Philosophy Times

You’ve probably heard of Pascal’s Wager, a philosophical argument created by the 17^th-century philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal, who holds that it may be impossible to reason with certainty about the existence of God, since reason has its limitations, especially when dealing with anything outside tangible human experience. Hence, reason can comprehend the unknowable with a degree of uncertainty. We can know the finite, but we can only know that the infinite exists, not its full nature, since it does not have limits as we do. Pascal quotes 1Corinthians (1:21) to support his contention that reason fails to establish the infiniteness of God.

As finite creatures with a finite capacity to feel and reason, how do we truly account for the infinitely unfathomable? Pascal submits,

“Incomprehensible that God should exist, and incomprehensible that he should not exist….that the world should be created, and that it should not be created.”

Pascal’s argument may be directed well towards those who would profess to be in a state of doubt and indecision concerning the existence or non-existence of God (Hacking, 1972) or even to those who seek both a temporal and an eternal validation for their belief. For any seeker, after cruising through all theistic arguments and the atheistic ones, a singular question arises: which way must one gravitate, and with what certainty?

Either God is, or is not, contends Pascal (Pensées Ch. 3 – The need to make a bet). For Pascal, reason simply cannot help us, given the infinite chasm which separates us from a direct answer. In such a case, which side would one incline towards? For the sake of argument, says Pascal, let’s keep faith and doubt aside while deliberating this question (Pensées Ch 3, p233). Or would one rather just not play? One may not really have a choice, submits Pascal. The very fact that you are alive and sentient effectively ensures that one is in play. As it is, which way would one go?

Pascal leaps over the speculation of developing any argument for the existence of God. He simply argues why one is better off believing in his celebrated and curious gamble. Pascal contends that any rational human would prefer the truth and the good (which are on the side of God), and hence it follows that what we would also prefer to shun are error and misery (which stand against God). So where would you stake your reason, knowledge and happiness, and which side would you prefer to lean your will towards?

Pascal’s Decision Theory	God exists	God does not exist
Believe in God	Infinite value	Finite disvalue
Do not believe in God	Finite value (or finite disvalue) (or infinite disvalue)	Finite value

Ref; Recent Criticisms and Defenses of Pascal’s Wager, Robert Anderson, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Feb., 1995), pp. 45-56 (12

Pascal wagers for the existence of God, which to him simply outweighs wagering non-existence. More than a reason for believing or disbelieving, focusing on the consequences of belief would make one better off believing. If, in staking one’s lifetime, one can gain eternity, would one risk eternal damnation or prefer salvation?

The wager is on firm ground as Pascal assigns an infinite value to belief in God’s existence when one wagers for God as against the finiteness of mortality, should one choose the pleasures of the flesh over the eternal flourishing of the spirit. Wagering for God provides for the corporeal utility of a good life on earth and the promise of a liberated and eternal afterlife, which one would not be entitled to should one choose to wager against God (Duff, A., 1986). After all, every noxious pleasure (Brown, G., 1984) that we believe we are enjoying would end when the body dies.

But a word of caution: one cannot wager for God sporadically, only on Sundays, looking dapper in your Sunday best, or when one is lying sick in bed and wager against God when the sun shines bright on your rooftops, and the tequila is flowing. The wager must be an ongoing action, a habituated state of character. Doing anything else would simply mean wagering against God. Now, if one of the two roads can lead to being saved, must the other road necessarily lead to damnation or a removal from membership in the afterlife? Pascal doesn’t specifically mention being damned if one wagers against God, but yes, it would be a shallow life in contrast.

Is Pascal justified when he says that the seeker ‘loses nothing’ if the wager for God proves fallible? What if one enjoys shallow stuff which qualifies as pleasurable but which may reside outside the piety of God’s abundance? If the wager is for God, one would stand to ‘lose’ this pleasure. Also, what is held as finite is the only life that I know of. How does one account for the unknown infinite over the known finite, which one can touch, taste and smell? Would what one stands to lose by wagering for the piety of God be substantially less than what one can lose if one does not wager for God?

