Blaise Pascal & Pascal's Wager

[Helios]

An influential philosopher and a good video from the School of Life



Pascal's Wager

It's an interesting yet simple theory, the idea that believing in God has no drawbacks as we're never sure that the probability of his existence is 0%, and that if one were to gamble and not believe in God they're faced with eternal damnation in whatever % chance that he does exist. One stands to gain everything and lose nothing by following this reasoning in practicing theism. The problem arises when one will argue that which religion is correct and will believing in the wrong one doom you anyways?

 

[Kanini]

They didn't lie; pessimism is somewhat comforting at times but it can get exhausting if you're constantly in that state of mind.

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I've heard this argument be used repeatedly and i'm starting to get curious about how he put it. Kinda want to read his book now so thanks for sharing.

It's an interesting yet simple theory, the idea that believing in God has no drawbacks as we're never sure that the probability of his existence is 0%, and that if one were to gamble and not believe in God they're faced with eternal damnation in whatever % chance that he does exist.

 

[abdullah233]

Justifying Pascal’s wager goes against Islam but I see where agnostics could justify it

 

[codewebsduh]

Pascals wager tries to transform the act of following a religion into a binary representation yet ignores the plurality of religious worship. Whereby there are thousands of religions and pascal only focuses on Christianity. Furthermore, Pascals wager pre-supposes that a God wishes to be worshipped thus tactically committing the fallacy of begging the question.

There are other arguments for God which are much more nuanced then Pascals.