1.Pascal's Wager
Pascal's wager is an argument for the belief in God by arguing that believing in God is the rational choice to make because it leads to the greatest utility. Pascal's wager draws from the belief that believing in God is the practical choice as it leads to salvation when making the choice in whether to be a theist or an atheist. He debates if belief in God leads to salvation and eternal happiness (heaven) then believing in God is infinitely better than not believing. One of the main arguments against Pascal’s wager says belief is involuntary and people can not force themselves to believe something they don’t necessarily think is true. My goal of this paper is to defend the argument for Pascal’s wager against one of the most promising objections which is we can not force people to believe. The first section I will describe Pascal's wager. The second section I will described the argument against Pascal's wager saying belief is involuntary and can’t be forced. In the third section I will rebuttal the argument. Finally, I address the possible objection that can be raised against my argument.
Pascal's argument is not to created to prove God exist but instead explain why theism is the rational choice. His argument is:
The Argument for Believing in God
(BG1) One should always choose the action with the greatest expected utility.
(BG2) Belief in God has greater expected utility than nonbelief
(BG3) So, one ought to believe in God.
BG1 claims the choice we make when faced with a decision in uncertainty is that we always choose the action with the greatest expected utility. In essence you rank the expected utility by multiplying the value of each possible outcome by the probability of that outcome, and adding together the results. When faced with a decision in uncertainty you must weigh four different things: options and outcome, cost and benefits of each eventuality, ranking eventualities, and likelihood of each outcome. For example, when planning on going to a Baseball game you could weigh the chances of actually going to the game by the chances of bad weather against how much your would like or dislike the possible consequences and how much you really want to go to the game. To Calculate expected you need to rank your happiness on a scale of 1-4 for each outcome. Shown by this example:
Good Weather(50%)
Bad Weather(50%)
Expected utility
Plan to go to game
4
2
3
Don’t plan on going to game
1
2
1.5
Planning to go to the game leads to a higher expected utility making it the more rational choice to make.
BG2 is making the claim that belief in God has the greatest outcome in terms of probability it will happen and that it will lead to the greatest reward and happiness. This is shown in calculations below:
God exist(0.000001%)
God doesn't exist(99.99999999%)
Expected utility
Believe in God
∞
2
∞(0.000001)+2(99.99999999)=∞
Don't Believe in God
1
3
1(0.000001)+ 3(99.99999999)=-∞
This was calculated using the idea that if you believe in God and guess its right then you get your shot at a life of eternal happiness which is infinitely better than anything else, however if your wrong then you don’t lose anything. This is compared to eternal suffering of not believing which is way worse giving it the lowest possible utility. Since heaven is infinitely better than anything else even if you have the mere probability of 0.0000001 chance God exist would still lead to a greater utility than not believing in God. This leads into BG3 as it is rational and in your best interest to bet on the outcome with the greatest utility. Belief in God could possibly leads to eternal life in heaven which is infinitely better than any other option.
2. Argument you can't force someone to believe:
In this section I address one of the main debates of Pascal's Wager. This objection mainly claims to disprove BG2 that belief in God has the greatest utility. Pascal's Wager assumes human beings have the ability to believe in something just as an act of will. Many argue you can not force yourself to voluntary believe something if you originally did not believe it to be true. Let alone make someone else believe or not believe something no matter how great the reward. For example your teacher can not force you to believe that he is a descendant of royalty even if he offers you an A in the class. Or you can't force someone to be happy at a carnival if they really don't like carnivals. Even if you believe heaven was infinitely better than anything else and wanted to believe in God in order to receive the reward, it's doubtful you could really force/trick yourself into believing something you already don’t believe is true or understand. You could pretend to believe, but you will never 100% wholly believe it. So because of this BG2 fails because if you cant even make yourself believe in God, then it wouldn't have a greater utility because the probability would be zero to a hundred. The expected utility for believing in God would instead be zero.
3. Objection to that Argument:
I will now argue against the argument you can't force someone to believe by claiming if someone, whether they believe in God or not, can acknowledge the possibility that heaven could be real and great and desire to go to Heaven. Then you at least must have a little belief in the possibility of Heaven and that believing in God can lead them to Heaven. Then they can engage in the art of wishful thinking, and align themselves with the ideas that could lead them into Heaven such as going to church, listening to Christian music, hanging around other believers, and studying the bible. By doing this the little possibility non-believes have that Heaven is real can grow into an actually belief. An example of this would be if someone could think of the possibility of Kanye running for president and winning in 2020 could happen but it is very unlikely and they don't have much faith in it. However if that person starting subscribing to Kanye’s campaigns newsletter, started joining the campaign for Kanye 2020, joined Kanye's party, and listen to Kanye's speeches they would eventually develop a bigger belief in the possibility that Kanye could be president because you are actively involved in his campaign and surrounded by the idea that Kanye could be president. Since your environment and actions promote the idea of Kanye being president then your belief in the possibility he could be president would most likely grow. When you think something is good and desire it your action start to align with those values and overtime your actions determine your environment and how you live your life which directly influences your thoughts. You can’t literally force people to believe something when they think something is good it obtains their actions to lead them to be surrounded by ways to achieve this goal creating a deeper sense in the possibility it could be real. So when someone engages in the idea that Heaven could be real, that some higher being like God made heaven and that if you believe in the higher power then you go to Heaven; then it obtains your actions to help you engage in activities and environments that help foster a deeper belief.
4. Counterexample
In this section I will address possible criticism that could be made on converting people to believe. One is if God is omnipresent and knows everything than what if God knows you are faking it in your belief only to get into heaven, will he accept it. If God knew you were faking your belief than it would be unclear if he would allow you into heaven or not. However, even if you faked your belief in God and God knew and didn't let you into heaven; it would still be rational to believe in God because at least you bet on the greatest utility.