What You Lose by Being Religious | An Atheist's Response to Pascal's Wager

50 years I missed so much. You are so correct

Nonsense

F in the chat for everyone who's never had bacon

The main flaw in Pascal's Wager is that it is an Appeal to Consequences fallacy. The potential consequences of a claim being true have no bearing on whether or not the claim is actually true. If I were to claim that I have a magical elixir that will grant the drinker eternal life, health, and happiness, and that I will sell anyone a bottle of it for $5000, only a fool would buy it. Yet when clergy claim that believing in their god and giving them money each week will have the same effect, people accept it in droves.

I think it’s a misuse of the wager to view it as an argument for belief in and of itself. I don’t think Pascal was naive to think someone could turn on and off belief. It was more of a practical step for individuals who were struggling with their faith and wanted a way to see some benefit to the religious practice while sorting out their beliefs. The wager is very odd to outsiders because they aren’t already involved in the community and engaged with the rituals. I think we see the strength of the wager as individuals deconstruct from their faith and struggle with the fear of getting it wrong.

I truly love this approach!

Nothing whatsoever is lost by being religious.
In fact ... far MORE is gained by religion than merely what is imagined to be lost.

There's so many misunderstandings and misleading claims in this video. It's truly sad. To anyone lucky enough to see this years after it was posted: read the Gospel and think for yourself.

Strange..

A bit too dogmatic in some areas, but generally a video I agree with. Well done! 👏👏

If you were a true born again Christian your fear of ending up in hell should've been gone and not something that continues.

You can't lose your salvation once you have it.

After getting saved you can sin until you turn blue, and you will still end up in heaven instead of hell due to being saved because salvation is a gift from God and if God were to send anyone to hell for sinning after getting saved then he would be a liar.

What we lose for committing sins as true born again Christians are rewards in heaven.

We still sin every single day even as true born again Christians there is nothing that we can do about it due to having a sinful nature, in some way or form you're going to sin but despite any sin that you commit if you are still saved then you will not end up in hell.

I'll never lose it on not watching your sad videos😊

There's only 3 options:
- We cease to exist;
- There are multiple gods/aliens and they're fighting for us;
- God/Jesus is real.

I choose the latter because I exist and it makes no sense for the universe to make me self-aware (unlike the animals) just so I can dread dying everyday. And because it makes no sense that multiple gods would be disputing for our attention instead of just choosing their chosen ones. There's enough people to go around.

It all points to one God. The one who became man and died for his creation. The most ludicrous and simple thing ends up being the truth.

Great video. Thank you.

One more thing, you also lose the ability to marry who you want to marry. I had a great uncle who was excommunicated from the Catholic church for marrying a divorced Protestant. Because of that, many of my more religious family members no longer wanted to have anything to do with him. I really felt bad for both of them.
This was post-war Germany in the 1950s, where things were taken a lot more seriously.

Buddhism, at least the denomination I follow, only has one rule about sex: try very hard not to hurt anyone. But then again, many people don't think Buddhism qualifies as a religion.

We missed a lotta things in our life, but there is one more thing brother. You missed the point !

Hi. I'm an orthodox Jew who did not grow up this way. I agree with you however on this.

Wrong. You willingly sacrifice your ability for independent thought. You make yourself massively more susceptible to manipulation by the plutocracy and by surreptitious church leaders. You waste tons of money, time and resources which could be far far better spent helping those in need, solving environmental crises, ensuring your retirement, .. You diminish the acceptance and beneficial use of science. You make yourself substantially more susceptible to becoming a source of bigotry, sexism and intolerance. You will likely promote overpopulation, lack of prudent population control methods and women's reproductive rights. And you actively propagate these liabilities to those around you and your progeny.

🫀🧠🫀

To me, it's not what you gain or lose by being religious, it's about reality, and I prefer reality over a fantasy.

To worship the God of the Bible and the Quran, is to worship evil.

How wicked is a new born baby, so many of whom God murdered in the flood? Surely the most evil action in Earth’s factual and/or fictional history is the drowning of millions of people and animals - including their new born children, who could not possibly have offended God.

God allegedly instructed Joshua to enter Jericho and kill every man, woman and child. He further instructed the Israelites to kill every man, woman, child and suckling plus their innocent animals if they found one person in any village, town or city who did not worship him.

Did 40 children deserve to be mauled to death by a bear for calling a prophet baldy? Well God thought so, which is why he allegedly ordered the bear to carry out that massacre.

After forcing Pharaoh to not free the Israelites (by harding his heart), God chose to punish the Egyptians by killing their first born children - because Pharaoh diid what God had forced him to do. Not only is that an example of evil injustice and infanticide, but it is an example of absolute stupidity. Even after Pharaoh had agreed to free the slaves, God stopped him by supernatural force - and then punished other peoples' children because Pharaoh carried out God's will against Pharaoh’s will.

God instructs that a man should have his bride killed after discovering she is not a virgin. Which is the greater sin, sex before marriage or murder? According to the Bible, murder is not only a lesser sin - but a necessary instrument of justice against the monstrous sin of sex before marriage. How ridiculously evil is that?

In Psalm 135 verse 9 God gives his advice on achieving happiness as “Happy is he who dashes an infant against a rock”. So, according to the Bible, if you wish to be happy, dash an infant against a stone or rock.

