The idea of Pascal’s wager is that you can compare the benefits of belief or non-belief in God against the predicted pay-off depending on whether or not God actually exists. The argument arose long before the field of psychology, so it could not possibly account for what has been found out about how human minds actually work.
The four cell matrix gives us yes/no options for belief arrayed against yes/no options for God’s existence; thus
- belief in a God that does not exist pays off with wasted faith
- non-belief in a God that does not exist pays off with an atheist being right
- belief in a God that does exist pays off with eternal salvation
- non-belief in a God that does exist pays off with eternal damnation
There are two key problems: the ambiguity of the term “belief” and the inadequacy of the idea of payoffs.
Does the term “belief” refer to genuine heartfelt cognition and emotion, so called “true belief,” or to mere profession of some kind? If it refers to something genuine in the true belief sense then there is a fatal flaw in even using argument to affect it. True belief does not arise out of argumentation. There is a vast literature on how difficult it is to convince anyone of anything in both of the contexts in which this issue is central: education and politics. Given the fact that the miraculous arising of true belief is not a plausible outcome of applying the logic of a payoff matrix we must conclude that this argument is doomed to fail as a persuasive device, therefore we must assume that the wager is reduced to mere statements about belief.
Since we must necessarily be discussing the profession of belief, there is the problem of the cost of inauthenticity. We now know that there is a cost to professing belief that is inconsistent with our true sentiments. The payoff of professing belief when it is inconsistent with your emotional commitments and thought processes is some form of psychological anguish in the present. The wager does not account for this cost, therefore the payoff matrix is effectively voided, even if it had some chance of persuading someone, which it doesn’t.
Pascal’s wager is merely an internally consistent justification for previously existing beliefs. It is nullified by the scientific facts that logical arguments are not capable of causing true belief to arise and that it did not even contemplate the psychological costs of stating beliefs out loud that are not congruent with inner thoughts an feelings.