Wager an argument about belief in God.

There have been many arguments for theism throughtout the

history of philosophy. But blaise pascal a 17th century French thinker. Employed a particularly unusual
strategy. He did not try to prove that God exist he didnt even tried to argue that gods existence is more
likely than nothing. Instead he lifted an approach from the gambling hall and argued that given the odds
and the potential pay offs beliefin God is a really good deal. Even if the chance that god actually exists is
low. Rationality, he claimed compels us to wager for god. First consider a decision problem, whether or
not to buy a lottery ticket, holding price of the ticket the sensible approach is to focus on two
considerations. First what are the chances of winning, what is the size of the pay off. Holding fix to the
pay off, the higher the chance of winning. The better the deal.. but equally holding fix to the chance of
winning, the larger the pay off the better the deal. Most actual lottery ticket are not a good deal at all,
but we can easily imagine a hypothetical lottery thats a really good deal. Even if the chance of winning is
still very low. For example even if the chance of winning is only 1 in 100 if the pay off is a billion dollar
and the cost of the ticket is say only a dollar it makes sense to buy one ticket. Pascal claims that even
god is by similar reasoning infinitely better deal than this he reasons as follows either god exists ot god
does not exist, if god exists and you believe, the pay off is an eternity of happiness. An outcome of
intimate value. If god exists and you dont believe, things will go much worse for you. so if god exists
youre better off believing, now if god doesnt exist then regardless of what will happen to you if you
believe and what will happen to you if you dont believe regardless of whether the value of each of
those outcomes is positive or negative and regardless of whether the first is larger than the second or
vise versa this muich seems clear. The value of each outcome will atleast be finite. Now, here is where
mathematics and infinity works its magic. Since infinity times any none zero probability is still infinity
and infinity plus any positive or negative finite value is still infinity the expected value in believing in God
is infinity which is definitely greater than the expected value of not believing. Now something about this
reasoning might strike hyou as a little bit fishy. Many philosophers have provided many objectivions to
this version of Pascals wager.

Objection.

One objection starts from the observation that the world contains many different religions which
postulate different god. Some of which would if they exist punish believers of other religion.

Another objection claims that even if pascals reasoning is good as far as it goes it has no pratical
importance, since someone who doesnt already believe cant just decide to truly believe

The third objection hold that even if you would decide to believe someone who believe in god because
they thoughtit would loose a good gamble wouldnt be given the infinite reward.

Today thought I want to focus on a different objection, this objection is that pascals wager proves too
much. First notice that theres some chance that if you attend just one church service youll be
converted. And become a full pledge believer no matter how low this chance is as long as its none zero
given the infinite pay off if god exists the same form of argument can be formed would allow us to
conclude that the expected value of attending just one church service is infinite. Perhaps this doesnt
seem so crazy yet but notice that theres also some none zero chance that if you go to the beach
tomorrow morning right at dawn youll have a religious experience and be converted. the same is true
going to the mountains at dawn tomorrow or for that matter of riding a ferris wheel or playing the
guitar or brushing your teeth or well anything at all. For every possible action you might perform theres
some chance that doing so will give you a religious experience and make you a believer. And so by this
same patter of argument given before every possible action has infinite expected value of believing in
god. This cant be right. For one thing it has the consequence the every possible action has the same
expected value as every possible action and so there is never a reason to do one thing rather than
another. Given the absurdity of this conclusion it seems that this line of reasoning must go wrong
somewhere but only that to you to think through it exactly where it does go wrong. To conclude Ill
describe a different version of pascals wager which may avoid some of the obejctions mentioned so far

This version is claimed to be more closer to the argument as pacals himself actually intended it to be.
We start of the same first presmise if god exists, youre better off as a believer than as a none believer

But the second premise of this argument is different it claims that even if god doesnt exist. Youre still
better off as a beliver than as a none beliver. If so then youre better off as a believer whether or not god
exists and so you should believe in god. This argument relies on a general plausible principle, it says that
if no matter what the world is like the outcome of choosing option a would be better than the outcome
of choosing option b. then you should choose option a. Its hard to argue with that. The crucial question
of this version of pascals is whether the second premise is right is it true that even if god doesnt exist
youre better off believing than as a non believer. There are some preliminary result in psychology that
suggests belivers may be happier thannone believers on average in certain respects, but the data are
still unconclusive and there may be important differences between different people, different culture
and different religions