Pascal's Wager is a Sound Argument to Believe in God

1. I would like to highlight an important part of the quote you have selected. "insofar as theists, taken across all possible worlds, are on average better off than atheists" This is an assumption. It is not supported. 2. The problem with the isolation of the "Which deity?" question from the "Do I believe?" question is that in order to determine payoffs for corner of the game where God exists, certain fundamentals must be known about God, namely how one will be rewarded for their belief choice. And this is no trifling matter, as to make a dominant strategy dominant, we must know that the payoffs in that column are greater than each payoff in the all other columns. And if we isolate the question of which deity to believe in, then we have no way of determining the payoffs for belief. As I said before, if a God is truly unknowable (which you have not contested) then the payoff is as likely to be any number as any other number, so if we use expected values the positive and negative payoffs cancel out, resulting in the payoffs in each square of God exists being zero plus the payoffs in God does not exist. However, if we decide that we can know something about God, namely that He rewards those who believe in His specific religion, things get worse. We must now incorporate all of the eternal suffering into our expected value as well as the one correct choice that results in eternal reward. With two options, we are faced with the same dilemma as before, namely that the payoffs cancel out. But as we know, there are more than two options, meaning that the expected value is negative infinity, the same as the expected value for atheists. The dilemma stands. 3a. The ball game you now describe is quite different from Pascal's Wager when you consider the unknowability of God. In the ball game you describe, the payoffs are known, making it a symmetric game. However, in the game of choosing whether or not to believe in God, nothing about the payoffs is known for God's existence. Therefore, all possible outcomes for belief if God exists are equally likely, so when evaluating the payoffs for the God exists half of the game the expected values cancel out, leaving you with zero. Considering this, if we were to actually represent this scenario as a game, this would be more accurate: A. You play, and win, and the ball is green, and something happens but you don't know what. B. You play, and win, but the ball is not green, and something happens but you don't know what. C. You play, and lose, and you have simply lost money. (The cancellation means the opportunity cost doesn't actually change the payoffs as I mentioned previously. D. You don't play, gaining nothing and losing nothing. In this scenario, the only way you could conceivably lose money is by playing. Thus, not playing strictly dominates playing and this is what any rational person would choose. 3b. You are misusing the quote. Obviously Pascal does not mean we can know literally nothing about God, for if that were true then how would we know that we could know nothing? That by itself is contradictory. What this really means is that beyond the basic definition for God (which I provided in the previous round, with citation) we can know nothing about God. i.e., God's specific intentions, what God may look like, if God created an afterlife, etc. Thus, the basic nature of God can be said to be from this definition only, self-contradictory. With that in mind, we know that the probability of the half God exists is 0%, and thus that half cannot be included in dominance calculations. Over to Pro.