Cypher (The Matrix, 1999): “I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize?……Ignorance is bliss.”

More important is the moral criticism of wagering on God’s existence. A mercenary approach to a stake in the kingdom of God may have nothing to do with a justified, true faith. What kind of gamblers would be inhabiting the realm of the Almighty then? Wouldn’t that Temple be just like the one where Christ vehemently overturns the tables of the merchants of trade? (Matthew 21:13) Hence, does not such a wager for God actually work as a wager against God since the operating principles for such a wager are actually embodied with an ulterior motive and hence intrinsically wagers against the essence of God? Would God want man’s belief as a preferential outcome of a gamble? Is this not political expediency?

Can a subscription to the goodness of God be the chance set-up of a wager? Voltaire submits that the idea of a game offers little justification for the gravity of such a profound subject (Hacking, I., 1972). Geoffrey Brown asserts that one deceptive feature of the Wager is its superficial simplicity (Brown, 1984). Be there the moral and mathematical detractors of Pascal’s wager, for the lay seeker, the axiology it employs provides a legitimate way to provoke interest in the virtues of locating the kingdom of God within our hearts and embodying principles of piety and good conduct in our human engagements.

Brown does submit that for the wager to be effective, it becomes necessary for the seeker to ‘desire’ the infinite bliss that a wager for God can give us, over the corporeal pleasures of the now. A seeker can certainly challenge the hackneyed concept of infinite bliss as an opportunity to sit on a white cloud and play the harp for all of eternity (Brown, 1984), as against raving at a full moon party on the island of Koh Phangan with the Devil as DJ. These stereotypical analogies may prompt us to re-examine concepts of pleasure and the bland visuals of the heavenly afterlife, which excite a stronger gravitation towards the carnal, as in Cypher from The Matrix.

Pascal’s decision table allows rational action towards the unity of God. Pascal asserts that when we do this (wager for), in time, we will come to believe, though initially not as a reason for believing but rather a cause for believing (Hacking, 1972). In submitting to this psychology of belief formation, first by acting like a believer, the seeker will come to surmount the stumbling blocks and suppress those passions which impede one from true belief. Pascal observes perhaps regretfully, ‘I envy those whom I see living in the faith with such carelessness, making such a bad use of a gift that it seems to me I would use very differently’ (Pensées 229). For Pascal, if everything we act upon must be available with absolute certainty, then what is to be said of human endeavour and the act of taking a leap of faith? Don’t we undertake sea voyages, battles, move to a new city, take up a new job, get into relationships? Why work for tomorrow, since that is also uncertain? If it were wrong to do this, then we should do nothing at all! In the movie Conclave (2024), the Dean of the College of Cardinals asserts, “Certainty is the enemy of unity…if there was only certainty, and no doubt, there would be no mystery.” Hence, for Pascal, Faith is superior to Reason. Pascal ends 236 with “You say: ‘But if he had wanted me to worship him, he would have left me signs of this.’ He has done so, but you neglect them. So look for them; it’s well worth it.” One may reliably contend that Pascal does provide a fascinatingly convincing stairway to Heaven. Now, says Pascal, ‘it’s up to you to make a start!’ (Pensées 240)

In The Phaedo (Plato, 1954), Socrates shares his vision of the afterlife; “…those who are judged to have lived a life of surpassing holiness, these are they who are released and set free from confinement in these regions of the earth, and passing upward to their pure abode, make their dwelling upon the earth’s surface. And of these such as have purified themselves sufficiently by philosophy live thereafter altogether without bodies, and reach habitations even more beautiful, which it is not easy to portray…I think, is both a reasonable contention and a belief worth risking, for the risk is a noble one.” To his friends and students who break down in tears on Socrates cheerfully consuming the cup of poison, Socrates wryly remarks “really my friends, what a way to behave!”