Except most classical religions claim exactly that.
Just one of the things religions are wrong about. Meaning, I think there is some sense in distinguishing among theistic claims -- that is, if theism were true; some theistic ideas are more reasonable than others. (I would expect that) the claim that 'my particular religious beliefs are true and all others is false' is not frequently maintained by thoughtful theists, and I could find references for specific examples if that would be helpful. (I know there are numerous examples to the contrary as well.) But religious people often (sometimes?) do allow for equivalence among different forms of worship. [edited for a softer, more reasonable argument]
While I think it is more likely than not that he did exist, judging that he was a "pretty amazing personality" is not something that one can reasonably conclude based on the evidence.
I'm not too concerned about an exact person. I see 'Jesus' as a historic phenomenon, with a very distinctive meme, that came from somewhere. It may have been a set of ideas that collectively developed over a couple hundred years (or, even more likely, was recycled from earlier philosophies.) But I also think it is likely there was a person that catalyzed or focused this particular paradigm shift.
And as for Mohammad- Muslims believe that he was a prophet, not an avatar or divine vessel. Saying that Mohammad was divine is one of the biggest heresies in Islam.
I'm sincerely sorry, since I didn't intend to be offensive. When writing the comment, I felt a twinge of anxiety wondering if I might be overstepping but disregarded it. I'm not familiar with Islamic views.
Tangentially, Agora is a movie about early Christianity and early epistemology/science that Less Wrong readers might find interesting. I recall it because the movie reminded me that Christianity has echoed similar things regarding the importance of these divine/non-divine distinctions.
Just one of the things religions are wrong about
Pascal's Wager though is only relevant for those religions generally. There's not much in the way of religions that believe God will torture you forever or reward you forever based on your belief and don't believe that believing in exactly the right version is really important. For purposes of this discussion, the moderate religions don't matter much.
I'm sincerely sorry, since I didn't intend to be offensive.
The point isn't an issue of offensiveness or not. The point is that your imagined proposal doesn't work.
Let P(chr) = the probability that the statements attributed to Jesus of Nazareth and Paul of Tarsus regarding salvation and the afterlife are factually mostly correct; and let U(C) be the utility of action C, where C is in {Christianity, Islam, Judaism, atheism}.
Two of the key criticisms of Pascal's wager are that
If, however, P(chr) is not infinitessimal, and U(Christianity) is merely very large, these counter-arguments fail.
Many poor arguments have been made that P(chr) > .1. But as far as I know, no one has ever made the best argument in favor of Christianity:
If you accept the simulation argument, then P(sim) > .99.
If you look at the fraction of computing power used for entertainment, I don't know what it is, but the top 100 supercomputer list for June 2011 lists a total of 4,531,940 cores in the top 100 supercomputers in the world; versus (rough guess) a billion personal computers and video game consoles, and a similar number of ordinary computers used at work. It would be reasonable to set p(ent|sim) = .5.
If you set P(ego|ent, sim) according to the fraction of entertainment simulations in which the person playing the game has an avatar in the game, then P(ego|ent, sim) is large. I originally set this at p > .99, but am now setting it to p = .5 in response to Jack's comment below.
We notice there are no obviously immortal world leaders on Earth (but see vi21maobk9vp's comment below). If we therefore limit the possible avatars that our simulator God is using on Earth to the major monotheistic religions of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, and consider them all equiprobable; plus a 25% chance that this God is jumping from one avatar to another, or chose to reveal Himself via Jesus but then Paul screwed everything up, or some other minority position; then p(chr0|ego, ent, sim, Earth) = .25.
P(follow-thru) is difficult to estimate; I will set it somewhat arbitrarily as .1. Given our observations of game-players here on Earth, it is not independent of p(ego), as players of self-glorifying games are likely to be young adolescent males, and so are people who enjoy burning insects with magnifying glasses.
We now have p(chr) > .99 x .5 x .5 x .25 x .1 = .0061875. As stipulated, your afterlife accounts for at least 99% of your utility if follow-thru (and hence chr) is true. If we suppose that the length of time for which God rewards us in Heaven or torments us in Hell has an exponential distribution, and we are considering only the part of that distribution where >= 99% of your utility is in the afterlife, then almost certainly p(chr) * U(Christianity | chr) > (1-p(chr)) * U(atheism | not(chr)). It now appears we should accept Pascal's wager.
(The expected utilities for Christianity and Islam are similar, and this argument gives no reason for favoring one over the other. That is of only minor interest to me unless I accept the wager. The important point is that they both will have expected utilities similar to, and possibly exceeding, that of atheism.)
You can argue with any of the individual numbers above. But you would have to make pretty big changes to make p(chr)(U(Christianity|chr)) negligible in your utility calculation.
(IMHO, voting this article up should indicate it passed the threshold, "That's an interesting observation that contributes to the discussion", not, "Omigod you're right, I am going out to get baptized RIGHT NOW!".)