your-god-is-too-small May. 2016 | Page 140

The second most common refutation is an “argument from inauthentic belief,” which states that if god exists he will see through our false belief if we are not genuinely convinced of his existence, basically refuting the premise that we can freely choose to believe. The last of the major rebuttals, though less well known, is the “argument of assumptions.” This asserts Pascal assumed a false dichotomy; god exists or doesn’t exist. There are actually innumerable possibilities such as god doesn’t exist, god exists and is malevolent, or god exists and is benevolent. Without going into the math here, which results from only adding two of god’s possible natures to the equation, choosing no belief in god is statistically the best decision when applyin g decision theory to these three possibilities. Explosion of Christian Denominations P a g e | 140