Pascal’s Wager Summary

Here’s Pascal’s Wager, with our criticisms of it.

Pascal’s Wager	Conse-quences of God’s existing	Chances of God’s existing	Conse-quences of God’s not existing	Chances of God’s not existing	Expected Utility
You believe in God	Infinite reward	finite amount f	Finite loss	1-f	Infinite
You don’t believe in God	Nothing or loss	finite amount f	Finite gain	1-f	Finite gain or loss

1. You should believe in God.

2. The chance that God exists is positive and finite.

3. If you believe in God and he exists, you’ll get an infinite reward. If you believe in God and he doesn’t exist, you’ll have only a finite loss.

[This may not be true, and even if it is true it’s not something that Pascal has any right to claim.]

4. Believing in God has an infinite expected utility.

5. If you don’t believe in God and he exists, you’ll either win nothing or else you’ll lose something. If you don’t believe in God and he doesn’t exist, you’ll win only a finite gain.

[This may not be true, and even if it is true it’s not something that Pascal has any right to claim.]

6. Not believing in God has a finite gain or negative expected utility.

7. Believing in God has a much higher expected utility than not believing in God.

8. You should do that which has the higher expected utility.

[Maybe we shouldn’t adopt beliefs on the basis of utility. And maybe it’s impossible to do so, anyway.]

2 + 3 L 2 + 5 L

A | B |

4 + 6

C |

7 + 8 L

D |

1

Pascal addresses our criticism of premise 8 by endorsing a type of indirect voluntarism according to which, if we behave as though we believe in God, we will eventually acquire this belief. The fact that this acquisition may be at the expense of “deadening our acuteness” is of no concern to Pascal. His Wager, he thinks, has shown the importance of believing in God for whatever reason and at whatever cost.

If you want, we can consider how our study of the philosophy of religion raises the same questions that we saw in our study of epistemology.