In any event, we’re not even done tweaking Pascal’s wager at this point. I have no idea how the math would work in such a case: An infinite number of gods with infinitely good heavens, and only one of those gods actually exists… How do you choose which to bet on? Any mathematicians out there, please let me know what you think! My mathematical intuition says that choosing one item in an infinite bucket is an infinitesimally small gesture that is, that it’s actually a zero-probability bet to choose one god out of an infinite number of them. Well, keep going: A god that prefers people who own three bunnies four bunnies etc., ad infinitum. So there are two possible gods generated this way.
Well, this can’t be the same God, because there are contradictory beliefs involved. (I’m saying this is possible, not necessarily likely!) Now take that God and say he prefers people who own two bunnies. Now say that he prefers people who own one bunny. Take one of the versions of the Christian God. How could there be infinitely many gods like this, you ask? It doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. However, if there are actually an infinite number of gods that could exist and offer infinitely good Heavens, things change. Lord knows (ha) how you’d decide, but Pascal’s wager is still reasonable here. Now, if all of these possible gods really do offer up an infinitely good Heaven, but only one of them actually exists, the math says you should still bet on one of them. (Of course there are thousands more one could worship with no heavens at all, or with only finitely good heavens. For one thing, there are thousands of Gods one could believe in, each with its own infinitely good Heaven. Pascal has an answer for this, and claims that if you’ll only continue to act as if God exists, sooner or later, you’ll actually come to believe it.Įven if he’s right about this cognitive-behavioral outcome, it turns out that the wager isn’t as simple as Pascal would have it.
Of course, you might be thinking: Obviously, you can’t simply come to believe something because it seems like a good bet. Viewed this way, the Belief column looks more attractive than the No Belief column! And so, Pascal says, you should put your metaphysical chips there. The argument is usually presented with a 2×2 matrix, like this: If you don’t believe in God, and he does exist, you are infinitely punished (eternity in Hell). If you don’t believe in God, and he doesn’t exist, you get a small gain (you’re right, and you get to live life without religious strictures). If you believe in God and he does exist, you win an infinite reward (eternity in Heaven). In its basic form, it goes something like this: If you believe in God and he doesn’t exist, you incur a small loss (you’re wrong, and you have given up some of your freedom and time worshiping something that isn’t real). By applying to the existence of God the same rules that governed the existence and position of the universe itself, Pascal sounded the death knell for medieval "certainties" and paved the way for modern thinking.Pascal’s Wager is a famous argument created by 17th Century polymath Blaise Pascal, urging us, even if we’re not convinced of it, to bet on God’s existence. Struggling to explain God's existence to others, Pascal dared to apply his mathematical work to religious faith, playing dice with divinity: he argued for the existence of God, basing his position not on rigorous logical principles as did Aquinas or Anselm of Canterbury, but on outcomes-his famous wager. One night in 1654, Pascal had a visit from God, a mystical experience that changed his life. But despite his immense contributions to modern science and mathematical thinking, it is Pascal's wager with God that set him apart from his peers as a man fully engaged with both religious and scientific pursuits. By age nineteen, he had invented the world's first mechanical calculator. A child prodigy, Pascal made essential additions to Descartes's work at age sixteen. In a major biography of Blaise Pascal, James Connor explores both the intellectual giant whose theory of probability paved the way for modernity and the devout religious mystic who dared apply probability to faith.
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