Pascal’s Wager

The Wager

We’ve looked at a number of arguments that attempt to show the truth of belief in God. That is, we’ve looked at arguments that attempt to arguing directly for the conclusion that God exists. A nice feature of such arguments is that if you accept their conclusion, you will have reason to believe in God.

Pascal was skeptical that any such argument could be successful. He didn’t think one could give a good argument for the truth of religious belief. However, he still thought he could give a good reason to believe God. He attempted to show the utility of religious belief.

Pascal’s idea was to start from complete ignorance of whether or not God actually exists. In fact, he thought that if there is a God, we could never really understand Him. (Again, Pascal is not going to try to establish the truth of religious belief. He starts from a position where he says: who knows what’s true?) Then he tries to show that belief in God is a good wager.

He describes the situation like this. Either God exists or he doesn’t. (Who knows?) You have two choices about what to believe. You can either believe in God or not. This gives four possibilities:

(i) If you believe in God and He exists, then that’s infinitely good for you. (You get to go to heaven and have a good afterlife.)
(ii)If you believe in God and He doesn’t exist, then there’s no real loss. (You miss out on a bit of sinning, but you’ll probably get to go to some fun church pot-lucks, so it’s about an even bargain.)
(iii)If you don’t believe in God and He does exist, then that’s infinitely bad for you. (You end up in hell, suffering for all eternity.)
(iv)If you don’t believe in God and He doesn’t exist, then there’s no real loss. (You miss out on the pot-lucks, but you get to do the sinning, so again it probably comes out even.)
Given this range of possibilities it seems that belief in God is clearly the best bet. You won’t lose anything and you may gain infinitely happiness. Disbelief, on the other hand, is a fool’s wager. The best you can hope for is breaking even, and you may end up with infinite suffering.

Belief

By this reasoning, Pascal claims to have established the clear utility of belief in God. (It’s hands down the best bet.) Now, Pascal realizes that this argument won’t make believers out of atheists. To actually develop a belief in God, Pascal recommends that one start attending church and hanging out with believers. Eventually belief in God will follow.

Objections

Pascal’s reasoning is very ingenious. By putting questions of truth to one side, he manages to avoid many normal ways of objecting to an argument. (Notice, for example, that the Problem of Evil wouldn’t worry him at all.)

However, there is a standard line of objection that has been raised against Pascal. Most agree with his reasoning given the way that he lays out the possibilities. But philosophers have questioned this lay-out of the possibilities.

For one thing, there are a number of religions out there. The choice of religious belief is not simply a choice between theism and atheism. We have to choose which religion to subscribe to. So, even if theism is the best bet, if I choose to be a Baptist and God turns out to be a Catholic, I might still end up out of luck.

And why should we assume that any of these religions has got it right? Perhaps God is a rather fickle character who actually punishes belief and rewards atheism. (This possibility would completely reverse the situation. Disbelief would then be the best bet.)

If Pascal truly starts from a position of ignorance about what’s true and false about the heavenly realm, what reason does he have for dividing up the possibilities in the way that he does? And if he truly takes account of all the possibilities, there is no "safe bet". (Any way you choose to believe will leave you with a chance of infinite reward, but will also leave open the chance of infinite punishment.)