Comment by TFNA
17 hours ago
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.
True, but I believe Pascal was specifically talking about the Christian god, was he not? Ironically, Jesus clearly claims that what truly matters to god is your intentions, as in the goodness of your heart. I would argue that Paul came along later and dumbed that idea down to "do you really believe?", which is what Pascal based his wager on.