Blaise Pascal, Pensées | The Wager About God's Existence | Philosophy Core Concepts
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This is a video in my new Core Concepts series -- designed to provide students and lifelong learners a brief discussion focused on one main concept from a classic philosophical text and thinker.
This Core Concept video focuses on Blaise Pascal's unfinished work, the Pensées, specifically on his famous "Wager" about the existence of God. Pascal argues that one has to choose one way or another about the matter, in how one lives and commits one's life. He frames the problem in terms of a bet or gamble, in which we stake our present life, and have a possibility to win eternal happiness and life.
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Wow, Pascal's Wager is basically a much more in-depth version of an argument I've used before. Cool!
Yes, you'll sometimes find that to be the case when studying philosophy
You are a true lifesaver with your videos. I have a better understanding when I watch your videos than I do with my professors.
Glad they're useful for you
Thank you so much, Dr. Sadler! So many people misunderstand this concept because they haven't actually read Pensees. I've had many TH-cam comment debates with those of the ilk.
Yes, far too many people rely upon glosses, rather than actually looking at what a person wrote
Thanks for this! Watching all of your recent videos about the Pensées has inspired me to pick up my unread copy that's been sitting on my shelf for years.
That's great!
These videos have been very helpful as a supplement while reading through Pensees. Thank you.
You're welcome!
Thank you for existing! ❤️
You're very welcome!
You’ve got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them. Know when to walk away, know when to run....
Indeed. . .
Excellent presentation. Thank you.
You're welcome
My first exposure to Pascal's Wager came from a Calculus professor over 3 decades ago informing us as to why he was a Christian. He explained it much like you did. Although he used Expected Value to show that it was irrelevant what the probabilities are for the existence of God, unless zero. He chose to omit zero, but was not concerned with using an a priori probability (e.g., Bayes) of 50/50 from 2 possibles. I think Pascal was less precise, yet more accurate in choosing his probabilities since he confessed to not having a posteriori evidence to adjust them.
So, if we choose to use some probability above zero for the existence of God, we get the same outcome of infinite gain (beatific vision) for the expected value of obeying God's moral directives. Is obedience enough to win heaven if we lack authentic faith?
Of course, the real problem with Pascal's Wager is in choosing a religion, its unique God[s] concept, and the set of deontological directives that particular religion imposes on you. Any religion that utilizes the same obedience game forces me to "embark," does it not? When the Jehovah's Witness adherant knocks on my door I get a theology of "win heaven or settle for eternal peace." That one is not so risky! Or if a Mormon pimple-faced "elder" knocks on my door selling his brand, I get another set of behavior restrictions that I don't suffer as a Catholic. (I do love wine.) Of course, we could branch out to other Abrahamic religions, but why stop there? Aren't all religions that employ the obedience game engaging in the same racket, even if they just make something up?
I suppose then you look at the rest of Pascal's Pensees to see why he - a pretty smart guy, who doubtless foresaw that sort of objection - thought Christianity was the most plausible of the religions, right?
th-cam.com/video/w3lPHxbAlh0/w-d-xo.html
I came to this video by watching some of your other stuff and saw this video title in the right column. I thought it would be interesting. I am always interested in the dialectical method and I agree with Mortimer Adler's assertion that philosophy is everyone's business. So I thought you might enjoy the process.
You misinferred my motivation. I have no interest in debating you. I am interested in what Pascal had to say and discussing that with others is fun. If I were motivated by any of the stuff you mentioned in the link above, I would start my own free TH-cam channel and take clips from yours (and others) and exercise my commentary there. That is not hard to do and, of course, I would be mindful of th-cam.com/users/ytabout/copyright/fair-use/#yt-copyright-resources
@@eudemonia Well to clarify - Pascal was aware of different kinds of infinity. But even the number is just really big I think the argument its ALWAYS positive - the other cells will ALWAYS be either zero or negative. Hence even if infinity is taken away - the logic remains unaffected.
I don't think Pascal seriously thinks the Wager will do anything. He says again and again reason leaves us where we began. You can still not believe even if you do the numbers. The Wager just points to an inconsistency in the skeptic - even if you are skeptic you are being extremely risky to NOT believe. Why take the risk in other words?
@Zachary Stewart Actually, I did not ignore that. The proper question ought to be directed to the owner of this channel. Why did he prune my comments that addressed those topics? They used to be between the two from the owner above on this thread.
