Conservative

Pascal’s Wager

According to Wikipedia, Pascal’s Wager is “a suggestion posed by the French philosopher, mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal that, even though the existence of God cannot be determined through reason, a person should wager as though God exists, because living life accordingly has everything to gain, and nothing to lose” (see source).

We were discussing the death penalty in my introduction to ethics course, and a philosopher used the best bet argument to argue for the retention of the death penalty. The best bet argument is based on Pascal’s Wager or Pascal’s Gambit which is outlined in the chart above. Some might consider it a fallacy, and you can read the rebuttals and refutes at http://infidels.org. I recommend reading the opposing arguments to any theist, and I especially recommend it to any Christian apologist. The attempts to dismantle Pascal’s Wager focus on explaining away God, but the articles and authors do not address the unexplainable which is undeniable faith in scripture contained in the Bible. Philosophical reasoning versus theological reasoning.

Here is an excerpt and the reason behind Pascal’s Wager from his book Pensées:

     1. “God is, or He is not”
     2. A Game is being played … where heads or tails will turn up.
     3. According to reason, you can defend neither of the propositions.
     4. You must wager. It is not optional.
     5. Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these
     two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.
     6. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is … There is here an infinity of an
     infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of
     loss, and what you stake is finite. And so our proposition is of infinite force, when
     there is the finite to stake in a game where there are equal risks of gain and of
     loss, and the infinite to gain (part III, note 233).

What are your thoughts?

Response:

intelligentchristianity responds:

Sorry, I attempted to comment on your post about Pascal’s Gambit (Wager), which I enjoyed very much. Unfortunately this failed to go through. So here’s what it was supposed to say:

It is amazing how often this idea is tossed about with no credit given to Blaise Pascal for coming up with the thing in the first place. When one is first confronted with the argument it is quite compelling. To distill it into its most basic form:

You can believe in God or not. If God exists and you believe in him, you gain everything. If God exists and you do not believe in him, you lose everything. If God doesn’t exist you break even either way, you lose nothing and you gain nothing. Someone who doesn’t believe in God either gains nothing or loses everything. 0% possibility of gain, 50% possibility of big loss. Someone who believes in God either gains everything or gains nothing. 50% possibility of big gain, 0% percent possibility of loss. Well the choice is obvious…believe in God. Simple math.

So what could possibly be wrong?

A few things. First, there is not just one god to believe in. There are hundreds, even thousands. The Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, etc. ideas of God all have different requirements for this promised gain, a.k.a. eternal life. These requirements are not compatible, you will have to choose one god. This dramatically decreases the chances of picking the correct god to believe in. On the other hand, some gods definitely make more sense based on the evidence than others, so this can be narrowed down. And no matter haw small the odds of picking the right god, it is still greater than the odds of gain with the atheist view (0%).

Also, dishonest belief. Let’s forget about all of those other Gods and just focus on Christianity for a moment. Christianity requires belief, but it requires honest, whole-hearted belief. Belief based on cold mental logic cannot be true belief, because it is not a true change of the heart, but merely a sort of insurance…making sure that one covers all bases, trying to “trick” God. Surely an omniscient God would see right through this deception. There are a few other arguments, but I find none of them compelling. Perhaps Star Trek’s Spock, with his fascination with logic, put it best: “Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end.” Logic is useful…it is the most powerful reasoning tool man possesses. Without it, man could no more differentiate truth from falsehood than he could a rock from an elephant. But it only goes so far. When we attempt to use logic to prove something that exists completely apart from and above human thought, we will find that logic run to its end will bring us to the brink of a bottomless chasm. In the end one must choose one way or another.

(Source: Wikipedia)