Blaise Pascal

The French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal wrote in his Pensées, a collection of notes made towards the end of his life, that when making a life wager on the existence of God, belief in God is the best bet.  This is known as Pascal’s Wager.  Using the first formally structured decision theory and probability theory Pascal started from the proposition that reason and experiment cannot establish the existence or non-existence of God.  He developed the proposal that no matter the state of existence of God, it was a better bet to behave as though there was one.  In his other writings, Pascal expressed his belief that in comparison to other options, like stoicism, paganism, Islam, and Judaism,  the Christian faith is the only one that could be correct.  A corollary of Pascal’s thesis is “If it is impossible to know whether God exists, it follows that it is also impossible to know (in the case that God does exist) God’s expectations of us.” This corollary makes Pascal’s belief in the correctness of Christianity unsupported by his own logic.

Pascal’s wager has been attacked and defended by philosophers over the ages,  Voltare – treatied it as a proof, as opposed to a pragmatic analysis.  Denis Diderot, and J. L. Mackie point out that the same argument could be said about any religion, many of which each claim to be the only true path to salvation.  Richard Dawkins further challenges the scope of outcomes by proposing the possibility of a God who rewards honest search for truth, and punishes blind faith.  You see, taking these refinements into consideration, the decision matrix no longer supports Pascal’s clear odds.

My contribution to this discussion is to show that there is a third choice.  When the decision matrix is evaluated with my “third way”, it can be seen that this is the only sure bet.

Pascal’s original wager can be shown in a formal presentation as:

This matrix changes when the additional considerations of Mackie and Dawkins are included:

With these additions, it becomes clear that the wager now has no clear winning bet, as both choices have an infinite benefit.  Without additional information it is impossible to compare two infinities.  Only when the mathematical structure of both infinities is known is it possible to assess the mathematics involved.  Heaven does not fit this model.

I propose an alternative to these views by proposing a third wager.  In this third case, faith is a recognition that it is impossible to know if there is a God, combined with an intent to live according to ethics drawn from scientific knowledge of reality.  One would also conform to the prevailing ethics of the local society, insofar as it does not conflict with rational ethics.

• If God exists and rewards an agnostic faith and/or rewards logic, potential rewards ensue.
• If God rewards some religious faith, then you are certainly no worse off than choosing another incorrect faith.  Since the agnostic faith recognizes that not only is the existence of God  uncertain, but also the nature of God and his/her/its expectations it is at least as good a choice as any religion.
• In the case that God does not exist, there is no cost, and the benefit of a life well spent.

Inspecting this revised table shows that all of the wagers except the Agnostic one entail an infinitely negative outcome.  In fact, it is the single wager that has only “safe” outcomes.