Introduction to Philosophy Mr.
Pendergast
In the seventeenth century the mathematician Blaise Pascal formulated his infamous pragmatic argument
for belief in God in Pensées. The argument
runs as follows:
If you erroneously believe in God, you lose nothing
(assuming that death is the absolute end), whereas if you correctly believe in
God, you gain everything (eternal bliss). But if you correctly disbelieve in God,
you gain nothing (death ends all), whereas if you erroneously disbelieve in
God, you lose everything (eternal damnation). Or, . . .
Bet (Chance x Payoff) – Cost = Expected
Value
How should you bet? Regardless of any
evidence for or against the existence of God, Pascal argued that failure to
accept God's existence risks losing everything with no payoff on any count. The
best bet, then, is to accept the existence of God. There have been several
objections to the wager: that a person cannot simply will himself to believe
something that is evidently false to him; that the wager would apply as much to
belief in the wrong God as it would to disbelief in all gods, leaving the the believer in any particular god in the same situation as
the atheist or agnostic; that God would not reward belief in him based solely
on hedging one's bets; and so on.