life, werent destructive or hurtful, and were bascially a good person then it shouldnt matter if you believed in this god all along. Because believing in something you have no proof of is hard, if not illogical. There is just no way to prove any of the ideas that people have about these things, because theyre just that, ideas. And like Preo said above, who can say what is bad or good? We're just crazy apes percieving the world through mammalian senses. You cant expect your pet dog to understand how to type, so how can we expect us to understand the universe? I dont know if we have the ability.