The French philosopher Blaise Pascal once posed the following line of reasoning: Even if the existence of God cannot be determined through reason and evidence, a rational person would wager as if God does exist because if there is no God, one loses nothing and if there is, one wins eternal life in his favor.
This argument does well to sniff out those who should stay out of the gambling den.
Pascal begins by making an assumption about the evidence for the existence of God. Though I do not entirely accept this assumption, I will accept it to argue the following point.
Pascals wager, like every wager, is based on probability. And sadly, we must ask this unanswerable question in order to establish an answer: Given there is no evidence for or against God, what is the probability of his existence? An exact answer, of course, cannot be given.
We can, however, exclude a few common answers. The probability is surely not fifty fifty, for example. If someone makes a claim for which there is no evidence, the odds of it being correct do not suddenly become fifty fifty. If that were the case, we would have to accept every whim of the human imagination as credible. In fact, considering the prevalence of Jerusalem syndrome among schizophrenics, there should be thousands of Messiahs locked away in asylums everywhere.
The lack of evidence may make it impossible to calculate odds, but it does usually make them automatically small. The grander the unsubstantiated claim, the smaller the likelihood of its correctness. So the odds are not known but they are small. One might say: incalculably small.
However small the odds are for the existence of God, we must now make them even smaller. Pascal’s wager was designed to allow him into the afterlife. Which means that not only must he be right about the existence of God, he must also pick the right God to worship. Wouldn’t he feel sheepish if, after choosing the Christian God, Pascal would find himself in a bad suburb of Hades?
Despite the incalculably small odds of picking the right God to worship, and his existing in the first place, the wager would still be perfectly rational if it would bear no cost. This seems to be the central assumption Pascal makes. say, for example, entry into heaven would entail only a declaration that one believes in God an nothing else. But there is a cost to believing in God. Every God expects one to perform a set of real world actions in order to win eternal life. The Christian God doubly so. To say nothing of forgoing ones healthy scepticism.
Finally, I have to ask: Would an all powerful judging God not see through this simple ruse? At the point of judgment would he not notice that the man standing before him decided to bypass faith and morality simply to reap eternal reward? Wouldn’t that make him a little angry? I think it might.
Let’s just hope he is more forgiving than the casino’s.
This argument does well to sniff out those who should stay out of the gambling den.
Pascal begins by making an assumption about the evidence for the existence of God. Though I do not entirely accept this assumption, I will accept it to argue the following point.
Pascals wager, like every wager, is based on probability. And sadly, we must ask this unanswerable question in order to establish an answer: Given there is no evidence for or against God, what is the probability of his existence? An exact answer, of course, cannot be given.
We can, however, exclude a few common answers. The probability is surely not fifty fifty, for example. If someone makes a claim for which there is no evidence, the odds of it being correct do not suddenly become fifty fifty. If that were the case, we would have to accept every whim of the human imagination as credible. In fact, considering the prevalence of Jerusalem syndrome among schizophrenics, there should be thousands of Messiahs locked away in asylums everywhere.
The lack of evidence may make it impossible to calculate odds, but it does usually make them automatically small. The grander the unsubstantiated claim, the smaller the likelihood of its correctness. So the odds are not known but they are small. One might say: incalculably small.
However small the odds are for the existence of God, we must now make them even smaller. Pascal’s wager was designed to allow him into the afterlife. Which means that not only must he be right about the existence of God, he must also pick the right God to worship. Wouldn’t he feel sheepish if, after choosing the Christian God, Pascal would find himself in a bad suburb of Hades?
Despite the incalculably small odds of picking the right God to worship, and his existing in the first place, the wager would still be perfectly rational if it would bear no cost. This seems to be the central assumption Pascal makes. say, for example, entry into heaven would entail only a declaration that one believes in God an nothing else. But there is a cost to believing in God. Every God expects one to perform a set of real world actions in order to win eternal life. The Christian God doubly so. To say nothing of forgoing ones healthy scepticism.
Finally, I have to ask: Would an all powerful judging God not see through this simple ruse? At the point of judgment would he not notice that the man standing before him decided to bypass faith and morality simply to reap eternal reward? Wouldn’t that make him a little angry? I think it might.
Let’s just hope he is more forgiving than the casino’s.
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