The religious sanction, therefore, is logically null, in terms of the religious man's own mental processes.[6] There is left him, to discredit the rationalist, only the threat that the God whom he terms infinitely good will or may punish the unbeliever for not believing on the strength of a Bible packed with incredible narrative and indefensible doctrine. The anti-rationalist position is thus reduced to 'Pascal's wager'--at once the most childish and, from the standpoint of other and nobler religious thought, the most irreligious argument ever advanced by a competent intelligence on the side of faith. Pascal's thesis is that if the unbeliever is wrong, he runs a frightful risk of future torment; whereas, if he should after all be right, he will be no worse off after death for having believed. So the 'belief' required of him is a simple mindless and faithless conformity to a conditional threat. To such moral perversity can religion persuade. To Pascal's wager there have been many retorts. Mill declared that if a God should doom him to hell for having been unable to believe in such a God, 'to hell he would go'--glad, by implication, not to be in heaven. Mansel's sole answer was a puerile attempt at a pious sneer. Clifford, in effect, denounced the Pascalian appeal for what it was, a base appeal to fear.[7] But it is unnecessary to resort to such logical supererogation. There are two obvious and decisive rebuttals to Pascal's doctrine on purely logical ground. Firstly, his thesis is available to the Moslem or the polytheist no less than to the Christian; and when put from either of these sides it leaves the Christian running the very risk with which he menaces the unbeliever. He may have chosen the wrong God. Secondly, the hypothetical Good God, if in any intelligible sense worthy of the name, would conceivably be as likely to send Pascal to hell for dishonouring him as to send the honest atheist there for refusing to make-believe. The pietist has dishonoured himself to no purpose.