I could go on about approval of slavery (including selling children as sex slaves), child sacrifice as a thanks to God for helping win battles, having One's son killed for coming home drunk, killing children for lack of respect for their parents (even if the parents were child abusers or murderers), eating of babies...etcetera…
These are certainly not MY morals and should not the morals of a good god. These examples are among the reasons why I, who nearly became a priest, am an Atheist - and happier for it.

Finally: How can a moral person worship a god who boasts about how he created evil in Isaiah 45 verse 7?

Considering this and a multiplicity of other evidence, I have to conclude that to worship God is to worship evil.

As a vegetarian Atheist, I agree with most of what you say - except for the chance of not eating pigs. Pigs are among the most intelligent, loving, loyal fellow mammals on Earth and are well documented as having risked their lives to save their human owners. Here are 2 Examples:  
Theo risked his life to alert his sleeping lady human to a fire. She escaped but Theo died. 
Lulu risked her life by lying in the street to stop a car, in order to lead the driver to her lady owner, who was having a heart attack. The driver called the ambulance and the lady was saved.  
There are many more examples of animals saving humans, often losing their own lives - including dolphins who have saved people from sharks, only to be killed by the sharks.  
These example illustrate that guardian angels are not fairylike humans with wings - but come in the form of fellow Earthlings, who are not always human.

Pascals Wager was a surrender to fear instead of standing up for truth.

Thanks!

You lose nothing by believing in unicorns but you don't because they don't exist.

Pascals wager only works if the god is too stupid to realise the atheist is only lying that he believes in god.

Thanks for this video. I wish you had said more. As a former Evangelical Christian who was indoctrinated and groomed from early childhood. I had spent most of my "considering others better than yourself," putting other people's needs above my own. If I someone asked for my help. I would ignore my plans, desires and finances to be provided for someone else in order to serve God. Even my choice of college and career was determined by how I could serve and please God.

I'm 72 years old. I have never believed in anything supernatural. I loose trust in the judgment of anyone who does believe in supernatural things. People who believe Pascal's wager do loose something with me and probably many other non believers.

Not to mention they lose out on brain development. In their view humans were designed to develop 1 way but then their god made it so his religion would shrink their brains and lead to a ~20% drop in intelligence. Seems like a strange belief system.

Self respect. Fun. Friendship with people who aren’t sexually identical to you. Peace. I am truly fearless from an existential standpoint because I don’t think a supernatural being is pointing an invisible gun at my head.

If I believe in god then I lose my logic, reasoning and freedom. Why should I lay my bets on any single god.

The only thing that you can lose is nothing, if you just say, if a God appears right at my side and says “ I really exist , so you can believe in me”! Then and only then, is when I believe in a God!!!! But I will risk saying, I won’t believe unless that happens !!!

Most of

All of the Gods that I have known are ones that Governments or Autocrats have invented to make people obey them!!!!

So, basically life should be about pleasure?

So basically you miss out on sensory pleasures.

Drinking alcohol isn't good even if you're an atheist (and I am one).

any god that would punish me indefinitely for a finite crime is not worth my worship. Also, if I do end up going to hell why would I be punished, yes I am not under the structure of the Christian heaven but wouldn't satan commend me for not believing in his biggest enemy.

What you lose by being a believer: Having a good life where you can cut lose, its a common belief that thiers a limit to forgiveness if you just keep sinning. That basically you need to repent to be forgiven and you didn't repent if you go ahead and do it again the next day. That being said from someone on the fence even many none believer bussiness men and women have found tithing the practice of donating 10% of your earnings to a church to be a sound economic decision which sounds like an arguement for gods existance.

I'm not an atheist, but this was very well reasoned. Well done!

“You missed the opportunity to make sweet guiltless love too any and all thinks” 💀

If you skipped being an Atheist you could’ve sinned more. Imagine not being able to have sex with children and animals without guilt. 😢

Something that often occurs to me: even if someone offered me many millions of dollars to believe that 2+2=5, I could not force myself to believe it. IOW, a religion can offer great benefits, but if they require you to believe nutty stuff, it doesn't work.

In Buddhism, the only thing your should feel guilty about in your sex life is if you commit adultery (which you should definitely feel guilty about regardless anyway), there is no need to feel guilty for liking the same sex in Buddhism.

so the all powerful all knowing god is easily fooled according to pascal wager freaks... " make out" you are a believer? .. hahah.. pathetic reasoning with a capital P

Bro just wants to live a life on sin

Most importantly, if you are religious, you don't get invited to the Evil Atheist Baby Barbecue And Orgy. So you miss out on the social event of the year.

Now this is plain stupid.

1. Sexuality - you can love whoever you want, God still loves you
2. Money - you can use money however you want, nowhere in the Bible it tells you how to use it, it just encourages being a good person and giving to the poor
3. Eternal damnation - you're foolish to believe people live their life in fear of eternal damnation, but they live their life with happiness knowing that life does not end when we die, knowing there's something after.
4. You can't shape your life however you want - well, aside from being a criminal, what does the bible tell you to stop from doing what job you want / live to your best potential.

It's literally not even worth watching till the end because each argument is a stupid lie.

If I could weigh each other out. I'd say spending eternity in torment carries way more weight than the possibilty of more "time" on earth which is miniscule compared to the prospect of eternity. Still not convinced that this proposition is bad.

Is there anything I missed? What else is there to lose by being religious?