Talk:Pascal's Wager

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Contents

[edit] Bunk Removed

The following makes unjustified assertions.

Nonetheless, as this criticism has surfaced, apologists of the wager have commented that of the rival options, only the ones that award infinite happiness create a problem. Neither Odin's nor Kali's finite, semi-blissful promise could contend with the infinite bliss offered by Jesus Christ, so they drop out of consideration. [1] Also, the infinite bliss the rival god offers has to be mutually exclusive. If Christ's promise of bliss can be attained concurrently with Jehovah's and Allah's (which is a plausible assumption, given that all three are identified as the God of Abraham), there is no conflict in the decision matrix. [2]

And furthermore, ecumenical interpretations of the wager [3] argue (perhaps in conjunction with Romans 1:19-20 and Romans 2:14-15, that it could even be suggested that believing in an anonymous God or a god by the wrong name, is acceptable so long as that God has the same essential characteristics (like the God of Aristotle). Proponents of this line of reasoning suggest that either all of the gods of history truly boil down to just a small set of "genuine options",[4] or that if the wager can simply bring one to believe in "generic theism" it has done its job. [5]

[edit] Delete Buddhism from the article

The section on Buddhism seems completely wrongheaded and I would argue that Buddhism specifically has NOTHING LIKE Pascal's Wager!! The section is uncited, and though there are links, in my research the linked material contradicts what is written rather than supporting it. I will tag it for now but I would really like to see it deleted Cuvtixo (talk) 14:37, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm totally in agreement. I've been suspect of that section from the first time I read it. Thanks for forcing the issue. David Bergan (talk) 16:55, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Plato's Meno

From the wikipedia article about The Meno:

After witnessing the example with the slave boy, Meno tells Socrates that he thinks that Socrates is correct in his theory of recollection, to which Socrates replies, “I think I am. I shouldn’t like to take my oath on the whole story, but one thing I am ready to fight for as long as I can, in word and act—that is, that we shall be better, braver, and more active men if we believe it right to look for what we don’t know...” (86b).

(The commonality with Pascal's Wager is the idea of believing something solely for the (expected) benefit that the belief itself gives you) Ekoontz (talk) 06:30, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Point taken, but are you suggesting including this quote in the article? Cuvtixo (talk) 14:56, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

This is a sketchy link at best. David Bergan (talk) 16:57, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Missing objection: Pascal's wager assumes that a person can just arbitrarily choose what they believe

This is absurd, a logical person is convinced of truth or falsity by evidence, not by a hypothetical scenario where it is imagined what would be best for you. You may HOPE there is a God and it might be best for you to believe that but that doesnt mean can delude yourself into a belief just because that belief would benefit you. Pascal's wager is so logicaly weak and has been so completely refuted from so many angles that its amazing that we still discuss it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 157.142.60.187 (talk) 17:17, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Try to understand Pascal... his premise is that achieving certainty on these issues is impossible. Human logic is shadowy, imprecise, and our reason is easily deceived. Given that shaky foundation, we have to assess our situation, that death is inevitable, and our (possible) afterlife depends on the choice we make before dying.
Glad to know that you have figured out everything with regard to truth and falsity. The wager is not for you. But for geniuses like Pascal who realize that truth becomes harder and harder to apprehend, the more earnestly it is sought, his wager is a means of assessing priorities.
Whatever the case, the wager is most certainly encyclopedic. The article is merited. David Bergan (talk) 02:14, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
@ Anonymous: You have just proven that you have not read Pascal. He does not assume that people can arbitrarily choose what they believe; in fact, he explicitly denies that people who have no actual faith in a God will suddenly reach that faith because of this argument. However, he also claims that this argument works perfectly as a rational reason to adopt faith. Thus, the problem with people who lack it (he says), is that their passions are blocking their rationality. To these people, proofs of God will not help: he says they must adopt religious experience, go to Church, act as though they were religious, and thus, they will eventually come to believe in God. There are problems with the wager - significant ones. But what you mention is not a problem. DDSaeger (talk) 19:05, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
You're looking at this the wrong way, DDSaeger. If a person can come to that conclusion after reading the article then perhaps there is something wrong with the it? The people who have "read Pascal" would find this page to be of limited use.--Tyrfing (talk) 21:25, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Appearances Elsewhere

Given that it was mentioned earlier already, I deleted the Buddhism subsection due to... utter irrelevance. That argument is entirely different from Pascal's wager by the simple fact that it's not actually a gamble in one's life: happiness follows regardless. That's not the point of the Wager (even if Pascal does acknowledge that the religious man will be happy in his life, the point is to make somebody believe in God, whereas the point of the buddhism paragraph was that doctrine is less important.

