Pascal's bet

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Blaise Pascal

The Pascalian (or Pascal's ) bet is Blaise Pascal's famous argument for faith in God . Pascal argues that it is always a better " bet " to believe in God, because the expected value of the gain that can be achieved by believing in a God is always greater than the expected value in the case of unbelief.

Note that this is not an argument for the existence of God , but for belief in the existence of God. With this argument, Pascal aimed particularly at those people who could not be convinced by traditional " proofs of God ".

Pascal's reasoning

“So you say that we are incapable of knowing whether there is a God. However, it is certain that God is or that he is not, there is no third . But which side will we lean towards? Reason, you say, cannot decide anything. It is an infinite chaos that lies between us and we are playing a game at this infinite distance from each other, where head or crest will fall. What do you want to bet? According to reason you can assert neither one nor the other; according to reason, you cannot deny either. So do not blame those who made a choice wrong, for you do not know whether they are wrong or whether they have chosen badly. [...]

A bet must be made, that is not voluntary, you are once in the game and not betting that God is means betting that he is not. So what do you want to choose? […] You have two things to lose, truth and happiness and two things to gain, your reason and your will, your knowledge and your bliss, and your nature has two things to flee, error and misery. Then bet that he is, without thinking too long, your reason will no longer be violated if you choose one than if you choose the other, because now it is absolutely necessary to choose. This closes one point. But your bliss? We want to weigh up profit and loss, trust that if you win, you will win everything, if you lose, you will lose nothing. So believe if you can. "

- Blaise Pascal

Pascal's argument is that an analysis of the options regarding belief in God leads to the following results:

  • You believe in God and God exists - in which case you will be rewarded (Heaven - you have won).
  • You believe in God and God does not exist - in which case you gain nothing (but also lose nothing).
  • You don't believe in God and God doesn't exist - in this case you don't gain anything (but don't lose anything either).
  • You don't believe in God, and God exists - in which case you will be punished (hell - you have lost).

From his original analysis of the possibilities, Pascal now concluded that it was better to believe in God unconditionally.

Comments and criticism

There are a number of objections to Pascal's argument that attack the weaknesses of Pascal's arguments in various ways. Compared to his original formulation, Pascal himself also makes some restrictions.

The cost of belief

The Pascal bet in the formulation set out above assumes that belief costs nothing. Pascal himself admits, however, that it is in any case possible that one is forced to sacrifice “earthly joys” in order to dedicate one's life to faith in God in an appropriate manner. The idea is that there can be costs, direct costs (time, health, wealth) and " opportunity costs ": those who think scientifically, even if it contradicts beliefs, might be able to make discoveries and achieve goals, which are denied an ideological prisoner.

It is also argued that belief can cost the joy of life because the believer is not allowed to participate in activities that are prohibited by dogma . The statement of Paul in 1 Cor. 15:19  EU may also be interpreted in this sense : "If we have only put our hope in Christ in this life, we are more pitiful than all people."

Pascal counters this objection, however, by stating that even in this case the bet still goes in favor of faith:

"But now there is a myriad of infinitely happy lives to be gained with equal probability of loss and gain, and what you put in is so little and of so short duration that it would be madness to save it on this occasion."

This view can certainly be criticized for the fact that the probability that God exists can also be assumed to be less. But even with the assumed minimal chance of winning, the profit multiplied by its low probability, which in the case of the existence of God could be drawn from faith in him, would still exceed the loss, which would have to be multiplied by the probability of the falsehood of belief in God.

So if one believes that the reward for believing in God is heaven and that this gain is assessed as "infinite" as in the matrix above, then it is still the better even with costs for belief, which are always finite Decision to believe in God if the probability of the existence of God is greater than 0, because every positive probability would result in an infinite expectation when multiplied by infinity.

In addition, the restriction that belief in God represents a loss in earthly life does not necessarily have to be shared. At this point, speculation can be made as to whether faith and prayer may even have medical or socio-cultural benefits.

Possibly the wage - which Pascal assumed to be "infinite" - is also significantly lower. Should the supposedly to be won eternal life not be eternal or not particularly happy at all, the expected value would be significantly worse.

According to the traditional criticism of religion ( “religion is the opium of the people” ) the bet is reversed here; the value of earthly life (“sparrow in hand”) is far too high to be allowed to sacrifice to a vague promise of a - possibly only moderately pleasant - afterlife (“dove on the roof”).

