"What's the most you've ever lost on a coin toss?" "Sir?" "The most you've ever lost on a coin toss?"
"Well, I don't know... I couldn't say." "Call it." "Call it?" "Yes."
“Pascal’s Wager requires a monstrous premise of equal chance.”
This video is the second part of a series in which I elucidate upon the objections to, and defences of, Pascal’s
Wager – and while it’s not necessary for you to watch the previous part to enjoy the
fruits found here, I’d recommend that you do should you want a full and comprehensive
understanding of the argument. Plus, if you do watch the first, you’d be giving me more
views, and as you know, that’s like crack to YouTubers! “Ahhhh!! It’s not a liquid!
It’s a great many pieces of solid metal that form a floor-like surface! Ahhh!” In
the previous video, we steelmaned Pascal’s Wager, and emphasised that since it was published
posthumously, one must read it generously, and engagement with subsequent philosophers,
to confront it in its strongest form. We will, of course, do precisely this throughout this
series, but for now, here’s the gist: Either God exists, or God does not exist, and you
either believe in God or do not believe in God. Now since the worst possible outcome
of wagering that God DOES exist is negligible to the BEST possible outcome of wagering the
God does NOT exist, Pascal argues that we ought to “Wager, then, without hesitation,
that He is." In essence, it’s an argument from superdominance, and given the premises,
it’s a great one! I’m Stephen Woodford, thanks for joining me, and this is Pascal’s
Monstrous Premise. “Look, I need to know what I stand to win.” “Everything.”
“How’s that?” “You stand to win everything. Call it.” Throughout his argument Pascal
employed the analogy of a coin being flipped to represent the existence and non-existence
of God, one in which either, “Heads or tails will turn up”, and in doing so he implicitly
assigned a whopping 50% chance of God existing. Now, some defenders of the Pascal’s Wager
claim this to be a strawman, but I disagree. For one, Pascal clarified this assumption
by stating WITHIN his presentation, “Since there is an EQUAL RISK of gain and of loss”,
and a sentence later “There is an EQUAL RISK of loss and gain.” Observing this implicit
premise, the philosopher Ian Hacking, in his book titled The Emergence of Probability (which
is a fantastic read, by the way), wrote that "[Pascal's wager] requires a MONSTROUS premiss
of equal chance. We have no good reason for picking 1/2 as the chance of God's existence.
This argument can work only for the people who are, in the strongest sense, exactly as
unsure whether God exists, as they are unsure whether he does not exist. Against all other
agnostics, another argument is called for." Indeed, Pascal’s monstrous premise is…
well… monstrous, but crucially, it’s not actually required for the argument to work.
In fact, it’s so not needed that the vast majority of proponents do not include it (and
it’s primarily because of this that they see its inclusion as a Red Herring or strawman).
But why, then, did Pascal not only include it, but give it so much emphasis? Well, he
gives his justification a few times throughout his writing, but in my estimation he does
so most notably at the beginning of his most substantive rendition of his wager: “If
there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having neither parts nor limits, He
has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is.
This being so, who will dare to undertake the decision of the question? Not we, who
have no affinity to Him.” Thus, so far as Pascal is concerned, God is incomprehensible,
and hence when presenting his wager he insists that “Reason can decide NOTHING here.”
Now in today’s age of apologetic acrobatics, when theists speak of their God being incomprehensible,
they do not mean it in the sense that we can’t comprehend God WHATSOEVER, but rather that
we can’t comprehend God exhaustively (that is, we can’t understand why God created
parasites whose life cycle necessarily causes blindness, why he let’s children die of
cholera, and why he allows earthquakes to crumble his own churches). In other words,
for modern theists, “incomprehensible” is a synonym of “God is mysterious”, and
my favourite response to this mental gymnastics is to borrow a sentence from John Adams: “Mystery
is a convenient excuse for absurdity.” Pascal, however, meant it literally – he believed
that God is utterly incomprehensible, adding: “Who then will blame Christians for not
being able to give a reason for their belief, since they profess a religion for which they
cannot give a reason? […] If they proved it, they would not keep their word; it is
in lacking proofs, that they are not lacking in sense.” Again, most proponents forgo
this premise, but if one was to accept it, and as Hackings puts its, refuse “To look
at any observation or experimental data bearing on the existence of a Christian God”, then
when combined with the fact that we have to wager, it WOULD be rational to assign a 50%
probability to the proposition. Which is to say, given this monstrous premise, Pascal’s
analogy of flipping a coin is not only fair, but rational. To use the language currently
favoured by philosophers, Pascal’s argumentation is valid, but it certainly isn’t sound.