I will delete the remnant of this section due to lack of sourcing and seeming lack of relevance in a few days as well, unless someone comes up with a reason for it to stay. DDSaeger (talk) 19:18, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Popular Culture

Are any of these actually notable? I don't see the mentioning of an argument in a tv series notable unless that tv series (or an episode of it) is really about that argument. For example, mentioning Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in Popular Culture about the Holy Grail is fine, whereas a mention of an argument that takes up a few instants (or even minutes) is not. If any single reference was included, these sections would become meaningless; they would not actually teach us anything. It'd be nothing but trivia, unsuited for encyclopedic articles. DDSaeger (talk) 19:18, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Cull the cruft. David Bergan (talk) 04:39, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I removed everything but Prevert (who is a rather notable artist) and the movie that seems to be completely about the Wager. DDSaeger (talk) 13:32, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Remarks about the newest version of the article

Given that DBergan seems to have revised the article strongly, I'm going to go through it diagonally and mention a few things that might still be problematic.

Providing a context for the Wager is very nice - the fact that he calls into doubt everything based on reason, and eventually even skepticism, is relevant. However, the inline citations are unnecessary and make the article look unencyclopedic - there's simply too many of them. The point can be made without those citations. Aside from that, there are rather unencyclopedic ways of phrasing the matter such as "bulldozed philosophy" or "torture reason".

I put the quotes in a table which looks a lot cleaner. I think the citations are necessary to establish context, but agree that some of the phrasing ("bulldozed" and "torture") was out of place. David Bergan (talk) 16:37, 12 April 2008 (UTC)


Now for the criticisms section: the numbered remarks don't seem fitting. I'd put it in a single block of text or under subheaders if necessary. They appear to be somewhat apologetic, unfortunately. It appears to be a slight POV problem, using terms such as "doing Pascal justice" etcetera. You'd need citations to use such sentences - and while I agree with the matter, that doesn't make the expression proper in an article.

Cleaned up the heading, took out the numbers and moved the faith part to the James section. David Bergan (talk) 17:29, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Faith part moved to "Context" since the James section was abbreviated to one sentence and placed in "Cultural references". David Bergan (talk) 06:35, 14 April 2008 (UTC)


The section "Assumes the correct god is worshipped" references original research, to my knowledge, on the interpretation of the Bible. It should be noted that Pascal never conclusively proves the truth of the Christian faith, should any be correct. His arguments are quite... debatable, to say the least.

I'll look for citations for Pascal's thoughts. I'm pretty sure he had reasoning along those lines... just don't remember where off the top of my head. David Bergan (talk) 00:06, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
He has reasonings... they just don't exactly seem very groundbreaking. I haven't read the entirety of the Pensées (I've been specifically checking out Pascal's Wager, along with James' Will to Believe and similarly structured arguments for a philosophy of science class), but from what I've skimmed, his condemnations generally involved incorrect information like "muslims aren't even allowed to read the Quran", or using Bible verses to prove the Bible is superior to the Quran. DDSaeger (talk) 07:47, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Not being able to track down good material from Pascal himself, I instead replaced with reasoning from contemporary apologists. David Bergan (talk) 06:35, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

The section "Does not constitute a true belief" suggests that William James is criticising the Wager, whereas he is not. In fact, he is one of the few philosophers who actually agree that the Wager reaches its effect.

I don't know much at all about William James or The Will to Believe. The comment here in the article seems critical of the wager, but perhaps you can substantiate that it's taken out of context. David Bergan (talk) 00:06, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Immediately after the quoted paragraph, we get "It is evident that unless there be some pre-existing tendency to believe in masses and holy water, the option offered to the will by Pascal is not a living option." A 'living option' refers to James' term for options in which both sides are seen as potentially acceptable - for example, choosing between agnosticism and christianity, for the Western person, as generally opposed to the choice between being a Shia or Sunni muslim. Later on, he further develops his view on how passions influence reason - granting Pascal the validity of the Wager. "Evidently, then, our non-intellectual nature does influence our convictions. There are passional tendencies and volitions which run before and others which come after belief, and it is only the latter that are too late for the fair; and they are not too late when the previous passional work has been already in their own directions. Pascal's argument, instead of being powerless, then seems a regular clincher, and is the last stroke needed to make our faith in masses and holy water complete. The state of things is evidently far from simple; and pure insight and logic, whatever they might do ideally, are not the only things that really do produce our creeds." DDSaeger (talk) 07:47, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Interesting. Maybe then the section on Will to Believe should be taken out of "Criticisms" and broken into its own section?
Or better yet, since this information is more relevant to Will to Believe than to Pascal's Wager... we should put the content in the Will to Believe article, and just have a one-liner like this in this article: "William James uses Pascal's Wager as an example of choosing a 'living option' in his doctrine The Will to Believe."
Your thoughts? David Bergan (talk) 00:21, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
I followed through with my idea of shortening James to one sentence. The text removed from his lengthier section can be found here in case we decide to add it back later or move it to Will to Believe Doctrine. David Bergan (talk) 06:35, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

