Pascal's Wager

Pascal's Wager

Pascal's Wager (also known as Pascal's Gambit) is Blaise Pascal's famous argument for the belief in God. Pascal argues that it is always a better "bet" to believe in God, because the value to be gained from believing in God is always greater than the value resulting from non-belief. Note that this is not an argument for the existence of God, but rather one for the belief in God. Pascal specifically aimed the argument at such persons that were not convinced by traditional arguments for the existence of God. With his wager he sought to demonstrate that believing in God is advantageous to not believing, and hoped that this would convert those that rejected previous theological arguments.

It states that if you were to analyse your options in regards to belief in Pascal's God carefully (or belief in any other religious system with a similar reward and punishment scheme), you would come out with the following possibilities:

You may believe in God, and God exists, in which case you go to heaven.
You may believe in God, and God doesn't exist, in which case you gain nothing.
You may not believe in God, and God doesn't exist, in which you gain nothing again.
You may not believe in God, and God may exist, in which case you will be punished.

From these possibilities, and the prinicples of statistics, Pascal deduced that it would be better to believe in God unconditionally. It is a classic application of game theory to itemize options and payoffs and is valid within its assumptions.

The following table shows the values that Pascal assigned to each possible outcome:

	God exists (G)	God does not exist (~G)
Belief in God (B)	+ (heaven)	0
Non-belief in God (~B)	- (hell)	0

Given the values that Pascal proposes, the option of believing in God (B) dominates the option of not believing in God (~B). In other words, the value gained by choosing B is always greater than that of choosing ~B.

Pascal assigned equal probability to each of the two possibilities. He argued that "reason is no more shocked in choosing one rather than the other," due to our ignorance. Later writers have pointed out that the probabilities make no difference to the argument, since any non-zero chance multiplied by infinity yields an infinite expected value.

Arguments regarding Pascal's Wager

Pascal's wager can be said to suffer from the logical fallacy of false dilemma, relying on the assumption that the only possibilities are:

the Christian God exists and punishes or rewards as stated in the Bible, or
no God exists.

The "many-gods" argument points out that we can find indefinitely many other possibilities offering eternal bliss and threatening eternal torment. For example, non-Christian gods might exist, and punish Christian believers for their failure to believe in them. Or some powerful entity might decide to punish those who believe in a god while rewarding non-believers. Even if (contrary to Pascal's original argument) we can assign greater probability to one of the possible outcomes, it makes no mathematical difference. As the previous section mentions, any non-zero probability multiplied by infinity yields an infinite expected value.

In this way, Pascal's Wager could be used to deduce that it would be advisable to believe in any or all of a variety of gods; however the belief systems of some religions are exclusive, leading to theoretical contradictions with Pascal's Wager for those practicing an exclusive faith. This is the argument from inconsistent revelations. Those who have an all encompasing religion (Sanathana Dharma or Pantheism for example) do not suffer from such a criticism. There is also the Jewish faith to consider, which expects a non-Jew only to obey the Noachide Laws in order to recieve reward in afterlife. In addition, some religions do not require a focus on a deity, such as Buddhism.

The wager fails to mention any costs relating to belief. It is argued that there may be both direct (time, health, wealth) costs and opportunity costs. There may be opportunity costs for those who choose to believe: for example, scientific theories such as evolution that appear to some to contradict scripture could theoretically enable a non-believer to discover things and accomplish things the creationist could not. It is also argued that belief incurs a cost by not allowing the believing person to participate in and enjoy actions forbidden by dogma. This of course assumes that an unrestricted lifestyle is in someway prefered, and dismisses research suggesting there might be medical or socio-cultural benefits of belief and prayer.

There is also the argument that one could "game" the wager in a scenario where the deathbed conversion is possible — as is the case in some streams of Christianity. The person who converts on their deathbed could have failed to have been dutiful in fulfilling their doctrinal obligations, and still gain the happiness associated with the Christian concept of "heaven". The danger here is well known to most Christians, as this is a common theme of sermons in a variety of denominations. The risk of taking this gamble only to die suddenly, and without warning, or to experience the time of tribulation is often portrayed as too great a risk to take. There are also no small number of Christians who feel that God rewards good works, rather than repentance alone.

Variations of this argument can be found in other religious philosophies, such as Hinduism. Pascal was severely criticized by Voltaire.

External links

Arguments against Pascal's Wager