I think Pascal’s Wager is brilliant and the objections to it are really weak.
Here goes:
First, one must keep in mind that Pascal was writing to people that thought Christianity could be true. He wasn’t addressing dedicated atheists but rather people that could be considered agnostic. For someone that was sitting on the fence, Pascal argued that living a Christian life had huge upsides that were potentially infinite with limited downsides.
According to Pascal, if Christianity is true and you live a Christian life, you go to Heaven forever. That’s an infinite benefit. If Christianity is false and after death everything goes black, you still live a moral and virtuous life if you obey Christian teachings. You’re still better off being a Christian even if it turns out to be false.
The social sciences show again and again that Christians live longer, are less depressed, less suicidal, give more money to charity, volunteer more and are more civically engaged than atheists are in America. I could post links but I don’t want to.
So even if Christianity is false, the Christian still lives a happier life and enjoys the huge benefits of being Christian. (Also, prayer also has been shown to change the brain in a positive way.) Suicide rates in America have gone up 30% since 1999 and a big reason for this, in my opinion, is that religion is dying in America. The benefits of organized religion are huge.
Now, a typical objection to Pascal’s Wager is the “many gods” objection. The atheist will ask about all the other millions of potential gods and religions and what if they’re true and Christianity is not. The solution to this is simple: study the world religions and pick the one that is most likely to be true. According to Pascal, Christianity is the most likely religion to be true. Evidence for this are the hundreds of people that saw Jesus after His resurrection, miracles and various other philosophical arguments put forward by theologians like Saint Thomas Aquinas.
Islam is the second largest religion in the world. What if Islam is true? Well, according to Christianity, a devout Muslim isn’t necessarily going to Hell. According to Islam, a devout Christian isn’t necessarily going to Hell, either. God or Allah is the judge. So if one ends up picking the wrong religion, one could still go to heaven forever. But Christianity and Islam both believe that atheists are going to Hell. According to Christianity and Islam, a devout Jew isn’t going to Hell, either. And according to Judaism, a devout Christian or Muslim isn’t going to Hell, either.
So being a Christian, Muslim, or Jew (the 3 main religions) gives you the possibility of infinite happiness if any of those religions are true; being an atheist gives you a near 0 chance of infinite happiness.
A second common to objection to Pascal’s Wager is that God would not want someone to believe in Him just because they want to go to heaven. This is false according to Christianity. This is literally in the Bible. Jesus promises his followers a great reward in heaven. There is also the story of the Prodigal Son, where the son leaves the father, squanders his money on partying and revelry and comes back to the father simply because of self-interest. The father welcomes the son back. This is a metaphor for God. He wants us to come to him and doesn’t care about the reasons.
So, go ahead, believe in God and be a Christian. If Christianity is true, you go to heaven forever, if it’s false, you don’t even know it and you still live a virtuous life and enjoy the huge benefits of belonging to a religion.
The odds that a God exists that punishes Christians has no evidence for it, unlike the evidence for Christianity that has lasted for 2,000 years.
Pascal wins!