Pascal’s Wager revisited

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Pascal’s Wager is widely misunderstood by atheists and theists alike, as Glen Scrivener and Graham Tomlin explain in this video. They’re right about that, but they also claim that the original version of the Wager is more robust, which I think is a mistake. It falls to many of the same criticisms as the popular version and then some. More on this in the comments.

51 thoughts on “Pascal’s Wager revisited”

  1. I did a search for the word ‘heart’ throughout the Pensées, and these are some of the things that Pascal attributes to it:

    1) the awareness and experience of God;

    2) faith;

    3) our moral sense;

    4) love;

    5) knowledge of the first principles of logic, such as the law of non-contradiction;

    6) basic intuitions about the physical world, including knowledge of what time and motion are, and that space is three-dimensional;

    7) and interestingly, the fact that we aren’t dreaming and that reality isn’t an illusion. He evidently recognizes the force of Cartesian skepticism, and lacking a way to prove by reason that we aren’t dreaming, he appeals to the heart as the source of that knowledge.

    (It’s why I’m a Cartesian skeptic. I see no way to demonstrate that we aren’t dreaming, aren’t being fooled by a Cartesian evil demon, aren’t brains in vats, etc. I don’t appeal to the heart, unlike Pascal. I just accept that the question can’t be resolved.)

    It’s interesting that Pascal thinks that the question of whether God exists is untouchable by reason (though he contradicts himself elsewhere by presenting “proofs” of religion). He truly regards it as a coin flip:

    Let us then examine this point, and say, “God is, or He is not.” But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager? According to reason, you can do neither the one thing nor the other; according to reason, you can defend neither of the propositions.

    If the probabilities truly were 50-50, and if the choice were binary — Christianity or atheism, with no other options — then maybe it would make sense to try to brainwash yourself. It would cost you your intellectual integrity, plus the extra costs associated with living as a Christian, but the stakes would be high enough to justify it.

    But those two “ifs” definitely don’t hold. The odds aren’t anywhere near 50-50, and in fact I’d argue that the probability that Christianity is true — at least as most Christians conceive of it — is extremely low. There are also a zillion possible alternatives to Christianity, some of which offer infinite rewards and threaten infinite punishment, some already existing and others that haven’t been proposed. Without estimates of their relative probabilities, Pascal’s Wager doesn’t work.

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