Pascal's Wager: A Critique of Its Use

Suppose you are a Christian —in the absolute loosest sense of the word— and you come upon a man who professes that he does not believe in God.  You may be dismayed and you may try and think of something clever to gently nudge him in the proper direction of being a theist.  You quickly revert back to a simple wager in that if one dies believing in God, they will be saved; but if one dies not believing in God, they will be damned.  You then make the case that it is better to risk dying and being wrong about God's existence, than it is to risk eternal damnation.  You have used a simplified and convincing argument known as 'The Bet', or, Pascal's Wager.

You, being clever, think that you have the atheist stuck in a simple dilemma where the only pragmatic and reasonable choice is to believe in God.  For to believe in God, is to potentially gain the rewards of eternal happiness and life; whereas the risk in the alternative is damnation.  However, you have made a mistake in misusing Pascal's Wager, and have thus given the atheist an easy argument to refute your belief in God.

Let us take this simplified matrix and point out how trying to use this argument as a cheap trick to refute an atheist renders one not just a poor apologist, but one ripe for plucking apart his iron-clad defense and render him a fool.

To properly understand this let us review the simple matrix that Pascal's Wager sets forth:

	God Exists	God Doesn't Exist
Belief	+∞ (infinite gain)	-1 (finite loss)
Disbelief	-∞ (infinite loss)	+1 (finite gain)

As you can see in this matrix, if God exists, then the risk/reward ratio is infinite, where as in the alternative scenario it is merely finite.  Therefore it is much more dangerous to hold disbelief for the risks is infinitely worse than the gain, whereas a belief holds only a minuscule risk compared to the infinite gain.  While the matrix is clear, concise, and logical, there are glaring presuppositions that make this not an effective tool to try and convert unbelievers.

Firstly, using Pascal's Wager to show to an atheist that there is little to gain in denying God's existence, arouses certain questions that do more harm than good in proving the existence of a God.  It first presupposes that if it were true that God did exist, then it would imply that those who disbelieve —regardless of the earnestness and sincerity of the disbelief— would be punished to eternal damnation.  The atheist would then immediately go into a polemical tirade about the lack of compassion about God.  We would hear the return of cries about the abominable nature of God, how God is 'petty' and 'jealous'.  Therefore if God does exist, then He cannot be the loving, compassionate, merciful deity the apologist claims that He is, since this God damns those who may simply not believe because they had searched and still found wanting.  And if that be true, then even if God does exist, He is not the God the apologist makes him out to be.  Therefore since the only argument put forth is a loving God that has been invariably disprove by first argument, the only logical conclusion is to argue that God does not exist.  For if God is not loving, but hateful, then there are no rewards for the believer as well as the unbeliever.

For the apologist, consider the horrifying supplication to this wager, it implies that betting wrong on God is a course for instant damnation.  You may defend this troubling statement and respond:

"Yes, if you do not believe in God, how do you expect to be saved?"

But I would argue that to simply believe in God is not sufficient for eternal life, the Protestants may argue that to simply mouth with your lips and have a physical feeling of desire, declaring Jesus "Lord, Lord" is sufficient to be saved.  Yet, in the same Holy Scriptures they love to refer to, Our Lord also says that not all who say "Lord, Lord" will be saved.  Therefore belief in God is not sufficient for eternal salvation, therefore the wager is fallacious.  We must also take into consideration the nature of God:

Is belief all that matters in salvation?

Does it matter if one lives a good life?

Does it matter that one tried to make the world a better place?

Or, is simply saying yes with one's mouth give one a ticket of passage to eternal bliss, while allowing them to be a complete monster during their life.  The Wager does not answer these questions.

We have to also consider other religions that are not Christian.  This same wager could be applied to any religion.  Failure to believe in Allah, or Shiva, may invariably result in the same infinite loss.  So the Christian has to now argue as to how they are not risking damnation for not believing in the right God.  To conclude, the apologist has to then revert to not an ontological argument, but an ontological argument over which religion has the right concept of God.  So instead of pressing the atheist to decide, the apologist now has to defend his beliefs against other faiths.  Thus, Pascal's Wager has effectively come to a dead end, and has put the apologist on the defence.

Eventually when broken down, what the apologist ends up doing is reducing the salvation of an eternal soul to that of a simple coin toss, and in it, makes a base appeal to purely speculative odds.  God goes from being the Creator, the Savior, the source of all Love, Truth, Mercy, Justice, Purity, and Virtue...to a cold being that casually discards those who place the wrong bet.  God in effect, becomes just as cruel as a humanistic god like Zeus.

It is important to stress that this simple dichotomy was not an attempt to appeal to the atheist conscience and make him reconsider the choice of refusing belief in God.  It was instead written to argue to the agnostic.  Pascal considered that there is no refusing of the choice to believe or not believe.  In this argument, Pascal accepts the atheists unbelief; as he does give them credit for at least making a choice, even if it is the wrong one in his view.  To Pascal since death is an absolute certain, to refuse making a choice, a bet, is unacceptable.  Therefore Pascal's bet is not used to convince an atheist to consider belief, but to antagonize agnostics who refuse to take a side.  Blaise Pascal is also defending a belief, a faith in God.

To Blaise Pascal, the atheists made their bed, they choose to disbelieve and will receive, or not receive, their eternal reward.  What Pascal is arguing is that atheists should not dismiss believers because believe, but should merely look at the logical reasons a believer believes, or an unbeliever seeks to believe.  Pascal argues that despite prior Christian ontological arguments for the existence of God: St. Anselm's, St Thomas's "five proofs", and his contemporary Reneé Descartes; they are not sufficient to the pure skeptic.  Therefore Pascal meets skeptics half-way by arguing that it is impossible to know God by reason alone.  But what Pascal does is argue that despite it being impossible to know God through reason, it is not unreasonable to strive to know Him through faith.  What atheists see as a frivolous waste of time, Pascal wagers that it is merely logical to try and obtain a belief in the Almighty.  Thus, it is not a coercive argument to believe in God, but it is instead an argument to try and discover the existence of God.

In conclusion, Christian apologetics should know when to use Pascal's Wager.  The Wager is not simply an appeal to believe in God, or convert, but is instead both an argument for the searching of God, and a logical defense for those who do believe.  Pascal says that if one is skeptical, then let them attend Mass, read Scriptural and spiritual texts, and let them pray.  To this end, Pascal is trying to open the door for all those who wish to know God, but struggle to believe and pray the skeptics prayer: "God I do not know that Thou exists, but if Thou be True, please in Thy clemency show me thy Face, so that I may come to believe."