Pascal's Wager
Pascal's "wager" is a fundamental philosophical argument defending belief in God. Through logical analysis based on a punishment-reward premise, Pascal shows that believing in God is preferable to not believing. The argument is called a "wager" because Pascal phrases it as a sort of bet: the individual has a better chance of being rewarded through belief than through denial. Therefore, Pascals' wager defends belief in God through reason and appeal to basic self-interest rather than through theological or mystical proofs. Yet even though Pascal tries to divorce belief in God from blind faith, his argument rests heavily on Christian theology. Pascal's God is the Biblical God, the results of his wager similar to a heaven-hell duality as proposed by Christianity as well as other monotheistic religions. Through the wager, Pascal is trying to show readers that believing in God is a personal decision, and one that can be as mundane as any other personal decision. Just as a person would gamble on a card game, he or she can also gamble on matters of theology. And, just as all gambles involve statistics and mathematical formulas of chance, so too does the gamble of belief. The philosopher basically tries to show that believing in God is a "good bet," that a person has nothing to lose by believing, and by saying that believing in God results in far more personal reward than not believing. Moreover, Pascal basically assumes that belief in God brings one "an eternity of life and happiness," a premise that is fundamentally flawed and biased because it is itself impossible to prove.
Although Pascal's theory is compelling and also cleverly worded, the wager has several rhetorical and logical flaws. For example, Pascal's wager promotes belief primarily in a Christian God and neglects the wide range of theologies or cosmologies that might present themselves to the potential believer. Pascal's vision is overtly monotheistic, and his worldview is essentially dualistic. However,...
Pascal's wager also assumes that God behaves as He does in the Christian bible. Binaries such as good vs. evil, heaven vs. hell, God vs. Satan, are fundamental assumptions hidden in Pascal's wager. Thus, many criticisms of Pascal's wager are rooted in the argument's Christian bias and the false dilemmas it creates. Pascal's focus on Christianity is, however, not accidental and in fact it might be safe to assume that the philosopher would not want to promote belief in any other God but the Christian God. Pascal's primary motivation in writing the argument was, after all, to foster belief in the God of his choice, the God of the Christian church. Nevertheless, the Christian bias does weaken the wager through basic logical fallacy.
Ironically, to promote belief in a Christian God, Pascal avoids a direct discussion of Christian theology. Doing so strengthens the appearance of logic and underscores the statistical evidence that Pascal uses to promote theism. However, the absence of any real appeal to mysticism or to matters of the heart ends up weakening the wager. Pascal neglects what could be powerful appeals to emotion, which are essential to most compelling arguments. Also, although Pascal avoids a direct discussion of Christian theology, the philosopher cannot help but insert phrases like "eternal life and happiness," which are written to stimulate an emotional response in the reader. Betting on God brings "eternal life and happiness," according to Pascal, and therefore, no reasonable sane person would not believe in God. The underlying assumption here is that not believing in God might result in eternal hell and damnation, a condition that of course most people would want to avoid. Although Pascal provides these appeals to the reader's hopes and fears, the wager lacks emotional depth.
Pascal's wager is more a coin toss than…
