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Because I think that people are only saved by Christ, so none of those work.
Now, if you're asking why I think that Christianity is more likely to be true than some position that would recommend any other identifiable course of action, well, I think that the fact that it's claiming to be a revealed religion and is large are reasonably strong points in its favor—if we expect God to reveal himself (or, at least, if we expect that to be likely provided that he care about what we do, which is what is here relevant, since we want to know what can give infinite benefits/harms). I think that the evidence for the resurrection is decent. The teachings make sense.
I suppose we'll have to disagree here because those don't look anywhere near reasonably strong. Any religion can "claim" to be a revealed religion, but if it really was revealed, I'd expect to see some of that revelation for myself. Otherwise, why wouldn't I follow any of the numerous kook cults whose originator managed to swindle 100-1000 people? Or millions, even.
As for largeness, well, many Christians claim their religion is just plainly better for building strong societies, and I grant that, but that's evidence against it being true (since people would have incentive to spread it because it's pragmatic for materialist matters even if they doubted it was metaphysically true).
Did you become familiar with Pascal's Wager before you became Christian, or after?
Well, for reason of Pascal, the relevant question is how strong it is compared to the alternatives. Do you think that it's reasonable for me to think that Christianity is more reasonable at least than most other religions (of those that promise infinite rewards)?
After. I've been Christian all my life. But I do think that if I were convinced that Christianity were false, that I would look seriously at alternatives, due to Pascal's wager, and if I gave up, would be doing that out of weakness and would be unreasonable in that.
I think it is unreasonable to rate religions higher based solely on the infinity of their rewards. Based on what I observe in life, it is much easier to deceptively promise infinite rewards than actually deliver on them, and this should hold for all agents in general. Thus you leave yourself open to all sorts of malicious agents who merely have to promise infinite rewards (or punishment) to capture your attention (but what if!..)
Of course, I suspect that you will not actually up-rate any random beings who promise infinite rewards (or punishment) without showing any hint that they could deliver on it. I suspect that is because Pascal's Wager is a post-hoc rationalization of Christianity for you and not something you could come to Christianity through from zero.
To answer your question: I think that as long as we're picking between gods a non-omnipotent, non-omnibenevolent, non-singular one is more likely than an omnipotent and omnibenevolent single one, so I'd start with the pagan gods of my homeland.
There's also the snag that even if I swallowed Pascal's Wager hook, line and sinker, it would not be Christianity I'd want to follow, because as far as I've been told (aggregating the opinions) the Christian God is merciful and would eventually forgive me anyway. If he wouldn't, then the God is not Christian, and not the kind of God I could worship out of love and faith. We need a new religion for people who hate the very idea that there is an omnipotent being threatening to plunge them into torment for all eternity if they don't follow its whims during their lives that simultaneously don't matter and are all that matters. Perhaps we could style its prayers off The Two Minutes Hate.
It is if our concern is the expected value of acting accordingly. Higher rewards->higher expected value (all else equal).
It actually doesn't leave me open to all sorts of malicious agents. My credence in them will understandably be quite low, and so the return on just continuing to try to follow Christianity faithfully will outweigh whatever they're offering/threatening.
Okay, do you think that the pagan gods of your homeland can plausibly promise you infinite benefits or threaten you with infinite harms? (And if so, we might then have to worry about different levels of infinities, given that e.g. hyperreals have them, but I'm not certain about that)
No, I don't understand why your credence in a random bum promising hell/heaven to you is not hypercharged to infinity the same way a religion's credence is hypercharged to infinity. My credence in religions is quite low, I consider them at best a way for people to epicycle their existential dread away and at worst a way for social egregores to keep downtrodden people downtrodden.
As long as we worry about different levels of infinities, consider Blarg, the god that will send you to hell of cardinality aleph(n+1) where aleph(n) is Christianity's hell, and vice versa for heavens.
It would be, but as compared to the larger infinity, it would be a much smaller one in expectation.
Cardinal infinities don't work. Something like hyperreals or surreals work better. You could also just drop the continuity axiom and treat infinity as a relation between values rather than sticking a number on it globally, but hyperreals/surreals should work equally well.
But if we want a convergent utility function, we probably need to add the stipulation that there's some maximum possible state, or at least, some state than which it is impossible that you have values infinitely greater.
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