on pascal's wager, or why all bets are off

ON PASCAL’S WAGER, OR WHY ALL BETS ARE OFF

B A C

I

The structure of Pascal’s famous argument to show why it is rational tobelieve in God1 is as follows: we cannot make sense of an infinite number,yet we know that there is such a number. Thus there is nothing strangeabout understanding that there is a God even when we do not know God’sactual nature. Now for all we know, God might or might not exist. Were weto bet on God’s existing, then winning this bet would mean winning every-thing and losing nothing (or at least nothing in comparison). But we do notknow that we shall win, and risking our lives seems too high a stake. But thislife on earth is a finite one. And ‘there is an infinitely happy infinity of life tobe won, one chance of winning against a finite number of chances of losing,and what [we] are staking is finite’ (p. ). Hence with a finite stake (anearthly life), a possible return of infinite value through betting on God, and agreater than infinitesimal chance of winning, each of us maximizes ourexpected utility by betting on God’s existence.

Consequently it is rational to believe in God. But while we can thus seethe rationality of so believing, our passions might not dispose us towardsembracing such a belief. So it is rational to follow the path of those whohave succeeded in becoming believers. And living as they do will diminish

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The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. , No. January ISSN –

© The Editors of The Philosophical Quarterly, . Published by Blackwell Publishers, Cowley Road, Oxford , UK, and Main Street, Malden, , USA.

1 Blaise Pascal, ‘Infinity Nothingness’, in Pensées and Other Writings, tr. Honor Levi (OxfordUP, ), pp. –. This fragment () seems to have been added to over a period of time.It is not surprising, therefore, that its various paragraphs, jumbled together on a single sheet ofpaper, are not, or so it appears, wholly consistent with one another. Nevertheless at least theargument which constitutes the wager is usually taken to be consistent and often felt to becompelling.

the passions which stand in the way of belief. As Pascal concludes (p. ),in the manner of someone who has found belief, we ‘should also submit[ourselves], for [our] own good and for [God’s] glory’. And the implicationsfor our behaviour are that each of us ‘will be faithful, honest, humble, grate-ful, doing good, a sincere and true friend’. Of course there seems to be aprice to pay, for we will ‘not take part in corrupt pleasure, in glory, in thepleasures of high living’, and so on. But the further we tread along the pathof the believer, the more certain we will be that we ‘have wagered on some-thing certain and infinite, for which [we] have paid nothing’.

II

But how much of this actually follows? Certainly, for all we know, Godmight exist. But, as Pascal openly admits, we do not know God’s nature.Hence, as critics as far back as Diderot have noted, Pascal’s wager seemsunable to tell us which of the various Gods that have been worshipped it isrational to believe in. Yet unless we know which of the Gods to worship, itseems that we cannot know how to act, nor what dispositions to acquire, inorder to be rewarded with an infinitely happy after-life. Nor would we knowwhat beliefs will earn God’s infinite reward. Hence we do not know whichbeliefs it is rational to hold. Thus we do not know which of the various formsof life to enter into in order to acquire eventually the particular beliefs itengenders.

However, most religious believers have shared many similar convictionsregarding how we ought to live our lives. Consequently, even if it cannot tellus precisely which God to worship, Pascal’s wager might nevertheless bethought to succeed in establishing, at the very least, that each of us ought to‘be faithful, honest, humble, grateful’, do good, and act as ‘a sincere andtrue friend’. And if it does succeed in establishing that, then it has estab-lished something very significant indeed. For justifying morality has provedto be rather elusive.

In a word, even if we failed to believe in the right God, we might still berewarded in an after-life as a result of having spent our lives acting morally.Hence it is rational so to act.

III

Unfortunately, it is possible to go further than Pascal’s critics have usuallybeen prepared to go. For example, we might ask: why presume that the sole



candidates for rational belief are those Gods which people have actuallyworshipped? Why, therefore, presume that it is rational to believe that Godis substantively good (and not merely by definition) and values faithfulness,honesty, humility, gratitude, doing good, sincerity and friendship, while dis-approving of seemingly ‘corrupt’ pleasures, or whatever? Thus unless weknow precisely what God does value, if anything, rather than what themembers of various creeds have to a large extent agreed,2 then we cannotknow anything about how to act, or what dispositions to acquire, in order tobe rewarded with an infinitely happy after-life. In a word, at first glance atleast, there seems to be nothing in the structure of Pascal’s wager that de-monstrates that God values one thing rather than another, and hencenothing that tells us substantively what it is rational for us to do or tobelieve.

So, while it might be rational for us to display honesty, humility, gratitude,etc., and to spend our lives performing good deeds in the hope that God willreward us with an infinitely pleasurable after-life, any such reward is con-ditional upon God’s having a specific nature – a good one. All of Pascal’sconclusions about how to act are premised upon certain assumptions aboutthe nature of God (if there is such a being) which we appear to have nogrounds for simply presupposing. In other words, the wager is only likely tohave any appeal to those who take the existence of a specific God forgranted. In short, Pascal’s argument only seems to work when the questionis begged.

Of course, it is possible that God is good and has the values Pascal andothers take for granted. But when we look around the world and see the(apparently) needless suffering taking place within it, we might draw a verydifferent conclusion about God’s nature from the one which is usuallydrawn. When we consider the Holocaust, or the millions of children suffer-ing from malnutrition, and the thousands daily dying of starvation, we couldeasily conclude that there might well be a God who is an unimaginably evilbeing, deriving immense pleasure from watching gratuitous violence andhorror all day long. The existence of such an evil God seems no less of apossibility than that of a good one.

