Edit: To clarify, when I say "accept Pascal's Wager" I mean accepting the idea that way to do the most (expected) good is to prevent as many people as possible from going to hell, and cause as many as possible to go to heaven, regardless of how likely it is that heaven/hell exists (as long as it's non-zero).
I am a utilitarian and I struggle to see why I shouldn't accept Pascal's Wager. I'm honestly surprised there isn't much discussion about it in this community considering it theoretically presents the most effective way to be altruistic.
I have heard the argument that there could be a god that reverses the positions of heaven and hell and therefore the probabilities cancel out, but this doesn't convince me. It seems quite clear that the probability of a god that matches the god of existing religions is far more likely than a god that is the opposite, therefore they don't cancel out because the expected utilities aren't equal.
I've also heard the argument that we should reject all infinite utilities – for now it seems to me that Pascal's Wager is the only example where the probabilities don't cancel out, so I don't have any paradoxes or inconsistencies, but this is probably quite a fragile position that could be changed. I also don't know how to go about rejecting infinite utilities if it turns out I have to.
I would obviously love to hear any other arguments.
Thanks!
I would put it a different way.
If we use normal decision-making rules that many people use, especially consequentialists, we find that Pascal's wager is a pretty strong argument. There are many weak objections to and some more promising objections. But unless we're certain of these objections it seems difficult to escape the weight of infinity.
If we look to other more informal ways to make decisions- favoring ideas that are popular, beneficial, and intuitive, then major religions that claim to offer a route to infinity are pretty popular, arguably beneficial, and theism in general seems more intuitive to most people than atheism
I think that given we have no strong reason to reject Pascal's wager, I would suggest that people in general should do "due diligence" by investigating the claims and evidences for at least the major religions. If someone says hey I've spent 500 hours investigating Christianity and 500 hours investigating Islam and glanced at these other things and they all seem implausible... that's one thing. But I think it's hard (probably impossible) to justify not taking Pascal's wager without substantially investigating religious claims.
If for instance, you end up think there's 0.5% chance that Jesus was God or Mohammed was the messenger of God, that's pretty substantial.
How many hours do you think a reasonable person is obligated to spend investigating religions before rejecting the wager?