Pascal's Wager: The Many Gods Objection

Dr. Craig responds to the "many worlds" objection to Pascal's Wager.

We welcome your comments in the Reasonable Faith forums:

[_kidtripp]

Ah I get it. Pascal's Wager is not a standalone argument. It is part of an argument once other religions are knocked out, like Odin and others that Dr. Craig said. I am Catholic but I absolutely love Dr. Craig.

[ianmartinesq]

Thank you, Dr. Craig. In this day and age the many gods objection is so important that I think PW shouldn’t be offered publicly without addressing this objection. I have said for a long time that Pascal’s Wager can get you to the table of religion over naturalism, but it takes more argumentation to chose Christianity over any alternative.

[shockofGod]

What pascals wager does beautifully is show chosing God not atheism is more rational.

[mattm]

OK I have to say it...the human skull in the background is a little eerie :)

[brianw.]

Pascal addressed the "many gods" objection, too:

"I see then a crowd of religions in many parts of the world and in all times; but their morality cannot please me, nor can their proofs convince me. Thus I should equally have rejected the religion of Mahomet and of China, of the ancient Romans and of the Egyptians, for the sole reason, that none having moremarks of truth than another, nor anything which should necessarily persuade me, reason cannot incline to one rather than the other."

[kingvegetakinggoku]

How could you believe something you don’t believe?

[josepheridu]

Most pagan gods were personifications of nature, which means they do not fit the definiton of God given by the Pascal's Wager.

[manoloiborra]

Some fan of you suggested me this video, and it's amazing.
Long story short, you talk about probabilities and you arbitrarily decide of their value, and your whole argument rests on this. Sadly, you don't use these probabilities as an axiom, you use them like they're "logical", but you don't bother proving it. So your whole argument rests on nothing, and a single sentence would have been enough to explain it (but then it would be harder to hide that "nothing" under a whole lot

"if the alternatives are so improbable they can be safely ignored, for example that Odin or Zeus might turn out to be the true God, the probability of that is so utterly negligible that these can be sagely ignored and the argument will not be impaired."

Fine, then: what's the probability, exactly?
Why would these be less probable than any other "God", including the one(s) you happen to believe in?
And why would that "God" not prefer creatures who can actually doubt anything lacking evidence over creatures who blindly trust their faith? (Because, as you might easily understand it: we can think of an infinity of "Gods", all of those with equal probabilities. The Christian one is only one out of this infinity.) Can you claim the probability is negligible as well?
Good. Then do the maths, instead of claiming conclusions before they're done.

[melchior]

I asked this question in another video but nobody answered so I'll ask it again since it came up in this video.

What does the following term Craig is using mean? "Properly basic belief"

[stephenkaake]

Pascal’s wager is about justifying a belief

[dugonman]

I've always used this line of logistic when arguing the many gods arguemnt among hedonist.

"All paganism acknowledge a source power which all gods sprung from. Most paganism state that that source is impersonal or unconscious, without being. Christians argue that the source DOES have a consciousness, a being, and is also a personal god. So it is safe to assume that this being, which created all, his the true one and only god and the being who should be worshipped.

With that, we can analyze which religion is most likely true on its own premise and its own arguments. For instance, christianity states that god came to us as christ who died and ressurected. Islam, meanwhile, states that Mohammed was his greatest prophet and the koran is the word of god, without metaphor or double meaning. To prove christianity is false, you need to prove the resurrection itself is false. To disprove islam, the koran has to say something, which is the clean precise word of god, which is fundamentally wrong. Also, talking about the old testament exclusively to christians without bringing any of your objections to any rabbis or jews doesn't prove christianity wrong mind you, moreso that judaism could be wrong."

When I say this, though, I'll still get people citing poetic passages from the old testament and hedonists dogding accusations like neo from the matrix.

[juhadexcelsior]

Polytheism falls in on itself in a 2fold way

Multiple omnipotent entites that are separate in identity and personhood from one another? Impossible as omnipotence can never be in conflict with itself.

One omnipotent force and other minor "gods" and spiritual beings? Well we come squarely back to Christianity.

[NickSandt]

Perhaps Odin, Zeus, Thor, etc. were Yahweh’s brothers in the assembly of Gods described in Deuteronomy and Psalms? Zedek is Hebrew for Jupiter so Melchizedek can be translated to “my king Jupiter” but another theory I’ve seen is it could mean “my king of righteousness”

[irish_deconstruction]

0:46 Why is Craig arbitrarily saying Greek and Norse Paganism can be "safely ruled out"? Just because they are considered mythologies by most people doesn't mean they are improbable, in fact, I would argue polytheism would be a more probable version of theism than monotheism, as it completely dodges things like the Problem of Evil due to there being good gods that do good things and bad gods that do bad things in a polytheistic worldview.

2:10 There is the cost of deciding to sacrifice your intellectual and moral integrity and independence at the hands of a supposedly tri-omni being who exists. Judging by the contents of the Bible arguments like the Evidential Problem of Evil, believing in such a being on the grounds of pragmatism doesn't seem very wise.

2:18 Theism, on its own, also has no benefit. Can Dr Craig please explain how something like deism is more beneficial to believe in than naturalism?

[bengreen]

So how do you respond to the 'many gods' objection, Bill?

Oh - I just gloss over it by pretending it doesn't really exist.

[DarrenGedye]

I usually respond to the Many Gods objection with the analogy of claiming 1+1=2. How can we be sure that is the correct answer when there are so many incorrect answers? Have you investigated the claims that 1+1=3 or 4 or 5 or 6 or...

[houstonsam]

It seems to me that Pascal's wager assumes that God can be appeased with meaningless gestures and that faith is merely an insurance policy. I find no dialectical or rhetorical virtue of any kind in Pascal's Wager, not as epistemic and certainly not as apologetic.

Over six decades now I've sometimes felt close to God and sometimes far from Him, but I hope my (imperfect) faith is love and gratitude for His grace toward me rather than a rational calculation of how I can get the best odds from the House.

[Trollkvinnan]

Why is not beliving a reason to get tortured forever?
Every other Religion would say the same. 2000 years ago Christianity was so odd like Zeus today.

[stephenmerritt]

There are two gods in this world. The God who created us in his own image and the god whom we create in our own image. For the former there is only one, for the latter there are many, one for each one of us, for they are a reflection of ourselves. Christianity is the only theology that passes this test, and affirms God to be unlike us in every way.