Pascals Wager is not a logic fallacy

Introduction:Let us examine Pascal's wager: "1. God is, or He is not" This is a simple case of the Law of the Excluded middle[1]. However, even this simple statement raises questions regarding semantics, especially with the term "God." In the sense of Pascal's original intention, the "God" being referenced here is a specific god; the Christian God[2]. However, some may argue more generally and extrapolate Pascal's wager to pertain to any god. In the interest of thoroughness, I shall demonstrate that both interpretations lead to logically fallacies. Prior to evaluating each of these two cases, I shall post a few more lines of the argument, for simplicity: "2. A Game is being played... where heads or tails will turn up. 3. According to reason, you can defend neither of the propositions. 4. You must wager. (It's not optional.)" Each of these is a premise in its own right, which I accept without further comment. Case 1: The Christian God Since this is the most common and likely interpretation, I will address this one first. In this sense, the "God is, or He is not" becomes, "The Christian God is, or He is not." It is still a valid statement, adhering to the Law of the Excluded middle. However, in practice, Pascal's wager is often levied against atheism. Such implementations of the Wager invoke the fallacy of the false dilemma[3]. There are many options between Christianity and atheism. By way of example (but not limitation), we have: Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Greek mythology, Roman mythology, Egyptian mythology, Norse mythology, Native American religion, and a whole host of others. Given the interpretation that "God" in the wager is the "Christian God." then "He is not" encompasses, not just atheism, but all non-Christian religious beliefs as well. To see the repercussions of this, we will continue through the rest of the argument: "5. Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing." Here we can see the implicit treatment of "He is not" as referring only to atheism. Indeed, if we believe in the Christian God and are right, we gain all. If we are wrong, we lose nothing. (I will note that we do, in fact, lose something: the effort required to bring us to believe in God and the requirements in living in accordance with that believe, which the argument will subsequently acknowledge as a "finite stake." This is, however, immaterial to my argument.) As we have demonstrated, reducing the choice to Christianity or atheism is a false dilemma. But what if we interpret it as including all non-Christian religions? When we do this, we eliminate the false dilemma, but render the inference "if you lose, you lose nothing" false. If, for example, the Muslim God is the true God, yet we wagered on the Christian God, we stand to lose a great deal, perhaps infinitely so (eternal punishment). In summary of this case: treatment of "he is not" as only atheism invokes the fallacy of the false dilemma, while treatment of "he is not" as all non-Christian philosophies invalidates the statement that losing in a wager for the Christian God risks nothing. Case 2: Any god In this interpretation "God is" refers to any possible god. As such, "He is not" necessarily refers to the atheistic position. This allows us to treat it as such without invoking a false dilemma. Similar problems regarding the rewards and loss arise here as well. Truly, if we wager in a god and lose, we lose nothing, and this inference holds in this case. However, we no longer have a guarantee of an infinite reward against which to weigh it. We may believe in a god (either specifically or generally) but any reward depends on which kind of god actually exists and which god we ended up believing in. As stated, belief in one god when another god actually exists could end in punishment, rather than reward. There is no guarantee, or even a reasonable expectation of reward, should we wager that God is and win. In summary of this case: treatment of "God is" as any god eliminates the potential for a false dilemma, but invalidates the statement that winning the wager necessarily results in infinite reward. Conclusion: In my argument, I have employed the tactic of Case Analysis[4] to demonstrate that all interpretations of the argument lead to some fallacy. Thus, one cannot employ Pascal's wager without invoking one of the aforementioned fallacies, making logical fallacy inherent in the argument itself. [1] http://plato.stanford.edu...[2] "Pascal formulated the wager within a Christian framework," http://en.wikipedia.org...[3] http://en.wikipedia.org...[4] http://en.wikipedia.org...