The Logic of Religion--Belief in an After-life

Thanks for introducing the interesting topic for this debate, I find it a good debate to serve as an inaugural for me. Your position is really similar to Pascal's Wager, which is a believe that he held that it would be better to bet on the existence of a deity than to deny one. His logic was that if the deity existed, and you denied him, that you essentially denied yourself of an eternal afterlife of happiness. If you do wager that a deity exists, you have eternal salvation and risk nothing during the life on Earth, and hence it would always be best to argue for the existence of a deity than rejecting it. There are several logical fallacies with this proposition: First, I'd argue that the assumption you ought to follow a religious edict to attain salvation is ridiculous - blindly believing a secular construct such as a church doesn't lead to salvation, but rather living by the principles is what does. In other words, by attending mass you're no better a Catholic than an atheist - it's the implementation of Christ's beliefs into your life that will earn you the privilege of salvation. The implication is that believe is an insufficient means at achieving the infinite benefit you describe, and thus the wager fails. Second, I'd argue that the Atheist's Wager is more appealing at a utilitarian scale. It contends that living as a good person in the secular would please a deity if he does, indeed, exists. And if he doesn't exists, you've increased the net utils within a society anyways, and thus are a morally "good" individual. From the consequentialist perspective, it doesn't matter whether you believe in a god or don't, it's the actions that will speak for themselves. Furthermore, I'd argue that a deity would prefer an individual following the Atheist's Wager over Pascal's Wager. The concept in modern monotheistic structures is the concept of choice - individuals are bestowed with the liberty to make a choice to be either morally porous or morally good. Pascal's wager seems to imply that it is better to coerce individuals into accepting a religious structure and religion in the hope of them becoming believers, but I'm sure that a god would be more benevolent to a person who lived morally than a person who did it simply to do it. The implication is simple: I am extremely skeptical that a god is capable of forgiving a murderer and not a moral unbeliever. Third, I'd say that Pascal's Wager is logically unappealing because it functions under the model that it is true because it cannot be proven untrue. It's only justification is that it would be comparatively better to believe than to not believe, but that is blatantly not the case. There are multiple examples: Example A: The coercion of American Indian (the new politically correct term.. go figure) tribes into Christianity by the British and the French, and the coerced "Christianification" of Native African tribes has led to a repression of their social systems and values, which I'd argue is the ultimate form of subjugation and thus that moral imperialism or ethnocentrism is morally repulsive. Forcing non believers to adopt a system of belief under the agenda of "helping" them achieve eternal salvation disproportionately rejects minority rights, which I'd argue is also unjustified. Example B: Religious edicts are often extraneous and an inconvenience to individuals, which would mean sacrificing utils (measures of happiness). Insofar as Pascal's Wager contends that it maximizes utils and instead restricts and rejects utils, it's antithetical to it's own purpose and must be rejected. Finally, and perhaps the most blunt, I'd argue that Pascal's Wager leads to eternal damnation. I doubt eternal felicity can be won as a result of a coldly calculated, extremely cynical wager. If the deity is vengeful or ascribes to a merit-based framework, I'd say that the god would rather punish than reward the immoral means and attempt to secure his trust. Pascal's Wager ought to be rejected and the Atheist's Wager is comparatively more appealing. *Note: I'm not prompting everyone that is religious to deny religion, nor am I condemning the religious at all. The purpose of this debate is to analyze whether trivializing faith as promoted by Pascal's Wager is worth it or not. In other words, the positions presented by the negation are neither representative nor meant to represent the author, and in no way are meant to be offensive to anyone. Please view this debate from a logical perspective and analyze it by quality, not bias.