G’day, my name is Matt Fradd, and today I want to talk to you a little bit about Pascal's Wager.
This is an argument for belief in God that's very controversial
and there's a lot of YouTube videos and articles out there online
saying that it's bunk, that it doesn't work.
I think they're wrong. [Laughter]
Today, in this video, I just want to share the bare bone basics of what Pascal's Wager is,
and then I want to look at some of your objections,
or some of the objections that you've heard, in the comments section.
And then, in another video, I will respond as best as I can to those objections.
So who was Pascal?
Pascal lived during the 17th century in France.
He was an agnostic, he became a Christian, he fell into the heresy of Jansenism.
Later on in his life, after a spiritual experience,
he started to become, by and large, a faithful Catholic.
And Pascal was working on a book on Christian apologetics
— that just basically means a book that defends the faith or makes a positive case for the Christian faith.
Unfortunately, Pascal died before he could publish the book.
So his friends collected all of his notebooks, basically put it together and published that.
So you can get that book today, it's called the Pensées.
It's super great if you've got ADD or something similar, like me,
because you're just reading these basically thick tweets, as it were,
from Pascal on his different thoughts on the Christian faith.
One of the things Pascal is most famous for is his Wager. So what is that?
Well, Pascal basically makes this argument:
either God exists or God does not exist.
We have two responses that we can possibly have towards God.
We can believe, or we can be in a state of unbelief.
There are no other options here, you understand? There's belief and unbelief, that’s it.
If I don't believe, then whatever else I do is going to be unbelief.
And so, for this reason, Pascal says this is a forced wager.
You have to make a bet.
Because refraining from betting is itself a bet, because it is itself unbelief.
So what are you going to do?
Well, Pascal wasn't a big fan of metaphysical arguments for the existence of God,
such like we find in Thomas Aquinas.
Why? Well, he thought most people don't understand them,
and even those who do understand them — later on when they're not thinking about them —
wonder if they've made a mistake or not.
So suppose you or a friend is thinking to themselves,
“You know, I've looked at the arguments for atheism
and I've looked at the arguments for Christian theism,
and I just can't tell which one is stronger.”
If you're like that, or if you have a friend like that, this is where Pascal's Wager comes in handy.
Because it isn't an argument FOR the existence of God;
it's an argument for why you should BELIEVE in God if reason can't decide, right?
If reason can't decide then we can decide based on other factors, such as self-interest.
So what do we get if we bet on God? What do we lose if we bet on God and he doesn't exist?
Okay, well, if God exists and I bet on him — that is to say I believe in him —
then, Pascal says, you gain everything.
You gain virtue and happiness in this life, and eternal happiness in the next.
If God exists and I don't believe in him, then I'm going to, basically, be living an illusion.
I'm gonna be living as if God doesn't exist.
It's gonna be very difficult for me
to be able to believe in things like objective beauty and morality and things like this.
Pascal doesn't talk about hell, but I suppose we could extrapolate and say:
Well, if God exists and I don't believe him, then I run the risk of being damned for all eternity.
Okay.
What if God doesn't exist?
Well, if God doesn't exist and I bet on him, well, what do I lose?
Well, you might first say “Well you lose a lot of things.”
I mean, you don't get to have different sexual experiences you might want to have.
You don't get to sleep in on Sunday mornings... and things like that.
But it's interesting to note that different Pew research studies have shown
that religious people — people who attend some sort of religious service once a week —
tend to be happier.
And we're even seeing people like Jordan Peterson, who doesn't appear to be a Christian,
speaking of the benefits of belief in God.
So you could say, well, even though I have to lose some of those things,
in the end it ends up being a benefit anyway.
Because in believing in God, I'm becoming more virtuous, hopefully more charitable, more prudent.
And that will make for a more happy life.
But if God doesn't exist, and I don't believe in him,
well I'm never gonna know that anyway, because at the end of this life I will just fall into oblivion.
So Pascal says, so go ahead, believe in God. What are you waiting for?
If God exists and you bet on him, you get everything.
If God does not exist and you bet on him, you lose nothing.
So believe in God.
Now I know, as I said in the beginning of this film, that there are a lot of questions about this argument.
So let me just address one of them.
You might be thinking,
“This seems rather cheeky, doesn't it? I mean, you're only believing because of self-interest.”
Yeah, that's true, and Pascal was aware of that.
But, when you think about it, when the disciples preached the risen Christ,
they were saying things like “Come and receive eternal life.”
So it's not like Christianity is entirely devoid of this self-interestedness, right?
We are saying to people
“Come and believe in God so that you'll have eternal life, so that you will avoid damnation.”
Secondly, Pascal obviously doesn't want people who believe in God
to have a superficial faith,
where they believe in him only because they're gonna get something out of it.
He wants them to go on from there to something greater and deeper and more serious.
But I think we can agree, or should agree as Christians
that God stoops to conquer.
So there you are. That's the basic understanding of Pascal's wager.
I'd love it if you'd like to leave me your comments below, tell me what you think of the wager.
If you have arguments against the wager I'd love to read them too,
and in a separate video I'll respond to your comments.
In the meantime, please follow me @MattFradd on Twitter
and click that subscribe button down there.
Thanks for listening!