There is infinite chaos that separated us. "God is, or He is not." But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is. If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. The Pensées passage on Pascal's wager is as follows: Merely by existing in a state of uncertainty, we are forced to choose between the available courses of action for practical purposes. In Pascal's assessment, participation in this wager is not optional. We must decide whether to live as though God exists, or whether to live as though God does not exist, even though we may be mistaken in either case. However, even if we do not know the outcome of this coin toss, we must base our actions on some expectation about the consequence. Given that reason alone cannot determine whether God exists, Pascal concludes that this question functions as a coin toss. Pascal describes humanity as a finite being trapped within an incomprehensible infinity, briefly thrust into being from non-being, with no explanation of "Why?" or "What?" or "How?" On Pascal's view, human finitude constrains our ability to achieve truth reliably. It is not certain that everything is uncertain. We understand nothing of the works of God unless we take it as a principle that He wishes to blind some and to enlighten others. But seeing too much to deny Him, and too little to assure me, I am in a pitiful state, and I would wish a hundred times that if a god sustains nature it would reveal Him without ambiguity. If I saw everywhere the marks of a Creator, I would repose peacefully in faith. If I saw no signs of a divinity, I would fix myself in denial. There is no doubt that natural laws exist, but once this fine reason of ours was corrupted, it corrupted everything. There is nothing so conformable to reason as this disavowal of reason. įor after all what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either. Nature offers me nothing that is not a matter of doubt and disquiet.
I look on all sides, and everywhere I see nothing but obscurity. This is what I see, and what troubles me. Pascal cites a number of distinct areas of uncertainty in human life:
While we can discern a great deal through reason, we are ultimately forced to gamble. Pascal asks the reader to analyze humankind's position, where our actions can be enormously consequential, but our understanding of those consequences is flawed. They should then 'at least learn your inability to believe.' and 'Endeavour then to convince' themselves. 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. (.) There is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.If you gain, you gain all if you lose, you lose nothing Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is.Reason cannot decide between the two alternatives The wager uses the following logic (excerpts from Pensées, part III, §233): ( June 2021) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. This section needs additional citations for verification. The wager is commonly criticized with counterarguments such as the failure to prove the existence of God, the argument from inconsistent revelations, and the argument from inauthentic belief. Pascal's wager charted new territory in probability theory, marked the first formal use of decision theory, existentialism, pragmatism, and voluntarism. The original wager was set out in Pascal's posthumously published Pensées ("Thoughts"), an assembly of previously unpublished notes. If God does not exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.), whereas if God does exist, they stand to receive infinite gains (as represented by eternity in Heaven) and avoid infinite losses (an eternity in Hell). Pascal argues that a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. It posits that human beings wager with their lives that God either exists or does not. Pascal's wager is a philosophical argument presented by the seventeenth-century French mathematician, philosopher, physicist and theologian Blaise Pascal (1623–1662).
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