One of the blogs I subscribe to is Cloud of Witnesses. A recurring post is “The Philosophical Word of the Day." Blaise Pascal was featured today. This reminded me of the conclusions I came to on the absurdity of the famous Pascal Wager. While there are actually several corollaries to his argument, the most well known is his “wager” argument. Simple put, it consists of two choices (belief and unbelief). If you do not believe and are wrong you will suffer eternal punishment, but if you are right you will enjoy eternal happiness. So, it is in your best interest to believe because if you are wrong you do not loose anything, and if you are right you gain everything. As you can see, this is primarily a practical argument. One that I believe has several shortcomings. First, if you approach God on the basis of skepticism, will he not know? Your motives are insincere at best, and sincerity is an important if not a vital aspect of religion. Secondly, this argument is for a belief in the “theos”. It does not help one know which religion to choose. Since the motive is based on pragmatism, why not be a Lastly, this argument is only moderately effective for works based religions. It is worthless to Christianity. This is because Christianity is based on belief (faith) not works. But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. (Heb 11:6) Salvation by grace is vital. There is nothing that we can do to be right before God. He sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to die for our sins so that we could be judicially righteous before Him. Salvation does not occur through pragmatic belief. It can only be realized through sincere faith.
I remember reading about the Pascal Wager during my first year of college. I was impressed by his reasoning and thought it was a good tool for apologetics. I even used it once or twice while witnessing. pantheist polytheist? Better to worship everything, then to pick the wrong one and thereby anger the god(s) you are trying to please.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
The Pascal Wager
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Along this same lines I found Dr. William Lane Craig's most recent Q and A very interesting.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/PageServer?pagename=q_and_a
He does into much more detail in his book reasonable faith. I would highly recommend it to anyone wanting to study natural theology or apologetics.
Thanks for pointing out the article. This continues one of my points that Pascal's argument is beneficial for salvation by works (the sacraments of Roman Catholicism) but not salvation by faith.
ReplyDeleteI also like his point for those who are skeptical of Christianity. He advices them to interact with other Christians. The most powerful apologetic is a true Christian. All rational arguments pale in comparison to a believer who shines forth Christ.
Hi Russ,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the shout out. You make some good points about Pascal's Wager. It's definitely not at the top of my list for reasons I would give to believe in Christianity. Another criticism is that a person usually can't simply choose to believe something as an act of their will. If the heartfelt conviction isn't there, it would be very difficult to suddenly start believing something you hadn't believed previously. You're right too about the apologetic power of a life that reflects Christ. That is the ultimate apologetic.
Chris
Cloud of Witnesses
Thanks for the reply and your original post that resulted in the article. Also while I definitely respect you, I don't think your are Christ as I put in your blog. Those typos will get you :).
ReplyDeleteRuss,
ReplyDeleteI disagree, not because Pascal's Wager is so enlightening or persuasive, but because I am not sure that you understand it properly. The purpose of the wager is apologetic, not evangelistic. The purpose of apologetics being to remove barriers to the eventual point of acceptance or rejection of the gospel. Evangelism being the presentation of the gospel itself. Pascal himself was not under the impression that one could simply become a Christian by virtue of a "just-in-case" mentality. In fact, that was what Craig was saying. You misunderstood his point to be in contrast to Pascal when in reality he was affirming Pascal's own rebuttal to your argument. The fact that the purpose of the Wager is misplaced when used as an evangel as opposed to an apologetic. In fact, we use Pascal's Wager in pragmatic apologetics on a regular basis. We try to get unbelievers to come to church even before they are saved because we are under the impression (and rightly so) that somehow this will make them more likely to hear, understand, and accept the gospel.
Furthermore, you make my point for me when you say that this is for belief in the theos not in the God of Christianity. To my knowledge there are no Christians who do not believe in the existence of God. I think Pascal, knowing this, finds it important to make sure that one believes in the existence of God prior to their conversion. We often call this classical apologetics and it is very prevalent in Paul's apologetic as well as that of many of the anti-nicene and nicene church fathers. It is pointless to try and make someone believe in the conclusion of an argument when they have serious problems with the premises.
Anyway, I think Christianity ought to do a better job (on the whole) of understanding the proper place of apologetics, reason, and evangelism in our faith.
Scott
Nicely put Scott, I was trying to draw attention to that in a more covert way :-P
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of my work in photocatalysis. In order for the activity of the metal oxide photocatalyst to be most effective it needs to be placed into an environment where it will receive the necessary exposure to the substrate solution and the activating illumination. Just as in Pascals wager the unbeliever is placed into contact with and under the illumination of the atmosphere. These two things are necessary for complete amelioration of contaminates (in both cases).
Ahh! How beneficial and multifaceted science can be. Whether you enjoy the analogy or not.
Leave it to Scott to come out and say I am wrong. Well, in my defense let me try to clarify and correct a few things.
ReplyDeleteTo understand Pascal’s argument you need to understand its background. He lived during the time of Montaigne when there was great skepticism. The classic arguments for God were no longer popular. So Pascal developed what he called a third ladder, one that was a pragmatic apologetic. You mention that this argument requires belief in God, when in reality its very premise is to turn unbelievers in God to belief.
Anyway, my point is that it is not very convincing as an apologetic (removing barriers). The only time it would be beneficial is if one was a skeptic who had ruled all religions out except for Christianity (which is highly unlikely). Because if you want to be consistent in the try it and you’ll like it (or believe it) approach, you would have to do so with all religions.
See the Stanfor article for a good presentation of the Pascal Wager’s context and validity.
*I would like to point out that I know both of these men, and we are friends (at least for the time being). Also I did understand that Philip and Craig were disagreeing with me; I was just trying to not turn the comments section into a forum :).