"Lots of joy in my heart" - said the man using the threat of eternal torture to coerce people

Whenever a Christian tells me "if I wrong, I lose nothing, but if you're wrong, you'll suffer in hell forever." I usually just respond with, "but what if the other branches of Christianity are right and your specific one is wrong and you're still going to hell forever.

I like the Richard Feynman quote: “I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that cannot be questioned.” Someone once told me I was being arrogant for questioning God.

“If I die and God doesn’t exist, no harm no foul.” Actually, if your belief in God caused you to judge and condemn others, abuse or justify abuse, participate in colonialism, and repress your normal thoughts/urges/emotions to the point of shattered mental health … then that is harm done.

The right reply is: "What if we're both wrong?" Pascal's wager's biggest problem is that its a false dichotomy. It assumes there's only 2 options: Christianity vs Atheism. The real wager is actually every sect of ever religions past, present, and future vs every other sect of every religion past, present, and future vs atheism. Even within Christianity there are disagreements. Southern Baptist tend not to be too fond of Catholics and the Jehova's Witnesses think they're both wrong. Even within similar sects you get splits. The NIFB was made because the IFB wasn't bigoted enough for Steven Anderson. If you look at it this way, its an impossible bet. If you give all equal weight and give a random bet, its almost guaranteed you are wrong.

"The human eye with its optic perfection"

Fitting that he forgot the blind spot

I'd say the wildest part of Pascal's wager is "if you believe in God and you're wrong, you lose nothing", which is a huge assumption I rarely see questioned.  Maybe if you're a certain type of straight dude it doesn't feel like you lose anything, but believing in God necessitates following God's moral teachings, and for a lot of people that means losing a whole lot.  For women it often means losing equality with men, and the drop in self-worth that comes with believing half the population is innately better than you because of something none of you can control.  If you're gay or trans it means wasting the one precious life you have trying to deny who you are.  For so many people, asking them to follow the Christian God is asking them to actively work against living their best life.

"If you believe in God, and you're wrong, what do you lose?"
Me?  I lose everything.

pascal's wager goes like this for me: The religion that can come up with the worst hell is right.

I can't believe we're still doing Pascal's Wager almost 400 years later.

As someone who is actively going through evangelical deconstruction, this question has been the one that haunts me the most.  And this video actually helped put some of that dread to rest.  Thank you for making & sharing this; it's helped me more than you know. ❤

Do Christians not get that other religions exist?

A friend of mine broke up with her boyfriend of 4 years because they had disagreements about who's worship was right. His family was more traditional and believed that homosexuality was sinful, which upset her because she had friends who were LGBT+. Not to mention that her sister was a lesbian. Ultimately, his belief in his version of god meant that he had to lose a long-term relationship with one of the nicest people I've ever met. So yes, belief in god when he doesn't exist means you can lose something important.

Love.

People use Pascal's Wager all the time but what escapes me is why not one of these religious people question the morality of a deity that would create hell for people who choose to live differently in the first place.

Jesus knows what it would take for me to pick his side in Pascal's Wager and chooses to not convince me. At this point, it's on him.

I love the "if I'm wrong I lose nothing but if you're wrong torment forever" argument because that logic leads one to the conclusion you should worship the most cruel God possible, as if you're right you avoided the worst possible hell, and if you're wrong, you've lost nothing. But they don't have the critical thinking skills to realize that

God, I am so sick of Pascal’s Wager. It’s such a bad argument, I cringe into my shoes when people bring it up as some sort of great “gotcha” moment.

People like greg Locke saying they "lose nothing" is a joke, considering because of his beliefs, locke has lost his humanity.

I think this argument ignores that choosing the “wrong” religion would probably anger “god” more than sincere non-belief. Personally, I’m just gonna act like I had my AirPods in the whole time, probably safer than worshipping in “false” gods if the bibble is anything to go by

Putting aside the fact that the odds of the Christian God being real are incredibly low, my answer to the question "what if you're wrong?" is a simple:

"Well, then I'm wrong. That still doesn't change the fact that I genuinely searched for truth my whole life and all of the evidence pointed at a natural world free from the super natural. If the Christian God is real, then I'd have critical questions for him because I cannot understand how a God that's supposed to be so loving has such an awful representation in his supposed Holy Book.

What would I lose by becoming a Christian? My identity, my happiness, and likely my life.

I'm trans. I spent years in a religion that said it was wrong. I was suicidally depressed for most of that. I deconstructed my faith* and when I was free to become myself, my life finally started improving. I am now happy in a way I never was as a Christian, and I'm free to love people without telling them they're going to hell.

* For the people who say "ah ha! You just want to sin!" me being trans had nothing to do with my deconstruction. It was largely intellectual, spurred by learning more about science and seeing how it conflicts with a fundamentalist worldview. The only emotional aspect was that I conquered my fear of hell, and finally developed some self-esteem after years of spiritual and emotional abuse.
Realizations about my identity came months later, and were unrelated to religion.