The Idiocy Of Pascal's Wager

There is no shortage of atrociously poor arguments for the existence of God, nor is there a shortage of arguments in favor of believing in God without confirmation of his existence.  Among the latter is Pascal's Wager.  Respected by some even in the present time, the wager suffers from grave errors that render the entire effort completely worthless.  Keep in mind that the existence of a deity is not an unprovable matter [1] and that my harsh refutation of the wager does not equate to a refutation of theism.

Pascal's Wager insists that it is somehow rational to believe that and/or act as if God exists even in the absence of confirmation.  If God exists, then the theist (or at least the theist affiliated with a particular religion) will enjoy a positive afterlife, and perhaps an existentially fulfilling terrestrial life before that.  If God does not exist, then the theist, having perhaps lived a fulfilling life already, ceases to exist--in other words, nothing happens as a result of God's nonexistence.  Atheists and agnostics are allegedly on the more concerning side of this wager.  If God does not exist, nothing happens when they die, but if he does, they will suffer consequences in the afterlife.

The wager is at best a shallow attempt to persuade someone to live in a certain way without demonstrating to them that the lifestyle in question would actually be rooted in reality.  It is used to pressure people into choosing a particular type of theism based upon the mere logical possibility that an agnostic or atheist might ultimately regret having not committed to a specific deity.  Of course, this inevitably reduces down to a pathetic stance of faith, not a rationalistic decision, which is hardly surprising given that Pascal erroneously denied in his Pensees that absolute certainty is possible, whatever the subject.

There are a number of horrifically invalid assumptions that plague Pascal's Wager.  First of all, it treats the issue of God's existence as if it is completely unable to be resolved by the use of logic, when this is demonstrably untrue [1].  Additionally, this wager assumes that the existence of God automatically means that there is an afterlife, and that God must have some sort of moral nature.  One of its most significant flaws, however, is that it treats human existence as if it is at its core a series of wagers hinging on a central wager.  Legitimate skepticism is not a wager for or against anything, and thus the person who withholds affirmative belief (or the inverse) when a point cannot be demonstrated is not wagering anything.

Appeals to ignorance never influence anyone except for the intellectually sluggish or deficient, for they are nothing more than a method of coaxing people into believing something which cannot be proven.  Thankfully, the existence of an uncaused cause can be proven, and the deity of Christianity seems to be synonymous with the uncaused cause due to significant historical evidence.  Pascal's bullshit methods of apologetics can do nothing to undermine legitimate apologetics based upon rationalism.

[1].  https://thechristianratinalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-uncaused-cause.html