A nice job of adding context and introductions to sections, though. (Note: not all these criticisms are based on your version, DBergan - many are remnants from earlier versions.) DDSaeger (talk) 13:43, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your work. I agree with most of your critiques and we'll see what I can do to address them. Kind regards, David Bergan (talk) 16:20, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Another day of lots of cleanup. Read it again from top to bottom and see if you have some other suggestions for improvement. Kind regards, David Bergan (talk) 06:35, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Assuming God Rewards Belief

There was a paragraph under the section "Assuming God Rewards Belief" that was not only nonsensical, it used quotes that were falsely attributed to a Stanford philosophy website. Pascals whole point is that no value can rationally be placed on the chance of the existence of god. If "proponents" of his theory are now assigning arbitrary values to the likelihood of any given state of god or gods based on the "backing of traditional religions" simply to discredit an interpretation of the logic that they don't like, they have tossed the baby out with the bathwater. I deleted the quotes (if indeed they were quotes) until such a time as someone can re-add them with proper attribution and a much better defense of them as they apply to pascals wager. As it stands, it looks like someone just came here and added a paragraph beginning with "However..." below all of the criticisms of the wager along with their personal defense. Wronghead (talk) 23:01, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for checking the source... the quote was missing because the link was directing to wrong page. I restored the section and corrected the link. David Bergan (talk) 01:46, 9 May 2008 (UTC)


"If Christ's promise of bliss can be attained concurrently with Jehovah's and Allah's (which is a reasonable assumption, given that all three are identified as the God of Abraham), there is no conflict in the decision matrix. [16]"

It is NOT a reasonable assumption to make, regardless of who you can source as saying that it is reasonable, as the traditional doctrines of these faiths do NOT generally allow for the obtainment of salvation if you happen to believe in one of them, but one of the other derivatives turns out to be true. They all say that you must believe in them in particular, or there is no guarantee. Some of them leave open the possibility, but that isn't something that can be applied to a logical table of the only possibilities. The imagined possibility of infinite happiness at whatever level of probability is just so arbitrarily defined that it holds little relevance among all the other arbitrarily defined possibilities.
I'm not sure what point you are getting at, but in an article that speculates that God could send all believers to Hell and all non-believers to Heaven, the consideration that Christ might reward those for faith in Jehovah seems quite plausible. David Bergan (talk) 17:28, 13 May 2008 (UTC)


"However, Pascal was clear, as explained above, that the application of his wager rests on the premise that an "honest attempted reason" about God's existence is impossible. Nor did Pascal ask readers to trust in "blind or feigned faith"... the wager was intended only to provide the seed that grows into a full believing life."

If his wager rests on the premise that an "honest attempted reason" about God's existence is impossible, then an honest attempted reason about what would happen if you wager for God's existing and He does in fact exist is also impossible. The result of believing in him and Him existing can have any magnitude, negative or positive, of endless imagined results.

"Furthermore, supporters of the wager point out that "these hypotheses lack the backing of tradition that genuine religions have, and thus should be disregarded... More precisely, these other hypotheses should be assigned zero (or perhaps at most infinitesimal) probability, so that they do not upset Pascal's expectation calculations." [22]

Tell us again why something being a tradition just gets more weight, especially when Pascal is assuming no way of proving the very crux of these traditions?

For all of these reasons, this entire section containing these lame counterarguments in support of Pascal's Wager really needs to be cleaned up.Mmortal03 (talk) 09:50, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Change in Atheist wager

Please do not delete what I added. If you do, then delete both analysis of the atheist wager as neither contains quoats. If you have any arguments against it then quoat them. You may then delete what I added. But please do not delete may comments if you desire to comment on it do. Else both should be deleted. bw —Preceding unsigned comment added by Goodbryan (talk • contribs) 10:01, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for trying to contribute, but your edits added no substance. I restored the last good version of the article. Kind regards, David Bergan (talk) 23:00, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Atheist's wager quote - source?

Where is this quote actually from?

“ You should live your life and try to make the world a better place for your being in it, whether or not you believe in God. If there is no God, you have lost nothing and will be remembered fondly by those you left behind. If there is a benevolent God, he may judge you on your merits coupled with your commitments, and not just on whether or not you believed in him.[6] ”

The article given as a reference does not contain the given text, and contains additional arguments that make the atheist's wager incompatible with theism, invalidating the paragraph currently following the above quote. Is there a reason for keeping this dubious quotation, rather than simply paraphrasing what is found in the referenced article? Ilkali (talk) 16:58, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah... Thanks for checking into that. I always thought that was a weak section. After reading the referenced work, it really pertains more to the Assumes God rewards belief section (to which it adds nothing new, and there are already very strong references in that section) than the Atheist's Wager section. There really is nothing but the title linking this text to the latter section.
Without any quality references, the Atheist's Wager section should probably be taken down... until someone can produce some material with merit. That's the wikipedia way. Kind regards, David Bergan (talk) 17:57, 29 May 2008 (UTC)