Pascal’s Wager

[onenow1]

Me thinks that sometimes people tend to “overthink” an issue.

When I was an atheist, I stumbled upon Pascal’s Wager and it really got me to Think.

Although, there were many things and events that led to my conversion, Pascal’s Wager stayed with me…even to this day.

Welcome home !!!

God Bless

 

[onenow1]

Blaze, is only a starting point for some, this is a search and rescue operation in reasoning abilities of the human mind made in the image and likeness of God.

Another rendition on Blaze:Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) was a world famous French Mathematician, as well as a great Christian thinker. His contributions to the field of geometry in particular are well known today. Pascal developed many arguments in favor of the existence of God. Therefore he proposed what has come to be known as Pascal’s Wager. This is a common sense analysis of the benefits and consequences of belief or unbelief in the existence of GOD.

When it comes to God’s existence, there are two possibilities: either God exists or God does not exist. In terms of our response, there are also two possibilities: either we believe in God or we don’t.

If God does not exist, and we wager that he does (by believing), then we lose nothing, since, presumably, there is no afterlife or eternal reward or punishment for belief or unbelief.

If God does exist, however, and offers us the free gift of eternal life, and we wager that he does not (by unbelief), then we risk losing everything by spending eternity separated from God.

If God does exist, and we wager that he does, then we potentially gain eternal life and happiness.

So, said Pascal, a reasonable person who even considers the possibility that God exists to be about 50-50 should wager that he does, since that person stands to lose nothing and gain everything, whereas the person who wagers that God does not exist stands to gain nothing (if God does not exist), or lose everything (if God does exist).

It should be noted that Pascal also held that the possibility of God’s existence was much greater than 50-50.

While this is not a proof for God’s existence, it does demonstrate the seriousness of the consequences of either belief or unbelief which a reasonable person ought to carefully consider and try to understand.

God Bless

 

[HerCrazierHalf]

Actually, Pascal was completely cognizant of the phenomenon of which you speak, and there are, in effect, two stages to Pascal’s Argument.

Stage 1 is pretty much as you describe it. The soul recognizes that going to hell is a bad thing and that going to heaven is a better alternative. Fair enough.

Stage 2 begins when the soul actually begins to believe or have true faith as a direct result of taking some basic steps (praying, going to church, reading the bible) in Stage 1. In this stage, the considerations of self-interest no longer pre-dominate - though they may still be useful in times of doubt.

I suppose it depends on the person. I’m rather skeptical about crossing into stage 2. At times I’ve tried to “force” myself to believe, but it doesn’t work that way for me. I suspect it would be like asking one of you to believe in a polytheistic faith.

IOW, Tom, you may begin dating a girl simply because she has a car and you don’t. But you wind up falling in love with her.

Beginning to love God can be just like that.

Possible, but I guess a long shot is better than no shot.

 

[Randy_Carson]

I suppose it depends on the person. I’m rather skeptical about crossing into stage 2. At times I’ve tried to “force” myself to believe, but it doesn’t work that way for me. I suspect it would be like asking one of you to believe in a polytheistic faith.

It doesn’t work that way for anyone. Did you force yourself to love your wife?

Possible, but I guess a long shot is better than no shot.

With God, your odds are pretty good.

He’s been waiting for all eternity to talk with you.

 

[HerCrazierHalf]

It doesn’t work that way for anyone. Did you force yourself to love your wife?

Of course not. Though I’m not sure I can explain the difference without sounding insensitive.

Perhaps it is a personality quirk of mine, but I don’t see how one do much better than trying to be open to a change in belief. For example you might not believe aliens, but regardless of motivation (besides evidence) you can’t just choose to believe that they exist.

With God, your odds are pretty good.

He’s been waiting for all eternity to talk with you.

Thank you for your kind words.

 

[icamhif]

The Wager Stated:

A. Either God exists or He does not, and either you choose to believe Him or you do not.
B. When you combine these two truths, there are only four logical possibilities.

1. You believe in God, and He exists.
2. You believe in God and He does not exist.
3. You don’t believe in God, and He exists.
4. You don’t believe in God, and He does not exist.
   C. If you believe in God, and you’re right, you will enjoy unimaginable happiness forever.
   D. If you believe in God, and you’re wrong, you will never know you were wrong. When you die, you will simply cease to exist.
   E. If you don’t believe in God, and you are wrong, you will suffer eternal damnation.
   F. If you don’t believe in God, and you are right, you will never know you were right. When you die, you will simply cease to exist. Further, you will not even have the satisfaction of knowing that you were right.
   G. These are the only four reasonable outcomes. You will be in one of these four situations after death.
   H. At present, you have partial control over the outcome.
   I. You cannot abstain from choosing.
   J. The believer has everything to gain and nothing to lose. The non-believer has everything to lose and nothing to gain by not believing.
   K. Not believing is the most foolish option.
   L. Therefore, believing in God is the safest course of action.

