Pascal’s Wager

Pascal’s Wager is an argument not for the existence of God but for a belief in God. He starts with the claim that “we do not know either the existence or the nature of God, because he has neither extension nor limits” (Reason and Responsibility, p. 134). We humans are both finite and extended in space, so we cannot know the nature of God because he is infinite and we cannot know the existence of God because he is not extended in space. God is “indivisible and without limits, he bears no relation to us” (R&R, p. 134), so we have no way of knowing what God is like or even whether he exists at all.

After establishing that the existence and nature of God cannot be known through reason alone, Pascal proceeds to develop the betting metaphor. He likens the existence of God to a coin, spinning at the far end of “infinite chaos,” which will come down heads or tails. In other words, he says that even though we cannot know which is the case, in reality God must either exist or not exist. “How will you wager? Reason cannot make you choose either, reason cannot prove either wrong” (R&R, pp. 134-5). Pascal implies that not believing God exists is essentially the same as believing that God does not exist. Therefore, each of us must either believe in God or not believe in God. There is no third alternative.

Reason alone does not give more weight to either choice, so we must look at more than the (completely lack of) evidence at hand when deciding whether or not to believe in God. Pascal suggests that because neither choice affects our reason, we should look at the likely payoff in terms of happiness. If we believe in God, and there is a God, we get infinite bliss. If we believe in God, and there is no God, we get nothing. If we doubt God’s existence and there is a God, we get infinite torment. If we doubt God’s existence and there is no God, we get nothing. The payoffs can be put into a table as follows:

	God exists	God doesn’t exist
Belief in God	Infinite bliss	Nothing
Doubt in God	Infinite torment	Nothing

If you stand to lose some substantial but finite amount of happiness by needlessly believing in God, and you stand to gain some substantial but finite amount of happiness by avoiding this needless belief, the table would look like this:

	God exists	God doesn’t exist
Belief in God	Infinite bliss	Some torment
Doubt in God	Infinite torment	Some bliss

The prudent thing to do is still to believe in God, because “the finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite and becomes pure nothingness” (R&R, p. 134), so the infinite gain or loss when God exists outweighs any finite gain or loss when God does not exist. It is always more rational to believe in God, since we essentially have nothing to lose by falsely believing in him, and everything to gain if we turn out to be correct in our belief.

Pascal’s wager creates a fairly effective argument against both atheists, who think they know God doesn’t exist, and agnostics, who think the existence of God cannot be known, and so choose not to believe in him. Atheist arguments against the existence of God usually consist of trying to show that his existence is logically impossible for one reason or another. Pascal neatly refutes most of the arguments available to the atheist when he asserts that we cannot know one way or the other about the existence of God. By saying that God is too far removed from humanity for us to be able to comprehend his existence or nature, Pascal implies that any argument that could possibly answer the question of God’s existence would also be too much for humanity to comprehend. That is, any arguments our finite minds are able to grasp don’t come close to encompassing all of what God is (if he is at all), and therefore such arguments cannot really show whether or not God exists. Therefore, it is both foolish and pretentious to claim we could ever know by reason that God does not exist.

It is likely that Pascal intended, by making that assertion, to soften the convictions of any (perfectly rational) atheist readers to the point where they merely lack belief in the existence of God, instead of believing in the nonexistence of God. It is not surprising, then, that he proceeds to attack this agnostic nonbelief with the main part of his argument. By stressing repeatedly that one must wager one way or the other, Pascal makes it clear that nonbelief in God is equivalent to a negative belief in God, at least as far as God’s own judgment is concerned. A person who chooses not to believe either way is being just as irrational as a person who chooses to believe God doesn’t exist, when it comes to the likely payoffs of the wager.

In addition to these merits, there are some major problems with Pascal’s argument. The first that readers are likely to notice is his obvious lack of neutrality. In setting up his argument for our inability to know of the existence of God through reason, he says, “So it is with our mind before God, with our justice before divine justice” (R&R, p. 134), referring to how vast God’s justice is compared to our own. On that note, it is difficult to go along with his claim that we cannot possibly know whether or not God exists, because Pascal himself clearly does believe God exists. We get the impression that he will probably use this claim later on to convince us to also believe in God. Any avowed atheist would therefore most likely be so turned off by the first three paragraphs that he or she would be unwilling to give Pascal much credit over the course of the remaining arguments. Granted, anyone who writes an essay in order to convince the audience of something has an ulterior motive, but it usually makes for a more effective argument if the author is able to hide his or her bias.

