Pascal's Wager
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- 'Since each religion claims that it is the only true one and that the others are invalid', the king explained, 'I have decided to hedge my bets.' – Ibn Rustah (10th century)
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[edit] Definition
Pascal’s Wager is a name given to a certain game-theoretical argument in favor of theism. Informally, it may be expressed as
- If you believe in God, and you’re mistaken, then no harm done. On the other hand, if you don’t believe in God, and you’re mistaken, then you suffer eternal damnation. Therefore, it’s better to believe in God.
The argument is implicit in the slogan found on bumper-stickers and church signs:
- If you’re living like there is no God, you’d better be right!
Strictly speaking, Pascal’s Wager is not an argument for the existence of God, but for the belief in God.
The following article analyses Pascal's Wager as usually presented by modern day Christian apologists, but Pascal's actual argument was logically more complex. He divided the possible belief systems as follows:
- Paganism
- Judaism
- Islam
- "Philosophy" (not atheism as such)
- Christianity
He disposed of the first three with fairly reasonable (if not definitive) arguments, and only then proposed the wager.
[edit] Probabilistic Argument
This argument certainly predates its namesake Blaise Pascal[1], but he may have been the first to apply mathematical probability theory to the argument. In Pascal’s formulation, the situation can be represented as the payoff matrix:
| God Exists (G) | No God (~G) | |
| Believe (B) | +∞ (Heaven) | 0 (Death) |
| Doubt (~B) | -∞ (Hell) | 0 (Death) |
From the matrix (assuming it represents the actual situation), it can be seen that belief in God is favorable to disbelief. It is instructive to compare this argument to those advanced in favor of the Precautionary Principle.
[edit] Criticism
[edit] Assumes a Particular God
We do not commonly find Pascal’s Wager used to justify belief in any god except the Christian God. Yet the argument rests upon two assumptions of the deity which are by no means exclusively Christian:
- The deity has a non-zero probability of existence
- The deity rewards belief infinitely
For example, the argument applies to both the Christian God and the Muslim God. There are certainly ancient pagan gods for whom the argument applies. The argument applies to the Invisible Pink Unicorn (IPU), whose “followers” often use a variation on Pascal’s Wager to justify belief. It is impractical to believe in all possible gods, since belief in any one is often exclusive of all others. Assuming that we accept Pascal’s argument, we are now faced with the situation represented below:
| God Exists (G) | IPU exists (~G) | |
| Believe in God (B) | +∞ | -∞ |
| Believe in IPU (~B) | -∞ | +∞ |
At this point, the probability of G becomes important, and we are left with the original dilemma of deciding how probable God is. (We may further complicate matters by postulating that the IPU also rewards non-IPU-believers, as long as they are non-theist.)
When Pascal’s Wager is used in favor of belief in the Christian God, it implicitly assumes a false dichotomy: either the Christian God exists, or no god exists.
[edit] The Problem of Exclusivism
In the same way, even having decided that the God who either does or does not exist must necessarily be the Christian God, it is necessary to decide in which Christian sects salvation is to be found. This problem is given special point by the fact that Pascal was himself as Catholic exclusivist, and regarded Protestants, for example, as most certainly damned:
- Thank God, I have no sort of connection with any community except the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church, in the bosom of which I desire to live and die, in communion with the Pope, the head of the Church, and beyond the pale of which I am persuaded there is no salvation.
So from Pascal's point of view, the probability matrix should actually look like this:
| God Exists (G) | No God (~G) | |
| Be Catholic (C) | +∞ (Heaven) | 0 (Death) |
| Be non-Catholic (~C) | -∞ (Hell) | 0 (Death) |
This too is a false dichotomy, and one visible even to the most enthusiastic missionary.
[edit] Assumes Probability of God
It may be argued that belief in a non-existent God carries a slight negative payoff; that it isn’t exactly “no harm done”, since the worship of a false deity can consume precious resources and detract from the experience of life. According to Pascal, any non-zero values on the right column are rendered irrelevant by the infinite values on the left. This assumes that G has a non-zero probability, an assumption lost on “strong” atheists.
However, we may also represent the payoffs as a percentage of life experience, reflecting the fact that an hour from a finite lifetime is worth infinitely more than an hour in an infinite lifetime. Supposing that belief entails one-seventh of one’s life spent upon divine worship, the payoff matrix may be represented as follows:
| God Exists (G) | No God (~G) | |
| Believe (B) | 100% (Heaven) | 86%(Useless worship) |
| Doubt (~B) | 0% (Hell) | 99%(Enjoy life) |
Here we see that the question of the probability of God is quite significant; in fact, the probability of God need not even be astronomically remote to suggest disbelief as a preferable choice.
[edit] Theist Criticism
Two additional assumptions are implicit in Pascal’s Wager, as an argument for theist belief:
- that beliefs can be willfully chosen,
- that belief resulting from mechanical logical arguments constitutes genuine faith
Theists subscribing to the sola gratia doctrine (particularly Calvinists) would reject the first of these assumptions, arguing that belief (or more accurately, “faith”) is given only by God.
The second would also be rejected by many theists. Logically reasoned belief in God may fall into the same category as “I’ll pay you ten dollars to believe in God”, and we may doubt whether the God described by the Christian scriptures would favor such a belief.
Pascal himself may have accepted these criticisms, but justified use of the argument anyway as a way to crack open the atheist mind, allowing genuine belief to follow from other channels.
