Topics Religion

Question Is this bad logic? As all religions claim they are right and all others wrong, then only one can be right (though they can all be wrong). And is Pascal's Wager now statistically a complete waste of time with so many religions to choose from? And why should the comparative age of a religion serve to lend it credence and respectability?

Accepted:
February 17, 2006

Comments

There are a lot of questions here.

First, I think your assumption that "all religions claim they are right and all others wrong" is false. I am a Christian, and neither I nor, I think, anyone else at my church would make any such claim. I believe there is profound truth in Christianity, and it is the right form of faith for me. But that is not to say that there is no profound truth in other faiths nor that they are not the right forms of faith for others.

Second, Pascal's wager, as I recall it, wasn't really specific to any one religion. Though if you did suppose that, in order to gain salvation, you had to follow one of the following five faiths, all of which were mutually exclusive, then you would be in a bit of a bind. But perhaps the conclusion should be that you should follow one of them. Which? Flip a five-sided coin.

That said, I think the going view is that Pascal's wager had other problems, anyway. See the discussion of it at the Stanford Encyclopedia.