If there is no God and no after-life, it is important that we should believe this because it will prevent us wasting our time in prayer and worship and vain pursuit of everlasting life; it will also prevent us disseminating false information on important matters. Nevertheless, it is, I think, difficult to avoid the view that it is more important to believe that there is a God, if in fact there is a God, than to believe that there is no God, if in fact there is no God. Thus failure to hold a true belief that there is a God could lead to us failing to worship a God to whom worship is due; whereas, if through a false belief that there is a God, we worship a God who does not exist, no-one is thereby wronged. Further, failure to hold a true belief that there is a God could lead to the loss of everlasting life, for if this belief is conjoined with a true belief that, if there is a God, he will give everlasting life after death to those who live a certain kind of life on Earth, a man who has these beliefs is in a position to gain that life. And even if the other religious belief is that if there is a God he will give everlasting life after death to any who try to live a good life on Earth, those beliefs together could encourage a man to persevere with a worthwhile life on Earth and so gain that everlasting life . . . , whereas failure to hold a true atheistic belief could involve at most the waste of a short finite life.  This seems to be one correct point in the argumentation of Pascal’s Wager, in which there are a number of incorrect points which I shall discuss later in the chapter.

(Richard Swinburne, Faith and Reason [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981], 81 [ellipsis added])