Pascal's Wager

Pascal's wager is an argument in philosophy presented by the seventeenth-century French philosopher, mathematician and physicist, Blaise Pascal (1623–1662). It posits that humans bet with their lives that God either exists or does not.We understand nothing of the works of God unless we take it as a principle that He wishes to blind some and to enlighten others.If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is....But at least learn your inability to believe, since reason brings you to this, and yet you cannot believe. Endeavour then to convince yourself, not by increase of proofs of God, but by the abatement of your passions. You would like to attain faith, and do not know the way; you would like to cure yourself of unbelief, and ask the remedy for it. Learn of those who have been bound like you, and who now stake all their possessions. These are people who know the way which you would follow, and who are cured of an ill of which you would be cured. Follow the way by which they began; by acting as if they believed, taking the holy water, having masses said, etc. Even this will naturally make you believe, and deaden your acuteness.The celebrity of fragment 418 has been established at the price of a mutilation. By titling this text 'the wager', readers have been fixated only on one part of Pascal's reasoning. It doesn't conclude with a QED at the end of the mathematical part. The unbeliever who had provoked this long analysis to counter his previous objection ('Maybe I bet too much') is still not ready to join the apologist on the side of faith. He put forward two new objections, undermining the foundations of the wager: the impossibility to know, and the obligation of playing.We have to accept reality and accept the reaction of the libertine when he rejects arguments he is unable to counter. The conclusion is evident: if men believe or refuse to believe, it is not how some believers sometimes say and most unbelievers claim, because their own reason justifies the position they have adopted. Belief in God doesn't depend upon rational evidence, no matter which position. Pascal's wager is an argument in philosophy presented by the seventeenth-century French philosopher, mathematician and physicist, Blaise Pascal (1623–1662). It posits that humans bet with their lives that God either exists or does not. Pascal argues that a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. If God does not actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.), whereas he stands to receive infinite gains (as represented by eternity in Heaven) and avoid infinite losses (eternity in Hell). Pascal's Wager was based on the idea of the Christian God, though similar arguments have occurred in other religious traditions. The original wager was set out in section 233 of Pascal's posthumously published Pensées ('Thoughts'). These previously unpublished notes were assembled to form an incomplete treatise on Christian apologetics. Historically, Pascal's wager was groundbreaking because it charted new territory in probability theory, marked the first formal use of decision theory, and anticipated future philosophies such as existentialism, pragmatism and voluntarism. The wager uses the following logic (excerpts from Pensées, part III, §233):