However, Pascal’s lack of neutrality is mostly a stylistic fault of the argument. It is only a problem if he is actually trying to convert atheists, and it looks more like he’s merely trying to give a little nudge to uncommitted agnostics. These agnostics are probably more likely to forgive Pascal’s personal belief in God than atheists would be. A more serious problem is his assumption that people can change their beliefs merely by changing their practices. “Custom is our nature. Anyone who grows accustomed to faith believes it, and can no longer help fearing hell, and believes nothing else” (R&R, p. 136).

He believes that merely by behaving as if one “did believe, taking holy water, having masses said, and so on,” one will “believe quite naturally” (R&R, p. 136). While it is perhaps not entirely unrealistic to assume that some people can make themselves believe simply by behaving as if they believed, Pascal offers no evidence to support his claim that anyone can do so. If we cannot voluntarily control our own beliefs, Pascal’s argument becomes essentially meaningless. He tries to get us to believe that it is safer, in the long run, to believe in God, but this belief is only useful if we can use it to change our belief about God.

Even this problem, though, can be forgiven. The claim that we can change our beliefs merely by acting as if we believe is perhaps a bit unjustified, but if there was nothing we could do to voluntarily change our beliefs, there would be no point in arguing about anything at all. Even if we can’t really change our beliefs purely by an act of will, there is an intuition that we can change our beliefs though some kind of voluntary action, so the average reader isn’t likely to hold Pascal’s claim against him too much. However, a third problem with Pascal’s argument should not be forgiven as quickly as the two above.

Despite his claim that we cannot know anything about the existence or nature of God, Pascal bases the entire remainder of his argument on the assumption that God, if he exists, is the Christian version. We wouldn’t come to believe in any other version of god by partaking in Mass, so Pascal clearly assumes that the God we would come to believe in by partaking in Mass is the only one that can exist. A more generalized version of this assumption is that any God that might exist rewards believers and only believers. If it is really true that we cannot possibly know anything about the nature of God, then it’s true that we are not justified in assuming anything specific about the nature of God when making arguments. Because we have no way of knowing anything at all about God, we should assume that it is just as likely that God punishes believers and only believers. Or perhaps God rewards everyone, or punishes everyone. Now the table looks quite different:

	Belief in God	Doubt in God
No god	Nothing	Nothing
God A	Infinite bliss	Infinite bliss
God B	Infinite bliss	Infinite torment
God C	Infinite torment	Infinite bliss
God D	Infinite torment	Infinite torment

If we truly accept that nothing can be known about the nature of God, then we must accept that all of these gods are possible. Actually, there are four additional possibilities, because God may also “reward” people in either or both categories with complete oblivion. We can’t know the probabilities associated with any of these types of gods, so as far as we’re concerned, they all may as well be equally likely. Therefore, the expected payoff for believing in God is equal to the expected payoff for not believing in God.

Of course, God B was the only one any of Pascal’s contemporaries would consider as being at all likely to exist. Any other possible gods wasn’t really a viable option to his intended audience, nor was any version of God B other than the Christian God. If we look at Pascal’s argument as merely one of pragmatism, we see that it is still a very good argument. It simply wouldn’t be very practical for any seventeenth-century European to actively believe in any version of God other than that of Christianity. When the only practical choices available are believing in the Christian God and not believing in any god at all, Pascal makes a very good case for believing in the Christian God.

There is one final counterargument, though, that invalidates the wager portion of Pascal’s argument altogether. In addition to accepting that all four gods in the above table are possible, if we are committed to the impossibility of knowledge about God’s nature, we have to accept another possibility as well. We have to admit that perhaps God is not limited by logic as everything else is. When Pascal likens God to a coin “which will come down heads or tails” (R&R, p. 135), he implies that God either must exist or God must not exist. That is, he implies that God cannot both exist and not exist, nor can God neither exist nor not exist. While this is something most of us are prepared to accept without question, there is really no reason to assume that God is subject to the same rules of logic that apply to things we can observe directly.