There’re only two probably objections that anyone takes very seriously.
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The Empty Set Probability — This is an epistemological argument. God cannot be known, and therefore no assignments of probability can possibly be made. This means, bottom line, that you cannot establish a superdominance, and you therefore cannot know how you should wager. You face a dilemma Morris calls “epistemic nullity”. If true, this argument implies a futility in the Wager.
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The Zero Probability — This is the argument most natural to strong atheists. They might argue rationally that God cannot exist, perhaps because of certain contradictions and paradoxes, or esle because of a dearth of any empirical evidence. The fifty-fifty chance given to God’s existence ought to be a zero chance. Naturally, this argument, if true, reduces the Wager to an equal outcome matrix, and some say, a negative outcome for believing since it wastes time and effort.
Pascal’s third premise was that you must make the most useful decision, assuming you are rational. But even this has been argued against in manifold ways. A man who is a masochist might enjoy nothing more than an eternity of misery. Thus, a masochist would choose deliberately not to believe and would win the Wager by coming in the back door of it.
And there is the existential argument. Maybe you can’t make the most useful decision because you don’t really know what would be most useful. How do you know you don’t have the notions of bliss and misery all mixed up? Perhaps what your body experiences as misery, your eternal soul might experience as bliss, and vice versa.
Finally, there is the problem of variance. In other words, the heavenly reward might not be all it’s cracked up to be. Better than punishment, to be sure, but maybe only a little better. Maybe it’s no more significant than the difference between getting a million dollars and getting a million dollars and fifty cents. If believing is a chore, then it might not be worth the effort.
A couple of arguments remain that are fairly general in nature, and not directed at any particular portion of the Wager. (For those who might not know, Pascal’s Wager is actually not a single premise, but at least three, put together in a sort of haphazard disarray on scratch paper. Collectively, they are called the Pensees.)
The Immoral Wager Argument — Gambling on God’s existence might be a blasphemous act in and of itself, tantamount to turning God into a parlor game.
The Lottery Argument — If you play, you might win a lottery and you might not. Thought there are these, and only these two possibilities, you would certainly not say that your odds of winning are fifty-fifty, because you know your real chances are more like one in fifty million.
The Procrastination Argument — If all that is required is belief, then you will be rewarded equally whether you drop everything and believe now or whether you postpone believing until some later date, like say, your deathbed. Of course, then you risk dying suddenly, so this argument, because of its external risk assignment, is usually acknowledged as a red herring.
I think a lot of people here on this message board have been mislead to believe that, because there are so many arguments against the Wager, and because they seem, on the surface at least, to be formidable, the Wager has been officially and summarily debunked. But this is far from the case.
The fact is that Rescher, Mackie, and many others do conclude, when all is said and done, that the Wager is valid as proposed by Pascal. And let’s keep in mind here that we are talking about Blaise Pascal, the father of statistics and so much more. This was not some goofy thinker like Descartes, offering something silly like, “I think; therefore, I am.” This was one of the greatest thinkers who ever lived, working out a decision matrix.
Okay, next (maybe tomorrow) the objections to the objections.
