On Pascal's Wager...

Pascal's Wager is the following:

« Vous avez deux choses à perdre : le vrai et le bien, et deux choses à engager : votre raison et votre volonté, votre connaissance et votre béatitude; et votre nature a deux choses à fuir : l'erreur et la misère. Votre raison n'est pas plus blessée, en choisissant l'un que l'autre, puisqu'il faut nécessairement choisir. Voilà un point vidé. Mais votre béatitude ? Pesons le gain et la perte, en prenant choix que Dieu est. Estimons ces deux cas : si vous gagnez, vous gagnez tout; si vous perdez, vous ne perdez rien. Gagez donc qu'il est, sans hésiter. »,

- Pensées, Blaise Pascal (1670)

The basic argument here is that

1- believing is harmless, and that if you believe and it doesn't turn out to be true, then you have lost nothing.
2- You have a pure dichotomy, only two choices, which sets the probability.

Let's take the first point. Religions do not only prescribe beliefs, but also actions. Accepting simply the existence of a God is unlikely to guarantee, in and of itself, entry into heaven. Action and belief need to work together to be sincere. So if one is to take Pascal's wager, then one must act on the belief in order to demonstrate that one's beliefs are sincere. Consider the person who actively learns of Pascal's wager, decides to lead a life of sin, with the calculation that one can always repent at the last minute in order to make good on Pascal's wager. Some may say that such a person is insincere in his repentance, since it was calculated from a young age, and at no time during his life did the person consider himself bound to act in a religiously correct way. Some may say that a pre-meditated deathbed acceptance is sufficient to satisfy the lord.

What is clear is that this person is making the minimum investment possible to earn God's grace. With this level of effort, it is clear that Pascal's wager is a good deal. One has literally lost very little effort. However, many would say true sincerity and salvation requires that one accept to do their best to live virtuously immediately from the moment of accepting the wager. In that case, what effort is required? well at minimum, say 3 hours of preparation etc... around a weekly mass, 1 hour a week of prayer. Over 60 years, that is 520 days of prayer. Consider that for every two hours one is awake, one will need an hour of sleep, and the cost rises to 780 days, or around two years. In addition, some percentage of income is also typically required. Say 10% as per the Catholic tithe. Over a thirty year career, that is three years' wages.

The second aspect of this wager is that one has only two choices. Belief or un-belief. But in order to sincerely express ones belief one has to adopt a method of practice, a religion. Each religion prescribes the behaviors required to join the lord at the end of mortal life, and the behaviors and required beliefs differ. Many, perhaps most of these religions state that theirs is the one and only way to achieve grace, and that all others are damned.

So one must not make a choice of two options, but choose the correct religion among the ones on offer. According to Religioustolerance.org there are roughly 34,000 choices within Christianity. So the chance of choosing the correct way to God is not 50%, but less than 1 in 34,000, without considering the possibility that the correct path might be some form of hinduism, buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Islam, or any of the thousands of other paths available. let's generously assume that there are 50,000 paths in total.

So Pascal's wager is realistically stated as: Are you willing to bet two years of your life and three years salary against the 1:50,000 chance of getting into heaven?