I read in a secondary that Pascal's Wager wasn't meant to convince people to believe; but to present that our rational mind cannot do anything in the face of the incomprehensible. Because it makes no sense that Pascal, being a rather "proto-existentialist" himself, would reduce the authenticity of faith into a kind of fire insurance after death. What do you think about this view?
Not much
Anything one should read before tackling Pensées?
Read it first, then see what texts/authors he's referring to, then read some of them, then go back and reread
Thank you!
Certainly you will miss on some glory and lexuries but will you not have others?
Yes. Already there in the text
wow thanks for this! can Pascal's wager be used for the justification of a belief in free will?
Not really. It already presumes you have the free will to make choices in the first place
@@GregoryBSadler thank you very for your quick response. I find it so helpful.
@@GregoryBSadler Technically no. Will could be incorrigible. Its just there. The Wager isn't mean really to convert - its part of a multi-stage process to begin one on the path to believe. I'll do a video on this soon but this is a good presentation.
@@darkthorpocomicknight7891 Looks like you responded to the wrong person here
Betting on God being true will cost the ego self EVERYTHING and EVERYONE it holds dear in this world. Job made just such a bet. They are a faithful few and mostly poor those who would suffer such an all or nothing wager, but legion are those who would wager at least a little against God in their hearts, so that they may not lose all of their earthly treasures and pleasures, just in case God is not.
"The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold ALL that he had and bought it."
Thank you for another wonderful topic and video 🕊
Job is a rather extreme case, not what Pascal seems to have in mind
Multiple times a day we come to a fork in the road. The one is difficult with a promise of suffering, but of which any reward is everlasting and substantial. The other is easy with a promise of pleasure, but of which any reward is fleeting and illusory. Just yesterday I had the shiniest new car in the neighborhood, and today it is just another piece of oil-burning scrap-metal stuck on a very wide and congested road, essentially going nowhere on account of its broadness in all directions. Each time we choose to ignore our conscience and intuition nudging us towards the narrow way, we are betting against God for the more immediate and flesh-perceptible rewards of the world. I struggle to imagine a case in which a wager for or against God is not an extreme one by its very essence and all or nothing nature, but I will watch the video again in hopes of gaining a better understanding of these particular thoughts of Pascal. I am a more intuitive than mathematical soul, which leaves me a decent mystic, but a rather poor philosopher. Hence my gratitude for your good work, making important philosophical concepts at least somewhat accessible to a layperson such as myself 🙏
Solid
Thanks
@@GregoryBSadler I just ordered his book. I followed a rabbit trail to your video. At first I found a quote of his about: Good, beauty, and truth. He says it should be applied even to apologetics. This struck me, because I am a Christian writer who is looking to present the gospel of Jesus in a beautiful and compelling science fiction narrative. Its been fun to mix theology, poetry and philosophy. Anyway, thanks for the video.
As an analogy, could the bet be something like: You bet heads or tails. If you bet heads, and the quarter lands on heads, you win $10. If the quarter lands on tails, you owe $1. If you bet tails, and the quarter lands on tails, you win $1. If it lands on heads, you owe $10... You also only get to bet one time. Its just as likely the man who bets on tails comes up on top at the end of the bet, but he takes on more risk for less reward.
No. The bet is binary but the Wager is necessarily four-fold. Its like saying the coin does exist or does exist AND here is the pay-out.
@@darkthorpocomicknight7891 I dont see how, part of the wager is that one should assume the coin exists, based on the high potential pay out and there being nothing to lose
@@AjaxNixon LOL Sorry I mean God is the coin. An atheist can just deny the coin (God) even exists. But you're right the atheist is ignoring a possible big win but he or she can still deny and lose out
The problem here, as I see it, is with what is entailed by the term "betting on God." To bet on God isn't the same mechanistic action as placing a chip on 'black' in roulette. It is an intellectual endeavor, not a mechanistic one, and definitely not an arbitrary choice that I can easily make. Betting on or against God--just like betting on or against 'communism,' for example--results from how I understand God (or 'communism') and how this plays out in my social context. To "bet on God" if everything tells me that God is not real would just be an act of dishonesty, and so wouldn't actually be a bet on God. Betting on God isn't just going through the motions; it's belief as well. I think that is a fair atheist response to Pascal's wager.
Yep. "betting on God" is indeed a metaphorical way of speaking. For Pascal, it's clearly not just an "intellectual endeavor", though.
