alt Hacker NewsI've always thought that surely an all-knowing god would consider Pascal's Wager to be rather mercenary and insincere, and it wouldn't count.
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People always leave off the second half of Pascal's Wager. Pascal's Wager is not simply that you can map out the odds vs risk and decide being a theist is more practical. But rather that if you take the odds, decide to be a theist, then start acting like one (participating in rituals, living like one, practicing what is preached, etc) then you may find God through those actions.
Or maybe he'd even penalize you for it.
It's important to recall that an all-knowing God isn't necessarily very compassionate, or even rational. Some of the people I've known who knew the most have been the biggest assholes. Or insane.
What if there's a god, but he punishes humans for believing he exists, just for fun? Where's your wager now?
Judaism has, outside some mystical currents, less of an emphasis on "well, do you really believe?" than in Christianity, and more of an emphasis on rule-following (and studying how to navigate those rules) as the basic bargain between God and man.
EDIT: My bad, I missed that Neumann asked to be baptised, so he wasn't going back to the Judaism of his ancestors through his Pascal's Wager-esque step.
A god who didn't like rules lawyering would ruin a lot of people's plans https://www.npr.org/2019/05/13/721551785/a-fishing-line-enci...