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7 PASCAL'S WAGERS AND JAMES'S WILL TO BELIEVE
Jeffrey J. Jordan
During the summer of 1955 John von Neumann, the mathematical genius and pioneer of
Game Theory, was diagnosed with an advanced and incurable cancer. When the disease
confined him to bed, von Neumann converted to Christianity. As might be expected of
the inventor of the minimax principle, von Neumann was reported to have said, perhaps
jovially, that Pascal had a point: if there is a chance that God exists and that damnation is
the lot of the nonbeliever, then it is logical at the end to believe (Macrae 1992, 379).
Pascal's point was his famous wager. Pascal's wager is a pragmatic argument in support
of theistic belief. Theism is the proposition that God exists. God we will understand as a
title for the individual who is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect. A theist is
anyone who believes that God exists. Pragmatic arguments employ prudential reasons on
behalf of their conclusions. A prudential reason for a proposition is a reason to think that
believing that proposition would be beneficial. Pascal (1623–1662), a French
mathematician and philosopher, is famous, in part, for his contention that, if the evidence
is inconclusive, one can properly consult prudence: “Your reason suffers no more
violence in choosing one rather than the otherbut what about your happiness? Let us
weigh the gain and the loss involved by wagering that God exists” (1995, 153).^1
According to Pascal, theistic
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belief, because of its prudential benefits, defeats its doxastic rivals of disbelief and
suspended belief. Other theistic arguments, such as the ontological proof, say, or the
cosmological argument seek to provide epistemic reasons in support of theism. An
epistemic reason for a proposition is a reason to think that that proposition is true or
likely.
Pascal's wager was a revolutionary apologetic device. It is not an argument for the claim
that God exists. That sort of argument appeals to evidence, whether empirical or
conceptual. The wager is an argument that belief in God is pragmatically rational, that
inculcating a belief in God is the action dictated by prudence. To say that an action is
pragmatically rational implies that it is in one's best interests to do that action. Rationality
and truth can diverge, of course. But in the absence of conclusive evidence of truth,
Pascal contends, rationality should be our guide. Pascal's pragmatic turn, though
foreshadowed in earlier writers, was an attempt to argue that theistic belief was the only
proper attitude to adopt when faced with the question of the existence of God. Because
reason cannot determine the answer, it must yield the field to prudence, which, if the
wager succeeds, wins the day for theism. Impressively enough, even though the evidence
should be inconclusive regarding theism, one would be positively irrational not to believe
if the wager succeeds. The wager is designed not to show that theistic belief is rationally
permissible but to show that unbelief is rationally impermissible.