A Comment on Pascal's Wager

A highly distilled form of Blaise Pascal’s famous “wager” may be stated as follows:

If God exists then we have everything to gain by believing that He exists, but we have everything to lose if He exists and we decide that He does not. Naturally, if God does not exist then there is nothing to be gained or lost by either believing or not believing in Him. Therefore, the wise, no-brainer “wager” is to believe in the existence of God and act accordingly.

… Uh, actually, I just found out that what I was going to say has already been said better by others. What I was going to say was that the desired/induced result of Pascal’s wager is no belief at all: it is merely lip service. But, like I said, this problem has been nicely addressed by many others, see, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager#Does_not_constitute_a_true_belief