Pascal’s Wager

What it is, and Why it’s Still Relevant

The other morning, I was sitting at my desk staring at the clouds in the sky. It was a windy enough morning where the clouds were moving rather quickly. I let myself get lost in thoughts. I was lead down a rabbit-hole of thoughts, tied together by what seemed to be a loose string. Somehow, I ended asking myself the question, “What does it mean to act as if God exists?”

I immediately thought of Pascal’s Wager.

A little background on Blaise Pascal first. He was an inventor, mathematician, philosopher, and physicist. In one of his many Treatises, he brings up the idea of the Existence of God. He acknowledges there is no way to prove God’s existence or non-existence.

He argued that we should act as if God exists.

His reasoning was that if God exists and we live a good life, then we will be rewarded by God. If God doesn’t exist, and we live a good life, then the reward is that you’ve lived a good life.

The tragic part is we will never be able to see the consequences of our good actions. This argument is often criticized. It is criticized because it assumes that God will grant us an afterlife and that an afterlife is a desirable outcome.

The irony of the argument isn’t whether God exists, and it isn’t about being rewarded for being “good.” The true nature of the question is pragmatic. It asks, in a practical way, “How do I live a good life?”

In order to answer this question, you first have to define what a “good” life is. This question is often defined by the times we live in. For example, living a “good” life might have been fighting against the Nazis in the Second World War. For arguments’ sake, we will also say that even Nazi soldiers believed they were doing “good”.

What then constitutes goodness?

Everywhere throughout our time, we have asked this question. Institutions have tried to answer this question. Emperors have tried to answer this question. Now, our government tries to answer this question for us. We only have to dig about 100 years in the past to see why the State answering this question and defining it for us is not a “good” idea.

So then, what is the answer to this age-old problem? How do we solve it?

I argue again from a pragmatic standpoint. I don’t think there is an answer. I don’t think this question can ever be solved.

And that doesn’t matter.

The solving of the question is in our striving towards solving the question. Because the question really isn’t “what is good and what is bad”. The questions are “How do I define Good and Bad? How do I then act in a manner that is consistent with those ideals? When and Why do I deliberately do Bad things, even when I know they are bad?”

The good Professor John Varvaeke once said in his lecture series Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, “Morality demands nothing less than perfection.” So if morality demands perfection, and we know we cannot ever achieve this perfection, why be moral at all?

The truth is that we are moral or immoral even if we don’t make a choice.

That question seems to be the question of our time, just framed differently. We have framed this question as “Why do I continue to work hard if working hard doesn’t do anything for me? The world is going to end anyway.” This argument is completely faulty! It is based on a faulty premise. The premise of the argument is nothing we do matters and the world is a horrible place and there’s nothing we can ever do to change that. Well, how do we know that?

What if everyone lived up to their potential, or at least tried to live up to their potential? What if everyone acted in a manner they considered “Good?” What if everyone lived on the premise that God exists?