Pascal’s Wager

For those who haven’t heard of it before, Pascal’s Wager was this argument Blaise Pascal had for why we ought to believe in God [1], despite what our desires/reason to the contrary. He claims that one must wager for or against God and that the rational decision is to wager for the existence of God, because then infinite utility is secured against the loss of finite utility.

And I do not like Pascal’s Wager. I don’t like the logic, I don’t like what it says about God; I don’t like what is says about faith.

Voltaire called the gambit “indecent and childish…the interest I have to believe a thing is no proof that such a thing exists”.[2] Some may say, for example, that their race is superior to all others despite lacking any real logical proofs simply because they want this to be true. A belief in the existence of God based a desire for an utopian afterlife shows similar unreason.

The wager follows form Pascal’s belief that god “has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is”. Since the beginning the gospel was opposed by Gnostic notions that God is unknowable, but the Bible claims that:

God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.[3]

God is personal and relational, and I can’t see that it is possible to both claim to have a relationship with God, yet believe that it can not be known what is his nature or if he even exists. The assertion that God is light emphasise that (although he can not be fully know) he is not ambiguous, nor does he hide his nature. I don’t know a lot about mathematics, but I still know with complete certainty that 1 + 1 = 2. In the same way I may never know everything about God (obviously much about God is beyond my understanding) but I can know with complete certainty that he exists, that he is good and that he is relational.[4]

The kind of belief Pascal suggests is sufficient is, thus, an empty belief - just as any relationship would be empty if the parties could not trust that the other existed and has an interest in the relationship. This understanding of ‘belief’ naturally gives a very jilted perception of what it means to be Christian. It suggests that it is limited to the decision that God exists, for the purpose of securing salvation.

Christianity isn’t merely about making a decision that God exists, rather it is about a relationship with God and becoming a ‘new creation’.[5] Our faith can only be known by examining our lifestyle and beliefs.[6] Also, the wager marginalizes the losses associated with belief in God. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die…because only the man who is dead to his own will can follow Christ”.[7]

With this is mind another problem with the wager comes to mind, namely that the ‘rational’ approach it promotes suggests that the individual ought to do what is in their best interests, whereas the Christian is motivated by what is in God’s best interests. The gospel is all about self-sacrifice, considering oneself after others and after God. Thus, a motivation from rationality (maximising one’s own utility) undermines the entire gospel. Heaven and Hell are irrelevant to realising the truth of God‘s existence (though their existence necessarily follows a belief in a just God).



[1] Being pre-Enlightenment Europe, ‘god’ as conceived by Pascal was necessarily the god of Christianity. Hence the assumption that the existence of heaven/hell follow from the existence of God. My comments also refer to the Christian God.
[2] Pascal didn’t actually claim that the wager did prove God, rather he claimed God’s existence could not be proven. But the criticism still stands.
[3] 1 John 1:5-6
[4] I also disagree with Pascal’s assumption that there is equivalent probability of God existing/not existing, although I don’t really have the time to present the proofs.
[5] 2 Corinthians 5:17
[6] 2 Corinthians 13:5-8
[7] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Cost of Discipleship