Pascal’s Wager: What if You Are Wrong?
Philosophy of Religion
Should you believe in a God?
To answer this question, we can examine and analyze arguments devised by philosophers over the century. Theists and Chrisitan Fundamentalists have come up with arguments like the First Cause, the Intelligent Design and the Ontological Arguments.
On the other hand, atheists propose ideas such as the Problem of Evil, the Paradox of Omnipotence, the idea of an infinite regress created within the Cosmological Argument.
The debate over the existence of God has inspired an array of arguments for and against its existence, which are based on science, logic, metaphysics, ontology and empiricism.
We will look at the basic argument of Pascal’s Wager and point out 3 main fallacies from such wager.
Blaise Pascal and his wager
In the 17th century, French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal proposed a pragmatic argument for belief in the Chrisitan God. He argued that any rational person should believe in God because that is the optimal choice that derives the greatest gain.
The Fundamental Argument
Premise: God either exists or doesn't.
Case 1: If God exists and I believe in God, I go to Heaven. This is infinitely good.
Case 2: If God exists and I do not believe in God, I go to Hell. This is infinitely bad.
Case3: If God doesn't exist and I believe in God, I experience finite disadvantages in life.
Case 4: If God doesn’t exist and I don’t believe in God, I experience finite pleasures unhindered by Christianity.
The above relies on a concept in mathematics known as expected value and can be illustrated with a decision matrix.
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. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is. -Blaise Pascal in Pensées
Therefore, Pascal argued that any rational person should believe in God under these conditions.
1. What about other Gods?
There are many objections to Pascal’s Wager, one of which being the Many Gods Objection.
The above table is a variation of Pascal’s Wager. It introduces another type of theism, which allows us to showcase the practice of religions in our world. We can conclude that the possibility of more than one God poses a direct attack on Pascal’s logic, in the sense belief in a particular God might cause us infinite suffering because of the possibility of multiple Gods.
We now see that Pascal’s matrix is too simplistic and fundamentally flawed and offers no warrant for believing Pascal’s Christian God or any particular Judeo-Christian faith.
2. What about evidence?
While Pascal’s Wager does give us a basic analysis on why belief in God would be beneficial, it’s important to keep in mind that it’s an argument for belief in the Chrisitan God, rather than its existence. Categorically, it means that to believe in God using the reasoning from the wager rather than evidence would disregard evidentialism, the notion that states one should believe in something if and only if they have evidence to support their belief.
If we only believe in God because we want to avoid suffering and gain pleasure, are we really believing in God? And if we are only convinced because of Pascal’s Wager, are we being faithful to our God?
More importantly, the argument does not aim to prove the existence of a God, let alone the Christian God. It only gives us a pragmatic and inevitable decision of believing in God in order to avoid suffering and punishment.
3. What about authenticity?
Finally, a major flaw in Pascal’s Wager is that it cannot directly change a person’s belief. Imagine this, if I were to offer you $500,000 to believe that 1= 0. You still wouldn’t actually believe that. The exact same reasoning can be applied to our belief in God. If a person doesn’t believe in God, providing them with incentives still wouldn’t cause him to believe in God.
Pascal’s Wager could only ever be an argument for feigning belief in God. And the God that you claim to believe in had better not be of the omniscient kind or he’d see through the deception. -Richard Dawkins
Other critics of the wager have argued that feigning interests for external rewards from God is dishonest and immoral and an omnipotent God would have the ability to see through the deception and therefore that person’s belief in God would be inauthentic and futile, essentially voiding the benefits from the wager.
An Epilogue
This is my favourite verse from Genesis and I think knowledge is ipso facto a form of enjoyment. It’s a tool. It’s part of being human. It’s what makes life interesting. Because of knowledge, we get to express thoughts and feelings about our world through words, books, pictures, sounds and equations.
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
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Happy reading,
Barry 🍩