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Part 9: Pascal’s Wager

Introduction

In Section Two of his Pensées, we find ourselves eager to read and study the most famous of all of Pascal’s ideas: The Wager. Dr. Douglas Groothuis, Professor of Philosophy at Denver Theological Seminar, indicates that it is not only a well-known but also a “much-debated argument in philosophy.” He continues: “Although the essential idea of the wager was not entirely new to Pascal, his concerns as a mathematician who did groundbreaking work in probability theory, as well as his enthusiasm as an avid defender of Christianity, give the wager its psychological and logical bite.” At the core, writes Peter Kreeft, the Wager “tries to prove that it is eminently reasonable for anyone to ‘bet’ on God, to hope that God is, to invest his life in God.”

Introduction

As in other sections of the Pensées, Pascal employs an interlocutor, an imaginary person who takes part in the dialogue or conversation. A.J. Krailsheimer has thoroughly described this person: He is “well-versed in the social graces, familiar with the world of the great and its pastimes, such as hunting, gambling, dancing, and tennis, sufficiently informed about the discoveries of contemporary science to recognize references to worlds revealed by telescope and microscope, anxious for popularity and approval, a critic of style and fashion, priding himself on being a hardheaded rationalist, for whom two and two make four, and laughing at pretentions that reason cannot sustain….These so-called libertines were motivated not so much by hostility as by indifference with regard to religion.”

Introduction

Longing to have others come to know God as he had, Pascal conveyed his thoughts (pensées), his apology for Christianity, mostly through brief, powerful, aphorisms intended as an outline for a book of prose. With great compassion and unusual insight, he sought to answer one question: “How can I pierce the carapace of complacency and touch the vital organ, the heart?” Thus, he pressed hard on the issues of indifference, vanity, diversion, wretchedness, and doubt. To these, he added the Wager, “a prudential element, which he hopes will captivate the seeker and compel him to consider other reasons for belief” (Groothuis).Didn’t Pascal, in the 17th century, seek to do what we long to do today with those whom we love? How can we invite family, friends, and strangers to at least search for the truth, even if they do not find it? Wouldn’t this be more reasonable, Pascal argued, than being indifferent about God and religion?

His Starting Point: The Reduction of Eternity

• “Our imagination so magnifies the present, because we are continually thinking about it, and so reduces eternity, because we do not think about it, that we turn eternity into nothing and nothing into eternity, and all this is so strongly rooted within us that all our reason cannot save us from it…” (432/194).

• “Nothing is so important to man as his state: nothing more fearful than eternity. Thus the fact that there exist men who are indifferent to the loss of their being and the peril of an eternity of wretchedness is against nature.” (427/194).

Be Concerned About Time and Eternity

“Of all their aberrations it is no doubt this (being unconcerned about seeking the truth) which most convicts them of folly and blindness, and where they can most easily be confounded by the first application of common sense and by natural instincts. For it is indubitable (certain) that this life is but an instant of time, that the state of death is eternal, whatever its nature may be, and thus that all our actions and thoughts must follow such different paths according to the state of this eternity, that the only possible way of acting with sense and judgment is to decide our course in the light of this point, which ought to be our ultimate objective” (428/195).

The Value of Eternity

• “My whole heart strains to know what the true good is in order to pursue it: no price would be too high to pay for eternity” (429/229).

• “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls, and upon finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had, and bought it” (Mt. 13:45-46).

• “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you” (Augustine).

Does Pascal Believe in Eternal Punishment?

• “Between us and heaven and hell there is only life half-way, the most fragile thing in the world” (152/213).

• “Custom is our nature. Anyone who grows accustomed to faith believes it, and can no longer help fearing hell, and believes nothing else” (419/419).

• “Who has more cause to fear hell, someone who does not know whether there is a hell, but is certain to be damned if there is, or someone who is completely convinced that there is a hell, and hopes to be saved if there is?” (748/239).

Condemned by Reason

“One of the ways in which the damned will be confounded is that they will see themselves condemned by their own reason, by which they claimed to condemn the Christian religion” (175/563).

Which Mistake Is Worse?

“Order. I should be much more afraid of being mistaken and then finding out that Christianity is true than of being mistaken in believing it to be true” (387/241).

Do We Take Our Errors Too Lightly?

“There is something to be said for every error, but, whatever may be said for it, the most important thing to be said about it is that it is erroneous.”

- G.K. Chesterton

G.K. Chesterton1874-1936

Douglas Groothuis, PhD

“If Christianity is true, the prudential benefits for believing (eternal life) far exceed those offered by believing in atheism (finite pleasures).”

The Wager: Prologue

• “The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite and becomes pure nothingness. So it is with our mind before God, with our justice before divine justice.” (418/233).

• Infinite, adj., having no limit or end (real or assignable); boundless, unlimited, endless; immeasurably great in extent, duration, or other respect. Chiefly of God or His attributes; also of space, time, etc., in which it passes into the mathematical use (OED).

• Analogy of Finite Number: “We know that the infinite exists without knowing its nature, just as we know that it is untrue that numbers are finite. Thus it is true that there is an infinite number, but we do not know what it is. It is untrue that it is even, untrue that it is odd, for by adding a unit it does not change its nature” (i.e., 1 + ∞ = ∞ ) (418/233).

The Wager: Prologue

• “Therefore, we may well know that God exists without knowing what he is” (418).

