Pascal's Wager Vs. Descartes' Meditations
Pascal’s wager is a risk/benefit assessment to determine whether or not a person should believe in God. It in no way aims to prove that God exists. Unlike Descartes, who tries to prove God’s existence through the idea of God himself Pascal does not think such a proof can succeed. Pascal does a good job in his argument because he takes both sides into account and comes to a reasonable conclusion using mathematics. Overall, Pascal’s wager is preferable to Descartes’ meditations because they contain many errors and do not appeal to people outside of Descartes’ own mind or beliefs.
Pascal focuses on the question: Should one believe in God? He takes the basic variables and puts them together and weighs the outcomes. The variables are A: God exists, and B: God does not exist. The other two variables are X: Believe in God and Y: Do not believe in God. When variables A and X are put together, i.e., if God exists and you believe in God, this is an infinitely good thing because if one believes in God, he will go to heaven. Next, consider variables B and X i.e., God does not exist but one believes in God. This is viewed as a status quo because nothing is gained or lost by worshiping nothing. This set of circumstances is given the value of zero. Next, variables A and Y are taken into account. If God truly does exist and one does not believe in him, this is an infinitely bad thing, because eternal damnation is viewed as a negative. Thus, this set of circumstances is given a negative value. The final two variables to be weighed against each other are B and Y. If God does not exist, and one does not believe in him, again the value will be zero because nothing is gained or lost in this example.
When the values for the variables X and Y are averaged, it shows that overall it does not hurt to believe in God. If one believes in God, there is no chance that the subject will go to hell. One who refuses to believe in God has a chance that he will end up in an...
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