Pascal’s Wager: To Believe or Not to Believe?

The mathematician, physicist, and philosopher Blaise Pascal is famous, among other reasons, for his wager-argument for God. Pascal’s wager treats belief in God as a choice to believe or to not believe. Either God exists or he does not. By believing that he does exist one receives salvation. However, by believing he does not exist one receives eternal punishment. In other words, by breaking down this wager one is able to perceive what he or she risks by not believing or by believing in God and in turn causes them to evaluate their future in the after-life.

Blaise Pascal was born a child prodigy when it came to education. His father educated him in his own home of Rouen. He became a brilliant mathematician and physicist. Pascal’s earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the study of fluids and others. He invented the first digital calculator while later creating the foundation of the probability theory. However, one of Pascal’s most known and controversial works is the writing of Pensees. Pensees, meaning thoughts, was the collection of unpublished notes about the truth on the Christian religion. After Pascal’s death the notes were assembled and later published. Within in the Christian framework it was set out in section 233 Pascal’s formulated Wager. The existence of God has been argued upon since years resulting in arguments from many great philosophers, Pascal being one of them. Pascal’s Wager, first proposed in the seventeenth century, describes an argument by him trying to convince one to rationally believe in the existence of God.

Pascal’s Wager brings about many controversial discussions through the idea of the existence of God. With this I have many controversial arguments that agree and may also disagree with the Wager. If one were choosing to believe that God does in fact exist, then one would gain salvation after death and if he or she doesn’t believe then one would lose nothing. However, my first argument against this fact is how God can reward faith. The Wager does not state as to which particular god one should follow. With this, faith can be blind and one may believe in many different religions with different gods. For instance, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and many more are various other religions that exist in this world. A child brought up by a family with a different religion than one of God is going to make the decision of the child to also believe in the same particular religion. This child then has no other choice but to follow the same religion, with this said does this mean if the child is blindly following the wrong faith do they receive eternal punishment after death?

To my second disagreement, I believe a being that possesses perfect goodness would not reward an immoral person for the sake of simple belief because that would mean he is not perfectly good. With this fact being said Pascal’s Wager is therefore invalidated because it contradicts one of the attributes of God, which is that he is “All-Good”. Along with the idea