I first heard of Pascal’s Wager when I was in high school, and I was an agnostic. I read it from a book called “Zero” by Charles Seife for my math class. It did get me thinking about religion more, and it did slightly reinforce my small fear of hell. But, it has far from convinced me to join any organized religion. At best, it has influenced me to change from “completely neutral agnostic” to “agnostic, but leaning a bit towards theism” (can’t say that for sure; my beliefs at that time were vague and complicated.) But even that didn’t do much at all, as I still chose to live my life however I pleased. I didn’t feel motivated enough to take the time to study religions or “try” any Church, mostly because I was focused in school and was afraid of getting brainwashed into some cult. It took a lot more things for me to even consider Christianity, nevermind convert to it.

So yeah, that’s my personal experience with the argument.

 

[Servant19]

Or one could do what is right for the simple reason that it is right and do it with no thought whatsoever as to receive any “reward” for doing good and to do the good for the simple reason already mentioned.

Could be that a “good” God would smile much more favorably upon something such as this than some phoney baloney, “I believe in You, just in case, because it might be beneficial to me”.

One of these seems to be on the selfless side and one seems to be on the selfish side, can anyone see the difference?

Indeed. One would of course observe that the natural order of creation derives a “heavenly outcome” naturally when one does good, especially when one does good out of obedience to the Creator of the “natural order”, and out of love for that Creator, rather than for the love of the “heavenly outcome”…



.

 

[Nixbits]

onenow1:

So, said Pascal, a reasonable person who even considers the possibility that God exists to be about 50-50 should wager that he does

How does the ‘reasonable person’ go about determining the odds that God exists?

 

[ericc]

How does the ‘reasonable person’ go about determining the odds that God exists?

a) toss a coin?
b) look around him and ask are all these possible without someone intelligent and powerful enough to start it? Where did all these comes from? Where did life comes from? Where did the universe comes from? Where did the stuff the universe is made off comes from? Where did all these intelligence comes from?

The more in depth these questions are, the harder it is to avoid the presence of such a Being.

 

[Nixbits]

Ericc, tossing a coin will clearly not help anyone determine the odds that God exists. And, since the honest answer to each of the questions you pose in (b) is ‘We don’t know’, this approach won’t help the reasonable person determine the odds either.

 

[ffg]

I think the mentality that the wager considers can be used as a stepping stone to soften or open the heart to God.

However, if someone considers the wager as a way of life, it’s like the effort needed to aim for the second to last place in a race. That ‘just don’t want to be last’ attitude.

It doesn’t take belief in God to consider:

If there is a God, there’s a good chance that my response to Him should be more than minimal.

 

[sehacopian]

I think PW is constructed to choose between God or No God. Not which god. Once a person believes in the existence of God, then the next step would be for him to decide which one. I don’t believe PW can sway former atheist like Anthony Flew. Evidence for him was some other.

I don’t think fundamentalists will give you partial credit for believing in any deity. You would have to believe in the right one, or so they think.

 

[ericc]

Ericc, tossing a coin will clearly not help anyone determine the odds that God exists. And, since the honest answer to each of the questions you pose in (b) is ‘We don’t know’, this approach won’t help the reasonable person determine the odds either.

When there is indecision, tossing a coin or casting lots or similar may be deemed to let God decide for one. For example, when choosing the replacement for Judas, the 11 Apostles cast lots to eventually selecting Matthias.

That’s one way of determining/deciding. But it is not the same as convincing one that God exist.

For b, are you implying that for those who decide that the answers to those questions point to God are dishonest? How is honesty determined here? By the answers? Isn’t the search by each and everyone for a deeper meaning to life (other than pleading ignorance) an honest quest? Or perhaps one can construe pleading ignorance a dishonest effort to genuinely search for answers? Presupposing that not knowing is the honest answer sounds predetermined.

 

[SteveVH]

Wouldn’t be the first “con job” that got the “con” thinking a little deeper about what they were doing, as you say, and something a little more than what was intended, coming out of it…

Just what it is called, “Pascal’s Wager”, can bring to mind, someone trying to “hedge their bet”, so to speak.

I was just trying to say that if “Pascal’s Wager” is the extent of one’s “belief” than it seems to be less than shallow, as in an attempted con job, but it can be a start, even if not started out as a start.

Yes, I agree.

 

[onenow1]

How does the ‘reasonable person’ go about determining the odds that God exists?

Pray, search and notice things you probably never took seriously before. One Saint you may be familiar with is St. John Paul ll. he has written much.

God Bless

 

[Nixbits]

ericc:

For b, are you implying that for those who decide that the answers to those questions point to God are dishonest?