Assuming there is God, you would still have lost the bet if you spent your entire earthly life trying to please a God whose demands you ultimately fail or whose wages are disappointing.

Inability to believe

Another objection that Pascal himself discusses is the problem that correct belief includes a firm belief that God exists. However, this cannot be easily established, as the argument assumes that the existence of God is by no means a certain fact. Accordingly, it is difficult to imagine that a person who is convinced of the correctness of Pascal's argument can forget his previous skepticism and decide to believe.

Pascal's answer to this problem is that one must first give up the joys of ungodly life, then faith will also come. In the interpretation of John Leslie Mackie , this means that one should manipulate one's will by engaging in religious practices until the real will to believe is established. This procedure would indeed mean the loss of earthly happiness discussed above in the event of the non-existence of God, but since this has already been taken into account, the bet would still have to be made.

In The Will to Believe , William James doubts that a belief based on Pascal's argument is seriously possible. Any hypothesis could be vigorously asserted, but it was absolutely impossible to seriously believe it out of sheer willpower unless we had a certain inclination to consider it seriously beforehand. James is sure that such a calculating belief “would lack the inner soul of faith's reality” is soulless. From the point of view of a Protestant person, he means:

"[...] these means of salvation seem such foregone impossibilities that Pascal's logic, invoked for them specifically, leave us unmoved"

"[...] these means of salvation seem to be so predetermined impossibilities that Pascal's logic, which he specifically cites for them, leaves us untouched."

Criticism of the options

The most prominent and probably the most striking objection to Pascal's bet questions the completeness of the representation of the options (Pascal sets up a false disjunction ). Accordingly, the prospects of an infinitely happy afterlife may not be reserved for believers alone; and if so, then it is also possible that belief in God does not automatically mean a happy afterlife for all believers.

Specifically, Pascal only assumes the following possibilities:

  1. There is a God who rewards precisely those who believe in him.
  2. There is no God and therefore no reward for faith.

In fact, there are more options:

  1. There is a God who does not reward.
  2. There is a God who rewards, but does not make this dependent (solely) on faith in him.
  3. There is no God, and one is still rewarded after death (although the question arises, by whom).
  4. There is a non-Christian God who punishes all Christians for idolatry.
  5. There is a Christian omniscient God, he only rewards our actions (lip service is punished).
  6. There is a God who rewards. But the wages are disappointingly low.

In particular, the second alternative is taken into account: It is entirely possible that there could be a God who rewards critical agnosticism and punishes blind faith, or who rewards honesty in thinking and punishes pretended belief. This train of thought aims at what God actually requires - that one believes in him or that one makes decisions according to him independently of him. The latter is also often represented in Christianity. Here is the view that God would reward good works and that neither repentance alone nor faith alone render good works redundant. Variations on this argument can be found in other religious philosophies, e.g. B. in Hinduism and in Islam .

This line of argument coincides among other things. a. with the well-known objection of William James (in "The Will to Believe") to the calculus of faith: In God's place we would with pleasure withhold the infinite reward with pleasure from a calculating and speculating in Pascal's way, i.e. only apparently believers:

“We feel that a faith […] adopted willfully after such a mechanical calculation would lack the inner soul of faith's reality; and if we were ourselves in the place of the Deity, we should probably take particular pleasure in cutting off believers of this pattern from their infinite reward. "

"We feel that a belief, deliberately accepted according to such a mechanical calculation, misses the inner soul of belief, and presumably, if we were the deity, we would with special pleasure deny believers of this kind their infinite reward."

- Williamm James : The Will to Believe

Even Richard Carrier argues in this way:

“Suppose there is a God who observes us and decides which souls go to heaven, and God only wants to colonize heaven with morally good people. He will likely choose from those souls who have made a significant effort to reveal the truth. [...] If people are aware of good and bad behavior, it follows that they also have an awareness of good and bad. This awareness requires extensive knowledge about our universe and, for example, also about whether God really exists. These people take care of confirming their beliefs, testing them and ultimately finding out whether their beliefs are believed to be correct or not. Therefore, only people who always check the morality of their decisions deserve a place in heaven - unless God wants to fill heaven with morally lazy, irresponsible or unreliable people. […] If someone wants to go to heaven, he has to answer some important questions - and that includes 'Does God exist?' "

The latter objection is less discussed. For the bet to “work”, there must be “a myriad of infinitely happy lives to be won”, as Pascal assumes. In the Bible, however, there are also stories in which the divine wages are disappointing from a human point of view ( parable of the workers in the vineyard ; the “silver penny” given there corresponded to the subsistence level for bare survival for a single day). What the “wages” look like is controversial within Christianity.