And, of course, if you've decided "everything tells me that God is not real", you're not in the situation Pascal describes in the text - which you'll want to read
From what I have gathered Pascals wager works only for the theist who already believe as atheists would have to subdue their passions (skipping church, sinning) and take steps to reintegrate themselves into the theistic community by participating in religious traditions and eventually through a sort of osmosis you are lead back onto the path of theism. Would this be a fair portrayal of his argument?
Nothing like reading the actual text, I always say. . .
Gregory B. Sadler I did read a part of it but I'm unsure of what he meant by passions I was wondering if my interpretation of his argument overall was sound
Your interpretation here jumbles things together that are clearly distinct in the text.
The "subdue the passions" comes in the discussion with the interlocutor who wants to "see the cards". It's not there at the start of the argument.
The main argument - as Pascal presents it - is supposed to work for anyone who buys the gambling assessment and reasoning. It doesn't depend on subduing the passions - that is a follow-up consideration.
❤❤❤
I hedged my bet thusly, i reckoned if there is a God He would communicate with me if i asked Him, and He has done just that. Jesus Christ is my Lord and i trust Him.
Well that worked out well for you
Has the proposed grid of options been challenged much in the history of philosophy? It strikes me that we're embedding quite a few assumptions about God and His behaviors into it before we start to calculate anything. A grid containing every imaginable behavior God might have towards our behavior could result in a very different calculation. For example, if there's even a small but nonzero probability that God would simply do the opposite of what Pascal's table says, the infinite gains and losses wipe out the particulars of their finitude. Opposites would be equal and we're back to indecision.
Yes, you're certainly free to make all sorts of grids. Notice that when you read the actual Pascal passage, there's no grid . . .
No. You can play with the grid the results are the same. This approach is used in game theory, decision theory, economics, etc. Even if you have no interest in God there is a logic to the decision-making.
@@darkthorpocomicknight7891 You don't need to assure me game theory is a real thing. I'm fully aware of that. But your response doesn't give me any confidence that you've actually considered what I've said. The conclusions we derive don't just depend on the system of logic we use, but perhaps more importantly on what we've set up the problem to be. That is, what facts we've used or not used and how we've related them. And I'm challenging that setup.
@@not_enough_space Well, the video when posted will examine both sides. It is not meant to be propaganda for one side or the other.
@@darkthorpocomicknight7891 I know Dr. Sadler is fair. That's why I trusted him enough to ask him a question. I hoped to know more about similar challanges to Pacal's wager (and, in turn, responses to them) that might have cropped up in the history of philosophy. He seems to agree a move like that could be made, but sadly didn't have much to say about it being done before.
God's bookie.
That would be if God was making the bets
@@GregoryBSadler Or if Pascal was working for God to take bets, like a bookie working for a syndicate.
What would you bet if somebody told you that there are 100 competing jealous gods?
I wouldn't
@@GregoryBSadler. I bet you wouldn't. I addressed the question to those who think like Pascal. I'm always staggered when I hear someone intelligent make his argument. Pascal became a Christian under the influence of the trauma of an illness. The religiously exaggerated threat of death makes many otherwise intelligent people partially blind (in my limited view).
There's a huge difference between Pascal's argument and the caricatures people advance to attack or refute in its place
Gregory B. Sadler. Pascal writes: "Dieu est, ou il n’est pas." I think that's a very bad statement from a logical point of view. Making such a statement about a completely speculative thing is bizarre. We could say that about any unknown thing, for example the well- but unknown spaghetti-monster or Kafka's Odradek and an arbitrary "number" of other spiritual inventions: They exist or they don't? Should we bet on their existence? But did the Odradek "exist" in Kafka's mind or in some of his reader's minds? For me, there is no (con)sense in claiming universality of things beyond an experience on which all humans can find some universal practical consensus. There has never been a universal consensus about "god's" and this will never happen because imaginations about purely speculative things are per se not common things. Every religion with (jealous) gods suffers from the severe drawback of tribalism. I'd say that no human being that didn't grow up in a religious culture and has never heard of "god's" would invent from scratch any "god's" let alone one almighty allgood etc human-like spirit that has us in mind.
th-cam.com/video/w3lPHxbAlh0/w-d-xo.html
I'm not a mathematician but wouldn't this be similar to saying for example: a man comes do you and says that if you believe in unicorns and give him 10% of your income for unicorn research, if he finds a unicorn it will be big news and you will both be rich and famous and you will make $100 million. You've seen pictures of unicorns, and heard stories of unicorns. And you have met people who believe in unicorns. Either unicorns exist or they don't exist so there's a 50% chance of making $100 million! Right? Actually, that doesn't seem like logical thinking.
