Pascal's Wager

For no reason I need record here, I mentioned Pascal's wager in the course of a discussion I was having with The Firm's senior partner. In short form I summarised its terms as follows:

We cannot know whether God exists. He may; in which case we are damned if we do not believe in him. He may not; in which case no consequence follows whether we believe or not. Therefore, a sane man will place his bet on God's existence and believe with all his heart. This is because this is the only choice that has any possibility of a desirable outcome i.e. salvation.

The senior partner (who does have a belief system ecompassing matters beyond the material world) reacted instinctively (as most people do) that this was an intellectually dishonest, or, at least not an honourable reason, for believing in a god.

It occurred to me afterwards to re-read the original. Of course, this is considerably more nuanced than my summary. It is readily available at 233 of Pascal's Pensees published by The Gutenberg Project.

The whole of 233 should be read before criticising it and I quote only two extracts:

"If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is. This being so, who will dare to undertake the decision of the question? Not we, who have no affinity to Him.

Who then will blame Christians for not being able to give a reason for their belief, since they profess a religion for which they cannot give a reason? They declare, in expounding it to the world, that it is a foolishness, stultitiam;[90] and then you complain that they do not prove it! If they proved it, they would not keep their word; it is in lacking proofs, that they are not lacking in sense. "Yes, but although this excuses those who offer it as such, and takes away from them the blame of putting it forward without reason, it does not excuse those who receive it." Let us then examine this point, and say, "God is, or He is not." But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager? According to reason, you can do neither the one thing nor the other; according to reason, you can defend neither of the propositions."

and:

"For it is no use to say it is uncertain if we will gain, and it is certain that we risk, and that the infinite distance between the certainty of what is staked and the uncertainty of what will be gained, equals the finite good which is certainly staked against the uncertain infinite. It is not so, as every player stakes a certainty to gain an uncertainty, and yet he stakes a finite certainty to gain a finite uncertainty, without transgressing against reason. There is not an infinite distance between the certainty staked and the uncertainty of the gain; that is untrue. In truth, there is an infinity between the certainty of gain and the certainty of loss. But the uncertainty of the gain is proportioned to the certainty of the stake according to the proportion of the chances of gain and loss. Hence it comes that, if there are as many risks on one side as on the other, the course is to play even; and then the certainty of the stake is equal to the uncertainty of the gain, so far is it from fact that there is an infinite distance between them. And so our proposition is of infinite force, when there is the finite to stake in a game where there are equal risks of gain and of loss, and the infinite to gain. This is demonstrable; and if men are capable of any truths, this is one."

Well, perhaps a third, just to illustrate that Pascal was not unaware of the arguments that may be marshalled against him:

"Do not then reprove for error those who have made a choice; for you know nothing about it. "No, but I blame them for having made, not this choice, but a choice; for again both he who chooses heads and he who chooses tails are equally at fault, they are both in the wrong. The true course is not to wager at all.""

The Gutenberg Project's edition is a reproduction of the Dutton 1958 New York edition. This is a particularly good choice as the translation has an introduction by T.S.Eliot, one of whose comments is that "Pascal is one of those writers who will be and who must be studied afresh by men in every generation."

The purpose of this post is simply to encourage those who read it to do just that and to point them to an easily available translation of the pensees.