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Why The Failure Of Pascal's Wager

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Why The Failure Of Pascal's Wager
Pascal’s Wager

Pascal argued that all men should believe in God for their own good. The wager is based on an assumption that says, if God exist, there will be infinite goodness for believers, and infinite badness for nonbelievers. He also assumed that all men must choose between believe in God or not. His reasons were easy to follow: If God does exist, nonbelievers will be doomed to infinite suffering of the hell. Whereas believers will enjoy infinite pleasure of the haven. If God does’t exist, nonbelievers will only have finite enjoyment such as luxury and certain pleasure. Whereas believers will only lose the same kind of finite enjoyment. To summarize: when it is uncertain whether God exist, there are two kinds of combinations. Combination 1: infinite goodness plus finite …show more content…
The failure of Pascal’s Wager
If we only look at As and Bs, we will have a hard time finding the problem. The problems lies in things included in Combination 1 and 2. Pascal claimed that if God really exist, believers will have infinite happiness. But who gave him credit for that? God obviously didn’t. What’s the point of betting if God doesn’t accept the bet?
An example might explain: I just saw a squirrel on the lawn in front of my apartment window. It began climbing a tree for some reason, and was going in up and down in branches. I suddenly wanted to take a guess at its next move. In order to make it an interesting game. I announced that I bet 100 million with Bill Gates that the squirrel is going to go left at the next branch. Surprisingly, the squirrel went left. I was happy, but my sanity told me that I wouldn't get the 100 million. Why? Because Bill Gates didn’t take up my bet. He did’t say that he is in the game with me and is betting 100 million as well. 100 million might bring me infinite goodness, but it has nothing to do with me if it is not a stake. It is clearly wrong to say that a wise man should always bet on a squirrel, because he has a chance of wining 100
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