Pascal's Wager: Monotheistic God

Wayne Davis,
Question 1: Describe how and why prudential arguments for religious belief, and in particular Pascal’s Wager, are affected by considerations of religious diversity.
Answer: To make this point clearer, it may help to consider the following argument:
Rationality requires either that you wager for an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god or that you do not wager for an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god.
Rationality requires that you hold:
1. The unity of wagering for an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god, if an unorthodoxly conceived perverse monotheistic god exists, is less than positive infinity.
2. The utility of wagering for an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god, if no unorthodoxly conceived perverse monotheistic
Rationality requires that you perform the act of maximizing expected utility (provided that there is one action that maximizes expected utility).
Therefore Rationality requires that you do not wager for an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god.
Also you should not wager for an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god.
Clearly, questions about whether anyone seriously believes –or could seriously believe – in the existence of an unorthodoxly conceived perverse monotheistic god are simply irrelevant to the assessment of the merit of this argument. If you accept the third premise – that is, if you are prepared to allow that there is some positive chance, however small, that an unorthodoxly conceived perverse monotheistic god exists – then it is very hard to see how one could claim that argument fails whereas Pascal’s wager argument succeeds.
Question 2: Many people claim to hold religious beliefs on the basis of direct personal private, religious experience(s). If they are reasonable, how should such believers react to the fact that adherents of other religious faiths have equally vivid experiences seeming to support their own diverse
Sometimes, arguments rely on the experiences of a single individual; sometimes they rely on the experiences of groups of individuals. Sometimes, arguments rely entirely upon third – hand reports of experiences; sometimes, the proponent of an argument claims to be one of those who have had the relevant experiences. Sometimes, arguments that rely on the reported experiences of groups of individuals claim that those reports have independent causal origins; sometimes they do not. On the other hand arguments may vary according to the evidential value of the experience that is reported. Sometimes, it is claimed that experiences provide evidence for the teachings of a particular sect; sometimes, it is claimed that experiences provide evidence for the core doctrines of orthodox monotheism; sometimes, it is claimed that experiences provide evidence that there is a “higher power”, or the like. Of course, not all experiences that are claimed to be evidence for the existence of an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god are experiences that directly concern an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god; experiences directly concerning angels, or heaven, or the saints, or whatever, might be god indirect evidence of the existence of an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic