Pascal's Wager

This Valentine’s holiday, my church held a Casino Royale themed dance. Unfortunately for me, securing a ride proved too difficult an obstacle to overcome, so I was not able to put my luck with cards to the test. I was looking forward to it, and had thought about gambling away all my play money in bold (or stupid) and exciting ways. I could, after all, take that risk, since I am not actually wagering any real money. Wagers is what I want to talk about now, and a very famous wager put forth by Christian philosopher, Blasé Pascal.

    You may have heard of Pascal’s wager, or if you haven’t, you’ve most likely come across some watered down version of it. It goes something like this: Either God exists, or he does not, and you have to make a decision as to whether he does or not. So let’s say that the odds seem to be stacked even. You can’t make up your mind one way or the other. What do you do? It seems, according to Pascal, the smart choice is to bet that God does exist.

    What happens if you chose to believe that God exists? If God does exist, and you are correct, then you will receive Heaven for your belief. But if you choose to believe God exists and  He does not, then really you’ve lost nothing but some time in your life. So if you take this bet, and you win, you win a lot or you lose a little. Now, let us suppose that you decided to bet that God does not exist, and you live as if he didn’t. What happens then? Well, if you bet that God did not exist and He did, you get hell. Obviously, no one wants that. But if you bet that God does not exist, and He really doesn’t, then all you’ve done is spent some extra time do whatever you wanted.

    So, you have two bets, with one promising you either a lot of gain or little loss, and the other promising you a lot of loss or a little gain. Which side are you going to bet on? Pascal says that the clear choice, the smart choice, safe choice, is to believe that God did exist. It’s the world’s best bet, and while it doesn’t prove the existence of God, it should be sufficient enough to scare you away from atheism.

    Pascal did not believe that merely believing in God would secure your destiny, but that believing and giving intellectual assent would get the ball rolling to real genuine saving faith. God, who is love, could appreciate even our most silly attempts to come to know Him. So what we have here is something that might be useful while talking to an agnostic or someone who is just sitting on the fence, especially some of the apathetic ones. While this won’t convince someone to give their life over to God (though I would be pleasantly surprised if it did), it can crack open someone who is not immediately interested into a Bible study or get someone interested enough to follow up with you or maybe you’ll find yourself in a casino and this could be a cool icebreaker to share your faith.