Now to illustrate how it’s not sound, consider this: If the sun was incomprehensible to us
in the way in which Pascal insists that God is incomprehensible, we would have absolutely
no idea whatsoever if we’ll be graced by its warmth tomorrow, since “Reason can decide
nothing here”, and if we were, as Pascal puts it, “embarked”, we would be rational
to assign a 50% probability to the proposition. In fact, we’d be rational to assign a 50%
probability to ANY dichotomous proposition that we assume to be incomprehensible, such
as Allah, Zeus, Vishnu, Odin, pixies, the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, Russell’s Teapot,
the flat earth, and the government turning the frickin frogs gay (“Do you understand
that?! Turn the fricken frogs gay! Crap!”). And it gets worse! In this bag there is one
six-sided dice, but what’s the chances of it being blue? If “Reason can decide nothing
here”, and “You are embarked”, rationality dictates that you assign a 50% probability
to the proposition. But now let me separately ask you another dichotomous question: what’s
the chance of it being yellow? 50%, correct! Okay, what about red? Yeah… 50%… so with
just three separate questions we’ve assigned 150% (“Do you understand that?! Crap!”).
Another huge flaw with this premise, that can be expanded upon in the future, but is
certainly worth mentioning here, is that since Pascal isn’t merely stating that God is
beyond our comprehension, but rather that we can know absolutely nothing about God,
he is contradicting himself. In order to assert that God is incomprehensible one must comprehend
something about God… namely, that God is incomprehensible… you see the problem? For
Pascal to say that one can’t know anything of God, he must know that we can’t know
anything of God, and so he knows something about God. *Clapping* Again, this needs expanding,
but consider this a cherry on top. While this premise is valid, it is definitely flawed.
Throughout this video series I’ve been insisting that Pascal’s wager doesn’t require his
monstrous first premise, and now that we’ve covered it thoroughly, I’ll let Pascal himself
explain why. Towards the end of his initial presentation, he writes the following: “But
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. It is all divided; wherever
the infinite is and there is not an infinity of chances of loss against that of gain, there
is no time to hesitate, you must give all…” In essence, Pascal reasons that even if the
chances of God existing is .1%, one would still be a fool not to wager all in God’s
favour, since, by definition, an infinite gain eclipses any and all finite loss; or
as he puts it elsewhere, “The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite,
and becomes a pure nothing.” And he’s absolutely correct. Granted, he spoke as if
belief in God costs nothing whatsoever, and that not believing in God gains you nothing
whatsoever (and both are colloquially false), but his point is that since these costs are
FINITE, and that they stand in the presence of the INFINITE, they are, indeed, a “pure
nothing.” If we contrast any finite number (no matter how large) against the infinite,
it does becomes a pure nothing. And so while Pascal’s first premise is no doubt monstrously
flawed, his argument not only works without it, but given the nature of infinity, his
argument is substantially stronger than our intuition would have us believe. On matters
of mathematics, Pascal was a genius, and I, for one, am very impressed. This man lived
during the infancy of calculus, and yet he grasped the concept of infinity greater than
most people alive do today. I don’t know about you, but that very much commands my
respect. So, to be clear, the monstrous premise is slain, but it’s death does not defeat
the wager. The next objection, however, does – and it’s a beautiful headshot. Talking
of which, if you’re watching this through the playlist, that objection will play automatically
after this video, but if you’re not in the playlist, you can find a link to it in the
description or comment section. Anyhow, I’m Stephen Woodford, and as always, thank you
kindly for the view, and an extra special thank you to my wonderful patrons and those
of you who’ve supported the channel via other means.