[VeritatisSplendor]

APD: Does the above mean that you were using "irony" or Pascal was?

Physicist:
I was using irony. The claims a religion makes about heaven or hell are totally irrelevant to whether it should be believed or not. Pascal's Wager is one of the most foolish arguments ever presented.

You are both ignorant about this.

Pascal's Wager is NOT repeat NOT NOT NOT an argument intended to intellectually convince. Pascal, who invented the modern theory of probability, was much too logical for that!

Pascal's Wager is aimed ONLY at people who have ALREADY intellectually accepted belief in God from OTHER arguments, but are feeling EMOTIONAL reservations and can't make the "leap of faith" even though they intellectually accept the arguments for Christianity.

This will make no sense to those non-Christians who cannot imagine that there are actually real intellectual non-emotional arguments for Christianity, but the more intelligent kind of non-Christian is capable of appreciating that there ARE reasonable intellectual arguments for Christianity and that the great thinkers who were Christian were not simply deluded fools!

[VeritatisSplendor]

Typo in my last post -- at one point I spoke of "belief in God" and elsewhere "belief in Christianity" -- I didn't mean to be drawing a distinction here, all references should have been to "belief in Christianity".

[Physicist]

Pascal's Wager is aimed ONLY at people who have ALREADY intellectually accepted belief in God from OTHER arguments, but are feeling EMOTIONAL reservations and can't make the "leap of faith" even though they intellectually accept the arguments for Christianity.

It makes no sense to get faith from an argument of any kind.