So Pascal, I’ve said, has separated the objective question from the subjective question.
He's noting that there are two variables at play here.
There's what you believe and then there's what really is the case in the world outside
of your own mind.
Either God exists or he doesn't exist and either you believe in him or you do not believe in him.
Note also, what's also affected here is your practice of your life, you have to believe,
and behave accordingly, which means there are some things you can't do.
Ten Commandments, adultery, murder, lying, theft are off limits for you if you genuinely
believe and try to conform to the religion.
So given this, there are four options and Pascal's Wager is simply to point out the
value of the four options and the logical structure that's facing us in choosing which
row, top or bottom, we want to believe in.
Let me do something else over here.
You must pick a row.
The person who says that the rational thing is not to wager is correct in a way, but you
must wager, you must pick a row.
And this is because of death.
At death everybody defaults into the bottom row.
So this is one of those forced choices.
You must pick a row because you're going to die and at death all ‘maybes’ default
to the bottom row.
It's as though I want to get married to a girl and she's stringing me along, saying
“maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe.”
After a couple of decades of maybe, one of us dies and then we definitely don't get married.
He's saying belief in God is like that: if you say “maybe” your whole life long and
then you die, guess what?
You're going to find out which one of these columns is true but only by… because you
sort of defaulted into the bottom row.
We might challenge that assumption, that's one rule that Pascal has here.
The second rule: Reason cannot tell you which column is true.
Really important here.
We don't get to pick a column, not because we can't have an opinion about which column
is true, but because reason simply isn't able to give us the objective answer on this.
Those, I think, are the two rules.
If you're compelled to pick a row but you don't know which column is true, you're actually
going to be picking two, the choice… you're going to be picking two boxes, not knowing
which one you're going to get.
In other words to choose the top row is to choose the top left or the top right box,
you don't know which, you just have a pair.
And to choose the bottom row is to choose the bottom left or the bottom right box, and
you don't know what you're going to get until you die.
This is why it's called a wager.
I’m taking two boxes of goods.
I know what's in each box but I don't know which box I’m going to get.
Everybody's with me on this?
I want you to see the logical reasoning process here, so this is the structure.
So what's in the boxes?
Which pair of boxes do you want, not knowing which one you're going to get to open when you die?
Well his reasoning is this: that if I believe and God exists, I attain salvation which is
infinite gain.
If I believe in God and God does not exist, I get nothing, just literally nothing.
I just become nothing, I just evaporate, I go out like a candle.
And I don't even have the disappointment, the disappointing feeling for five seconds
of knowing that I was wrong.
I never even find out that I was wrong, I’m just gone.
So total annihilation of myself.
If God exists but I don't believe in him: damnation, infinite loss, infinite suffering.
I’ll come right out and say it.
We're comparing here the possibility of eternity with God and the possibility of eternal punishment,
separated from God.
So you run a bit of a risk here.
Even if this is one of the two boxes I might get on the bottom row, it's the worst box.
I really… if there's even a possibility that's happening, I’d like to avoid it.
One of the things Pascal's doing here is appealing to the sort of natural gambler’s tendency
to want to avoid major losses, even if there's a big upside.
I might say, “Look, if that's in one box, there’s going to have to be something compensatingly
good in this box to make it worth my running this risk, even if it's a very small risk,
of losing everything.”
But in this box we also have nothing.
Because if I don't believe in God and God doesn't exist, I’m annihilated at death again.
I don't even know that I was right. I’m just gone.
Now given that I have to choose not just this box or this box because obviously I would
choose this one, or this box or this box because I’m going to choose this one, or this box
or this box on this I’d choose this one.
To rank these: best, worst, and these are sort of in the middle.
In fact these are exactly in the middle and they're equal to each other.
So I’ve got to do sort of a ranked choice.
I’d like to have the upper left, please.
If I can't have that I suppose I’d settle for one of these two.
I definitely want to avoid this one.
So we can see how, sort of just seeing the possibilities on the table, I would rank each
of them individually as a box, as an option.
But I have to choose pairs, I have to choose a pair: choose either salvation or nothing,
and either damnation or nothing.
And what do we find when we consider it that way?
Which row do I pick?
Pascal says it's obvious, and it's not even a close decision: the upper row is better
than the lower row. Why?
There are a lot of different ways to express it.
There's at least the possibility of a big gain here.
This is like a lottery ticket that's a one in a million chance.
But if it's a one in a million chance and I don't lose anything if it doesn't come up. Why not?
This is like a sort of anti-lottery ticket where if we draw your number we come to your
house and beat you up, but if we don't draw your number you still get nothing.
Who wants to enter that lottery, even for free?
I don't want…
I don't, I mean I run a small risk of a huge downside with absolutely no possible upside for me.
Or note here: the best case scenario in the bottom row is equal to the worst case scenario
in the top row.
Looking at it that way it looks like top row is my better option, if I have to pick a row
and if I have no idea which of the two columns in that row I’m going to get.
If I have to pick a set of boxes and it's unknown to me which, what the possibility is.
Something I pointed out in the video I asked you to watch: it doesn't actually matter whether
the ratio of probability here is 50-50 or one percent to 99 percent, because any non-zero
possibility up here is going to mean that it beats this row.
Because this is absolutely nothing.
Even a tiny chance of a big win is better than a tiny chance of a major loss.
I suppose I’d say even if this were just annihilation and there was no huge downside
here, the top row would still be preferable, but maybe not as strongly.
So this is the first part of Pascal's Wager, is to say that… can I find space for this
down here at the bottom? I’ll put it up here at the upper left.
Let me put it this way. I’ll make a weaker claim than his.
I don't say you *have* to choose the top row.
I’m saying it's *reasonable* for you to choose the top row.
If you have no other reason to believe, if you haven't been inspired, if you haven't
had a vision, if God hasn't opened up your heart, if you haven't been instructed in scripture
or whatever else from childhood, and if you've read Descartes’ arguments for the existence
of God and you're not convinced by them, you're not convinced by the philosophical proofs
of God, so you say, “My reason doesn't prove to me that God exists.”
If none of those other ways work that work for some other people, on this basis alone
you should be able to see, just as a gambler, as a practical man, that the top row is probably,
is better than the bottom row.
So it's reasonable for you to believe, to choose a top row.
It would be unreasonable for you to choose the bottom row, unless you had some sort of
different analysis of what's in these boxes.
If this is all that's in the boxes, top row wins.
So part of what this is… this is almost kind of a last-ditch effort to prove or to
convince somebody to believe in God.
If the rational proofs don't work, and your childhood training doesn't work, and you can't
think of any other reason to believe, believe on this basis.
It’s not the best basis maybe, certainly not the strongest basis, but there's a rationality
to picking the top row.