• “If there is a God, he is infinitely beyond our comprehension, since, being indivisible and without limits, he bears no relation to us. We are therefore incapable of knowing either what he is or whether he is. That being so, who would dare to attempt an answer to the questions? Certainly not we, who bear no relation to him.”

• “There is no proportion between our minds and God….” Pascal “is not denying that there may be logical proofs of God’s existence. He is denying that reason can understand his nature or his will” (Kreeft).

The Law of Non-Contradiction

Either God exists or he does not.• First Principles “form the foundations upon which all knowledge rests. First

principles are the fundamental truths from which inferences are made and on which conclusions are based” (Geisler and Bocchino). “….all reasoning necessarily presuppose these first principles” (Kreeft).

• The law of non-contradiction states that A cannot be both A and non-A at the same time and in the same relationship.

• “We know the truth not only through our reason, but also through our heart” (110/282).

• “Reason’s last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it. It is merely feeble if it does not go as far as to realize that” (188/267).

The Impotence of Reason

• “Reason cannot decide this question. Infinite chaos separates us.”

• A coin is being tossed – heads or tails? “How will you wager? Reason cannot make you choose either; reason cannot prove either wrong.”

• “You must wager. There is no choice; you are already committed.”

Peter Kreeft’s Illustration

“We are ‘already committed,’ that is, ‘embarked,’ as on a ship. The ship is our life. The sea is time. We are moving, past a port that claims to be our true home. We can choose to turn and put in at this port (that is, to believe) or to refuse it (that is, to disbelieve), but we cannot choose to stay motionless out at sea. For we are not motionless; we are dying.”

Time

Our Life

Death

The Uncommitted Interlocutor

• One cannot avoid the issue by remaining skeptical.• If theism is true, we lose the good, just as certainly as if we positively

chose to disbelieve.• If theism is true, the agnostic and the unbeliever forfeit the benefits

promised only to the believer.• Anyone who decides not to choose obtains the same result as the

person who does not believe in God. • We have a limited time to live on this planet, and we don’t know

when the end will come.• The choice is irreversible….and there is a point of no return.

What Are the Options?

• You have two things to lose: (1) the true and (2) the good.• You have two things to stake: (1) your reason & your will; (2) your

knowledge & your happiness.• Your nature has two things to avoid: (2) error and (2) wretchedness.

Kreeft: Four Possibilities

God Exists God Does Not Exist

I Believe

Gain:everything

(eternal happiness)

Lose:nothing

Gain:nothing

Lose:nothing

I Do Not Believe

Gain:nothing

Lose:everything

(eternal happiness)

Gain:nothing

Lose:nothing

The Wager: Assessment of the Stakes & Odds

• What you are staking is finite.• In the wager, there is one chance of winning against a finite number

of chances of losing.• The winnings: an infinity of infinitely happy life.• “That leaves no choice; wherever there is infinity, and where there

are not infinite chances of losing against that of winning, there is no room for hesitation, you must give everything.”

• “Since you are obliged to play, you must be renouncing (prudential) reason if you hoard your life rather than risk it for an infinite gain.”

The Wager: Assessment of the Stakes & Odds

• “Thus our argument carries infinite weight, when the stakes are finite in a game where there are even chances of winning and losing and an infinite prize to be won.”

• “This is conclusive and if men are capable of any truth, this is it.”• The Interlocutor: “I confess, I admit it, but is there really no way of

seeing what the cards are?”• Pascal: “Yes. Scripture and the rest, etc.”• Interlocutor: I am made in such a way that I cannot believe. What do

you want me to do?

The Wager: Assessment of the Stakes & Odds

• Pascal: “If you are unable to believe, it is because of your passions, since reason impels you to believe….Concentrate then not on convincing yourself by multiplying proofs of God’s existence but by diminishing your passions….Learn from those (like me) who were once bound like you and who now wager all they have.”

• R.C. Sproul: “The matter of the knowledge of God the Creator is not so much an intellectual problem as it is a moral problem. It becomes an intellectual problem because the mind is darkened by man’s indisposition or psychological bias against the light.”

• Behave as if you did believe.

The Wager: Spiritual Experiment

• Should one test his/her commitment with an experiment?• “The wager can be seen as a first step in the process of possible belief

development. Because beliefs cannot be taken up at will, a process is undertaken which may result in full-fledged belief, if certain conditions obtain….I suggest that the prudential factors raised by the wager are sufficient to generate a spiritual experiment, once the concept of God is rendered sufficiently intelligible to justify the rationality of such a venture.” (Groothuis).

• “True faith is not a wager but a relationship. But it can begin with a wager, just as a marriage can begin with a blind date” (Kreeft).

Final Thoughts From R.C. Sproul

• “In the final analysis there is either a God or Gods or there are none. There either is something or someone ultimate apart from me or there is not.”

• “Emotional prejudice is not limited to the dull-witted, the illiterate and poorly educated. It is exceedingly difficult for the most brilliant of men to be free of it.”

• “Man’s desire is not that Yahweh exists, but that He doesn’t.”• “God’s presence is severely threatening to man. God manifests a

threat to man’s moral standards, a threat to his quest for autonomy, and a threat to his desire for concealment.”

Simone Weil

“One can never wrestle enough with God if one does so out of pure regard for the truth. Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms.”

Simone Weil1909-1943

The Ultimate Question

“If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; and whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s shall save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?” (Mk. 8:36).

- Jesus Christ