No, I’m simply suggesting they may be wrong because there is insufficient evidence to know for certain. Going back to my original criticism, the question was: How could we determine the odds of whether or not God exists in our universe? We could evaluate all of the known universes and consider how many have Gods and how many do not. We could compare our universe with one which has a God and one which does not and see what similarities and differences there are. We could look for evidence that absolutely proves the existence of a God and could have no other explanation.

The problem with all of these suggested approaches, and probably with all others too, is that we don’t have enough evidence in our universe (or that we don’t sufficiently understand the evidence we do have), and that we have no evidence at all from other universes (or even if other universes exist).

It probably is not possible to prove that God does not exist (because proving a negative is so difficult). But it may be possible (one day) to prove that God does exist. But as for proving the odds that God exists: I don’t think we can.

 

[Mount_Carmel]

Pascal himself actually refers to God as being in effect largely outside of human comprehension or measure.

In his own words:
‘If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is. This being so, who will dare to undertake the decision of the question? Not we, who have no affinity to Him.’

As far as his claim of ‘no affinity’ goes he does not seem to recognise or accept the concept of humanity being made in God’s image - albeit a much paler image than His own.

 

[Tom_Baum]

Pascal himself actually refers to God as being in effect largely outside of human comprehension or measure.

In his own words:
‘If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is. This being so, who will dare to undertake the decision of the question? Not we, who have no affinity to Him.’

As far as his claim of ‘no affinity’ goes he does not seem to recognise or accept the concept of humanity being made in God’s image - albeit a much paler image than His own.

You wrote, “As far as his claim of ‘no affinity’ goes he does not seem to recognise or accept the concept of humanity being made in God’s image - albeit a much paler image than His own.”

I do not know one way or the other if Pascal recognizes or accepts “the concept of humanity being made in God’s image” but I would say that no human being could “know” that God Is a Being of Love as opposed to love being an attribute of God unless God made a “personal revelation” concerning this to them.

LOVE is what I believe God was referring to when God said, “Let Us make man in Our Image and…”.

“man” in the above quote referring to humanity, to ALL OF HUMANITY.

And as I said, I do not believe that it is possible for any human to come to this “conception” of God, that is God being a Being of Love as opposed to Love being a mere attribute of God, without God revealing this to them.

 

[Lion_of_Narnia]

The Wager is NOT basic apologetics–using it so will leave one open (quite rightly) to all sorts of criticisms, such as “which God/gods”???

The Pensees were written as Pascal’s personal notes to himself, never intended for publication. One has to read them very carefully and understand the context (Peter Kreeft’s treatment is quite good on this).

The Wager is meant (IMO) to be used AFTER one has already determined that a belief in God as expressed by the catholic Faith IS reasonable–but now its EMOTION holding one back from full conversion.

 

[cheese_sdc]

The Wager Stated:

A. Either God exists or He does not, and either you choose to believe Him or you do not.
B. When you combine these two truths, there are only four logical possibilities.

1. You believe in God, and He exists.
2. You believe in God and He does not exist.
3. You don’t believe in God, and He exists.
4. You don’t believe in God, and He does not exist.
   C. If you believe in God, and you’re right, you will enjoy unimaginable happiness forever.
   D. If you believe in God, and you’re wrong, you will never know you were wrong. When you die, you will simply cease to exist.
   E. If you don’t believe in God, and you are wrong, you will suffer eternal damnation.
   F. If you don’t believe in God, and you are right, you will never know you were right. When you die, you will simply cease to exist. Further, you will not even have the satisfaction of knowing that you were right.
   G. These are the only four reasonable outcomes. You will be in one of these four situations after death.
   H. At present, you have partial control over the outcome.
   I. You cannot abstain from choosing.
   J. The believer has everything to gain and nothing to lose. The non-believer has everything to lose and nothing to gain by not believing.
   K. Not believing is the most foolish option.
   L. Therefore, believing in God is the safest course of action.

Pascal’s Wager fails so hard as a convincing proof…

a) It requires the unbeliever to lie to the supposed Divinity (Hey! Invisible thing in the sky that I don’t believe it, I’m going to just go through the motions and hope you don’t notice that my heart really isn’t in it. Okay? We’ll just both pretend that I don’t really believe. Cool? Cool.)

b) You can insert any god in as the object. Set. Aphrodite. The Horned God. Frey. Pick a God, any God.

Oh, you don’t believe in Thor? Well, he has promised us life in Valhalla if we just believe in him, so it’s better if you believe than if you don’t believe, because you don’t want Hel to get ahold of you!

youtube.com/watch?v=6mmskXXetcg

c) It just reinforces the idea that “GOD IS GONNA GIT YOU! YOU BETTER BELIEVE OR ELSE”. I’ll pass, thanks.