There isn’t one. To reject Pascal’s Wager, you just have to conclude that you don’t care about infinity. Taking Pascal’s Wager is the correct utilitarian response. You probably need to weight religions both by how likely they are to be true and how likely you can “win” conditional upon them being true.
Amanda Askell has a good rundown on why most objections to Pascal’s Wager are bad.
Askell’s first response is a non sequitur. The person deciding to take Pascal’s wager does so under uncertainty about which of the n gods will get them into heaven. The response is assuming you’re already in the afterlife and will definitely get into heaven if you choose door A.
However, the n-god Pascal’s wager suggests that believing in any one of the possible gods (indeterminate EU) is better than believing in no god (-infinite EU). Believing in all of them is even better (+infinite EU). There’s nothing in the problem statement saying that each god will send you to hell for believing in any other god (although it can be inferred from the Ten Commandments that Yahweh will do so).
I’m not sure I buy her last argument. Pascal’s Wager does seem like a reductio ad absurdum of expected utility theory. Because if you accepted, it then, by equivalent logic, you would have to perform every other belief, no matter how improbable, as long as it had an infinite payoff. For example, somebody could tell me that if I stepped on a crack, the universe will end. And since there’s a non-zero chance that they’re correct, I couldn’t step on any cracks ever again. As long as these potentially infinite payoff outcomes aren’t mutually exclusive, you would have to accept them. And there’s no bound on the number of them. Imagine being OCD in this world! Since this is clearly insane, there must be a fundamental flaw with how expected utility theory deals with infinities. Yet another reason to embrace virtue ethics :)
In theory, you could be stuck doing bizarre things like that. But I don’t think you would in this world. Most reasonably taking infinity seriously, probably involves converting to Christianity or if not that Islam or if not that some other established religions.
Major religions normally condemn occultic practices and superstitions from outside that practice. If someone comes up to you and claims to be a demon that will inflict suffering, someone who has already bet on the Christian God or Allah for instance, can just say go away- I’m already maximizing my chance of infinite reward and minimizing my chance of infinite punishment.
There isn’t one. To reject Pascal’s Wager, you just have to conclude that you don’t care about infinity. Taking Pascal’s Wager is the correct utilitarian response. You probably need to weight religions both by how likely they are to be true and how likely you can “win” conditional upon them being true.
Amanda Askell has a good rundown on why most objections to Pascal’s Wager are bad.
Askell’s first response is a non sequitur. The person deciding to take Pascal’s wager does so under uncertainty about which of the n gods will get them into heaven. The response is assuming you’re already in the afterlife and will definitely get into heaven if you choose door A.
However, the n-god Pascal’s wager suggests that believing in any one of the possible gods (indeterminate EU) is better than believing in no god (-infinite EU). Believing in all of them is even better (+infinite EU). There’s nothing in the problem statement saying that each god will send you to hell for believing in any other god (although it can be inferred from the Ten Commandments that Yahweh will do so).
I’m not sure I buy her last argument. Pascal’s Wager does seem like a reductio ad absurdum of expected utility theory. Because if you accepted, it then, by equivalent logic, you would have to perform every other belief, no matter how improbable, as long as it had an infinite payoff. For example, somebody could tell me that if I stepped on a crack, the universe will end. And since there’s a non-zero chance that they’re correct, I couldn’t step on any cracks ever again. As long as these potentially infinite payoff outcomes aren’t mutually exclusive, you would have to accept them. And there’s no bound on the number of them. Imagine being OCD in this world! Since this is clearly insane, there must be a fundamental flaw with how expected utility theory deals with infinities. Yet another reason to embrace virtue ethics :)
In theory, you could be stuck doing bizarre things like that. But I don’t think you would in this world. Most reasonably taking infinity seriously, probably involves converting to Christianity or if not that Islam or if not that some other established religions.
Major religions normally condemn occultic practices and superstitions from outside that practice. If someone comes up to you and claims to be a demon that will inflict suffering, someone who has already bet on the Christian God or Allah for instance, can just say go away- I’m already maximizing my chance of infinite reward and minimizing my chance of infinite punishment.
:( this is not the answer I was hoping for… (I don’t believe in heaven or hell so the prospect of accepting the wager is a bit depressing)
Thanks a lot though for the response and the really helpful link!
You’re welcome!