Answer to Pascal's Wager

This was written for my philosophy class, Knowledge and Reality, in November 2011.

Blaise Pascal, in his famous wager on the belief in God, gave credibility to the reasoning of a man pursuant of eternal happiness. However, in the centuries that followed the publication of Pensées, where the wager was explained, many philosophers have offered critiques of his reasoning. I have compiled some of these critiques and will organize these by asking some fundamental questions about Pascal’s Wager, of his argument’s validity and soundness. Of first concern however, is the actual wager.

The Wager explained

Pascal’s Wager is a common argument for belief in the existence of God. It is simply stated as the combination of two choices, one of belief in God and the other of possible afterlives. Pascal argues from his cultural heritage of Christianity, so the deity he speaks of is the Christian one and the afterlives he speaks of are also Christian. Pascal argues that, since reason cannot give a sure answer to the question of the existence of God, we are left with only the possibility of God existing and of God not existing. Since we cannot know anything about the probability of either outcome, we must give equal chance to both – a 50% chance to each. He further argues that if God exists, then there is a choice between believing and not believing, and the corresponding infinitely happy or infinitely unhappy afterlives. He describes the possible outcomes of our belief in God and of God’s actual existence, describing four possible situations which are as follows:

1. God exists and you believe in him and you are eternally happy in Heaven, 
2. God exists and you don’t believe in him and you are eternally unhappy in Hell, 
3. God does not exist but you do believe, and you lose some happiness to be gained in this life by unbelief but gained nothing in eternity, and 
4. God do not exist and you do not believe, in which case you’ve gained some happiness through a life of unbelief and lost nothing in eternity. 

Pascal goes on to defend his view against possible criticism. He says the choice is unavoidable, and must be made. There is no middle or other ground, there is only belief and unbelief. He exhorts the reader to believe because the consequences of disbelief have the potential to be so terrible and the consequences of belief have the potential to be so great.

Pascal concludes by saying that if one is naturally and through reason an opponent to belief, one should put all effort into belief. He says that the heart should be the source of belief, since reason cannot help us decide. He reiterates that reason cannot answer the question of belief, and that the heart should answer it using faith. Thus, Pascal lays out a claim that since we cannot know by reason, we should know by faith.

Is Pascal’s argument Valid and Sound?

Several answers have been given to Pascal’s argument over the centuries, most of which have attacked it’s soundness. Now, for an argument to be sound, the conclusion must follow from the premises and the premises must be true. Pascal’s argument is this:

1. God exists or does not exist,
2. You must believe either that God exists or that he does not,
3. The benefits of belief and being right outweigh the benefits of disbelief and being right, so
4. Therefore, believe that he exists – the potential for reward is infinitely greater. 

Does the conclusion follow from the premises? I believe so. But is this argument sound? Are the premises and conclusion true? Let us examine each premise.

Criticism has been made of the first premise, that God exists or does not. Pascal assumes that there can be only one god and that that god is the Christian one. He is really saying “if there is a god, it’s the Christian monotheistic one.” It is possible, however, that the Christian god does not exist but some other single deity does. It is also possible that multiple gods exist. Another of Pascal’s assumptions is that God and the afterlife are inseparably linked. However, there could be a god and no afterlife, and vice-versa. These seem to go together, but lacking any evidence of the supernatural, we cannot know.

The second premise is that we must make a choice. This is harder to question, but there is one situation, at least, where we may draw questions. Pascal, in this premise, is speaking to those who are conscious enough to know there is a choice. What is to be said of babies, who do not have the ability to consider this question? What is to be said of those ignorant of the idea of god? There do exist human beings who cannot make a choice, whether due to their ignorance of it or their inability to process it.

The third premise is that our choice should be made by a weighing of the benefits of each outcome This is, in my mind, near impossible to attack. Pascal argues that we cannot know one way or another that god exists, leaving us without an angle to work with. There is no knowledge possible, only belief. Therefore, we must choose whatever alternative is best. Pascal exhorts us to reason with our hearts rather than our logic, because the usual, logical approach to philosophical questions is useless here.

Now what can be said about the conclusion? If the premises are unknowable, can the conclusion remain sound? It is not so. Pascal’s Wager is a very good way of explaining the merits of belief if only one faith is concerned – the Christian faith. But we face a more complicated decision. There is more than one god to choose to believe in, and belief in any one god makes belief in another impossible. Should the god most likely to exist be chosen? How are the religions to be judged for potential universal truth? Should the god who offers the happiest afterlife be chosen? How are we to know what will make us most happy? These questions touch on our hopeless ignorance on the possibility of a god’s existence as well as on our ignorance of the potential deity’s attributes.

Is manufactured belief better than none at all?

Robert Green Ingersol wrote another critical reply in Some Reasons Why (1881). He said “Belief is not a voluntary thing. A man believes or disbelieves in spite of himself, they tell us that to believe is the safe way; but I say, the safe way is to be honest. Nothing can be safer than that.” He promotes the idea that humans cannot change their minds to believe a thing they think unbelievable, and that it is better to be honest than dishonest, even for the sake of eternal personal gain. Extrapolated from here is the belief that a just god would more reward honesty than dishonesty, even if the dishonesty promoted belief. Pascal answers this to some extent by saying that one should, given the possible outcomes, pretend to believe and strive to believe, and by striving to believe, to eventually convince oneself. I have actually seen this in practice, at a church. In this church, I was told that one could know the truth by studying the truth, and that this was more effective a method than any method which studied falsehood. They likened this argument to the experience of a bank teller, who, after handling thousands of real, legitimate bills, could easily spot a counterfeit. By focusing on truth, they shunned alternatives and put blinders on their minds, seeing only what agreed with their values. The faith they had was great in direct proportion to their blindness to anything critical of their faith, and they succeeded in convincing themselves of the existence of God and Heaven. In this way they used Pascal’s method of creating genuine belief and were entirely honest in believing their belief to be true. They made no false claims, but they did fail to fully utilize their intelligence and so limited their ability to find truth.

We have explored Pascal’s Wager and the several answers which have been made to it. Some have indicated that the choice to believe in God or not to believe in God is a false dichotomy, that there is another option of multiple gods existing, not just one or none. Another criticism is that God and an afterlife do not need to coexist – there could be one without the other. These criticisms address the truth of Pascal’s premises and indicate more possibilities than Pascal anticipated. We have found that his argument, though valid, is not sound.