My question is: What religion do you choose to optimize the result of this wager?
You pick the one that's actually real.
Which of course, we have no way of knowing - so you have to have some kind of distribution on how likely you think a given religion is to be "true".
It must be by picking the religion where you gain the most by being a believer and lose the most by being a non believer.
Unless that religion is total bullshit, and the actual, real God decides to punish you for following it.
Or did you mean that in a different sense than Pascal. I.e., the here-and-now material sense? Like, it's better to be, say, Christian because you'll have an easier time in the society you live in?
And would creating your own religion be the optimal play?
It would seem clear that any religion you explicitly invent, stands a very high probability of being false, so that doesn't get you anything (unless, again, we're talking here-and-now material rewards, in which case it could be a good option).
You'll recall that Pascal's wager basically compared atheism to Christianity. The thing there is that while there is no upside for anyone if Christianity turns out to be false, there is a big downside for atheists if it turns out to be true (eternal damnation). Thus, he's able to propose a solution independent of the probability that Christian afterlife actually exists. You don't lose anything by believing in it, and you might gain something, so why not?
Such an approach does not work for choosing between religions: if Religion A says "believe in me and go to heaven, otherwise go to hell" and Religion B says the exact same thing, then which religion is optimal for maximizing your chance of going to heaven (or avoiding hell) depends strongly on the probability that a particular religion is "true." So you have to come up with some distribution on metaphysical truth if you want a rational answer there. Which is a pretty tall order. Otherwise you have no afterlife-related reason to favor one over the other.