No
@@brianw.5230 you can be a theist but you can be a theist of the wrong variety and not be saved. So I guess what you are saying is that if there is a God and if you pick the right religion and if you lead your life in the way that religion requires, then at least you have some chance of being saved. Whereas an atheist has no chance. I think the atheist would argue that since they have one life to live, why lead it answering to and obeying imaginary gods, especially when you can't tell which is the correct god? Even theists can't agree on religion. They just argue about it.
@@GregoryBSadler I like the unicorn analogy. Why not believe in the unicorn? Many people believe in unicorns. There are stories and pictures of unicorns. And if you invest time and money in the unicorn you may become rich. What do you have to lose? It makes perfect sense to invest in the unicorn.
@@riverbank2193 Well, sounds like you've got it all figured out. Good luck with your unicorn investment
@@brianw.5230 Better put, Pascal developed the theory of probability
This doesn't address the problem of picking the right religion. It's not simply a matter of belief in God because one can believe in God but pick the wrong religion. That doesn't seem like a 50-50 proposition. And deciding it's safer to believe in God wouldn't make someone actually believe in God, they would just be saying they believe in God for insurance purposes. Which wouldn't save them in the end either. So if you can actually convince yourself to believe in God and you manage to pick a religion, you still need to pick the right religion and to adhere to all the rules of that religion in order to get to heaven or paradise. So from a practical standpoint it seems like a person's odds of eternal reward might be more like 10% or less. Which still might be worth it. It's just that deciding that God exists does not automatically get you into heaven, according to the rules of most religions.
Who said it did?
@@GregoryBSadler no one said that it did. But it can't be a 50-50 proposition. Just saying you believe in God just gets you going down that path. Once you're on that path you have to pick one of many options off that path and hope you picked the right one. If you believe in God and you pick Islam that might be the wrong one. Or if you picked Mormonism that might be the wrong one. Or if you pick Catholicism or Lutheranism, it's hard to know which one is the right one.
@@GregoryBSadler oh wait, I see my mistake. The idea that God exists is a 50-50 proposition. Either he does he doesn't. But the implication is if a person decides to believe, and God does exist, then they may obtain eternal life.That's not necessarily the case. They might believe in the wrong God or the wrong religion, and face eternal damnation (according to most major religions). It seems like Pascal doesn't really address that.
@@schulenburgstudio Yep. You're definitely not the first person to discover that or point it out.
So what?
@@GregoryBSadler Sorry, I'm sure I am not bringing up anything new. It's interesting and it's new to me. It seems like the point is that if you don't believe in God and he's exists, you lose. If you do believe in God and he exists, you win. So it's better to believe. The point is it's not that simple. It's not enough just to believe. It's just about raising your odds? If you don't believe you don't stand a chance. If you do believe, you do stand a chance. You still need to make a lot of right decisions but at least you have a chance. Is that correct?
If god exists and you believe because of a promise of a greater pay off, then this god is a fool, and so you end up spending eternity with an infinite being that is basically a fool! is this an advantage? I do not think so!!! :)
Quite a lot of assertions there.
Good luck with your studies
My dear if you read the Bible you know that it is said that. We should serve the Lord in spirit and in truth, meaning from the HEART. Loving God doesn't end at just preaching or going to church or whatever you think it is. It's having a personal relationship with God. Jesus said in the Bible that there would be a lot of people preaching in His name or casting out demons in His name and still before the Hosts of heaven He would still say He doesn't know them. People that follow God don't follow God for rewards because to follow God is one of the hardest things you can ever do in this life. Those that follow God because they know Him love Him and have faith in him (trust). I don't know what your opinion is about Christianity cuz it's way deeper than you think. Don't use pastors or church folk to define Christianity ,We have only one standard in Christianity and that is Jesus Christ, focus on Him. Read the Bible and if you will only ask the Holy Spirit will give you understanding.
That's all I want to say
if christianity is true: believing in god because of Pascal's wager always will end in hell! Why? -> you're gambling -> gambling is sin -> go to hell
You're mixing up Christianity with weird outlier denominations who equate all gambling with sin