The existence of several deities, arbitrary criteria

The "many gods" argument shows that we can find any number of other criteria according to which eternal bliss could be offered and eternal torment threatened. For example, non-Christian gods could exist and punish all who did not believe in them, including Christians. But even within Christianity there is by no means consensus on the question of the criteria according to which eternal bliss is to be achieved, or how a belief in God must be expressed in order to preserve eternal life. Further, some power might choose to punish those who believe in God and reward the unbelievers.

In this way Pascal's wager could be used to conclude that it is advisable to believe in a number of gods, or even all of them; However, since the belief systems of some religions are exclusive, this would lead to contradictions to the Pascal bet for the believers of these religions. This is the argument of contradicting revelations , an argument that says that, given the many contradicting revelations, it suggests that none of them are likely to be believed.

In Christianity, Christian theology and the Bible, too, there is a confusing variety of views and statements about what God demands or what one must fail to do, believe or not believe in order to receive a divine reward, which in turn is about it a bewildering variety of statements out there. If in large parts of the Old Testament the reward of faith is exhausted in this-worldly things such as health, material wealth and numerous descendants, then in the New Testament there are again diverse references to people who apparently believed in God and were firmly convinced of his will to live accordingly (e.g. the proverbial Pharisees and scribes), but nevertheless or precisely because of this found no grace before God; others, in turn, were apparently accepted into the kingdom of God because of their deeds without being aware of the significance of their actions (e.g. parable of the Last Judgment or Mt. 7, 21-23). Or it is even said that God himself prevented people from believing in him. Pascal's presentation assumes, however, that it is a simple yes-no decision, from which everything else inevitably results. If so, there would be no theology and no different denominations or religions.

Followers of non-exclusive religions ( Sanatana Dharma or pantheism, for example) remain unaffected by such criticism. There is also a peculiarity of the Jewish faith to be observed, according to which even a non-Jew only has to observe certain laws , which include the prohibition of idol worship. Finally, there are religions that do not require a reference to a deity, like Buddhism .

Outsmarting the bet

There is also the idea that the bet could be "tricked" by converting on your deathbed - according to popular Christian belief, a person can live almost his entire life without practicing religion and still partake of the joys of heaven if he is converted on his deathbed. The "danger" of this is obviously the possible sudden death, leaving no opportunity to convert. In addition, various interpretations of belief call into question that one can convert when one wants. The innermost being could have become stubborn and thus incapable of turning to God.

literature

  • Pascal Blaise: Thoughts on Religion and Some Other Subjects . Besser, Berlin 1840, 3. That it is difficult to prove the existence of God through the natural powers of the spirit; but that the safest thing is to believe, p. 244–252 ( zeno.org - original title: Pensées de Pascal sur la religion et sur quelques autres sujets . Translated by Karl Adolf Blech).
  • Jeff Jordan (Ed.): Gambling on God: Essays on Wager. Rowman & Littlefield, 1994.
  • Nikolaus Knoepffler: About the impossibility of deciding the question of God through a bet in the sense of Pascal. In: Philosophical Yearbook. Volume 107, 2000, pp. 398-409.
  • William James: The Will to Believe . New York 1897.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Pascal Blaise: Thoughts on Religion and Some Other Subjects. P. 246 f. ( zeno.org ).
  2. ↑ Pascal Blaise: Thoughts on Religion and Some Other Subjects. P. 248 ( zeno.org )
  3. ↑ Pascal Blaise: Thoughts on Religion and Some Other Subjects. P. 250 ( zeno.org ).
  4. ↑ John Leslie Mackie: The Miracle of Theism. Stuttgart 1985, p. 320.
  5. ↑ The Will to Believe. S. 6 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  6. ^ Richard Carrier: The End of Pascal's Wager: Only Nontheists go to Heaven. 2002 ( infidels.org ).