YHWH's Magnum Opus Deals A Mortal Blow To Pascal's
Wager
By: Randall Hogan
Revisiting Pascal’s Wager
Over the last three and a half centuries much has been written about
Pascal’s famous wager.* The wager is actually the last in a group of three
philosophical arguments posited by the seventeenth-century French
philosopher Blaise Pascal. The arguments were found in a single paragraph
in some unpublished notes that Pascal was compiling for a future publication
called “Apology for the Christian Religion.” The notes were collected and
published posthumously in 1670 under the title “Pensées,” meaning
Thoughts.
In its most basic form, the infamous third argument states if you choose to
believe in god you have everything to gain, but little to lose. Yet, if you
choose NOT to believe in god you have little to gain, but everything to lose.
While this argument vies with Anselm's Ontological Argument for being the
most famous argument in the philosophy of religion, the real contribution of
Pascal’s “Pensées” was the introduction of probability theory and decision
theory together for one of the first times in history.
As for the wager, Pascal laid out the argument as an apologetic for god’s
existence within a Christian framework, which was refuted almost
immediately after its publication. As countless refutations have mounted
over the last 350 years, the leading counter argument has become known as
“argument from inconsistent revelations” or sometimes “avoiding the wrong
hell problem.” This rebuttal was first proposed by Voltaire in his French
satire “Candide,” published in 1759, and was later taken up by Diderot. This
counter argument basically states because there are several competing and
contradictory revelations of god(s), we have no guarantee of believing in the
right god if we choose to believe.
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