IV

But this possibility raises an interesting question which has not been pur-sued: what conclusions would we be compelled to draw were we to wager on


2 Hinduism provides an exception to the moral agreement common among many otherfaiths. See Alan Donagan, The Theory of Morality (Univ. of Chicago Press, ), pp. –.

ALAN CARTER

the existence of an evil God? If we were to display nothing but honesty,humility, gratitude, and so on, and to spend our lives performing nothingbut good deeds, we might spoil the evil God’s amusement (who would, nodoubt, find our lives in consequence tediously boring). We might then facean eternity of horrific torments. For if we fail to provide an evil God withsufficient amusement through our suffering in this life, such a God mightobtain alternative enjoyment by observing our agony within an eternal hell.On the other hand, were we to cause considerable suffering in this life, anevil God might reward us with a pleasurable after-life for our present grot-esquely amusing performances. Indeed, the prospect of an exquisite after-lifemight be offered to the evil as an inducement to undertaking depravedactions in the here and now – actions to be performed before a pervertedcosmic voyeur.

Now such a suggestion might appear unworthy of serious consideration.But Pascal himself writes (p. ) that ‘We are ... born unfair.... We are born... unjust and depraved’, and that ‘No religion apart from our own hastaught that man is born sinful. No philosophical sect has said so. So nonehas told the truth.’ But if the truth is also that God created everything, then,it could surely be argued, God has made us depraved. It does not seem allthat unreasonable to conclude, therefore, that God enjoys watchingdepravity.

In which case, as the price for not placating an evil God by indulging indepraved acts might well be having to endure an infinitely excruciatinginfinity of suffering, with one chance of losing against a finite number ofchances of successfully avoiding having to pay up, and as what each of us isstaking is a finite earthly existence, then, with a finite stake (an earthly life), apossible loss amounting to an infinite disvalue, and a greater than in-finitesimal chance of losing, each of us maximizes our expected utility bybetting on the existence of an evil God and acting accordingly. Thus Pascalis clearly mistaken when he claims (p. ) that, with regard to betting on the(good) God in which he believes, ‘you will realize in the end that you havewagered on something certain and infinite, for which you have paidnothing’. Had we bet on a good God, when it turned out that we shouldhave bet on an evil one, then we would have ended up paying infinitely.Moreover, we might conjecture that an evil God would expect our totalallegiance and abject adoration. Hence it seems rational to do whateverwould lead us to believe wholeheartedly in such a possible God and toperform whatever actions may, conceivably, be required to placate God. Itthus seems rational both to seek out lifestyles that would result in ourbelieving exclusively in an evil God, and, in living them out, to behave in amanner that would make Hitler appear saintly.



V

But now Pascal’s wager appears to have generated two inconsistent con-clusions. It seems rational to act so as to believe exclusively in a good God.(Exclusively, that is, if a good God is, oddly, a jealous God. However, myargument does not require this presupposition. For an evil God could easilybe presumed to be a jealous one, and the possibility of one jealous God,never mind two, suffices to generate the inconsistency.) And it similarlyseems rational to perform only good deeds. But it also appears rational tobelieve exclusively in an evil God and to perform the most evil of actions.How then should we act? It is not clear that it is more rational to seekpleasure than to avoid pain. And an evil God might be expected to havethought up more evil torments than a good one. So it might well be morerational to act so as to avoid the possibility of facing an evil God’s hell.Hence perhaps it is more rational to believe in the evil God. But a believerin a good God could retort that, being omnipotent, God is just as capable ofinventing the most ghastly of hells. In fact a good God, in order to encour-age good behaviour on our part, might very well threaten just as unendur-able a hell as an evil God. (As Pascal observes at p. : ‘God’s justice mustbe as vast as his mercy. But justice towards the damned is not so vast, andought to shock less than mercy towards the elect.’) And if the hells areequally insufferable, we should believe in the God who offers the bestheaven.

But in not disapproving of ‘corrupt’ pleasures, glory or high living, theevil God might actually offer the prospect of a better heaven. But, a believerin a good God might reply, being omnipotent, a good God could equallyoffer either pleasures forbidden to us in this life, or ones far greater and be-yond our present comprehension.

In which case we seem to have reached stalemate. Pascal’s wager appar-ently establishes that it is rational to believe exclusively in a good God andto perform only good deeds, while seeming equally to establish that it isrational to believe exclusively in an evil God and to perform as many evildeeds as we can. But it is impossible to follow both recommendations. Ofcourse, if it can be established that God is good, etc., and not merely bydefinition, then it is rational to bet solely on the good God’s existence. But ifthe goodness of God is already established substantively, then so is God’sexistence; and Pascal’s wager does no work. For his argument to work, itwould be necessary to prove the following: (a) if there is a God, then as amatter of fact (and not by definition) God is good (for if this is not


ALAN CARTER

established, we cannot know which form of life we should buy into nor whatto believe); (b) if there is a God, then God is a jealous God who demandsexclusive obedience (for if this is not established, we may as well hedge ourbets by believing in an evil God who might exist and who would demandexclusive servitude); and (c) if there is a God, then God values faithfulness,honesty, humility, gratitude, doing good, sincerity and friendship, whiledisapproving of seemingly ‘corrupt’ pleasures, and so on (for if this is notestablished, again we may as well hedge our bets by acting so as to placatean evil God whose existence is a possibility). Moreover, it would be necess-ary to prove all the above without proving simultaneously that God exists. Imust admit to being at a loss to see what such a proof might look like.

Thus if Pascal’s wager tells us that the rational thing to do is to beteverything on a good God and to perform only good actions, while alsotelling us, on the contrary, that the rational thing to do is to bet everythingon an evil God and to perform as many evil actions as possible, then hiswager tells us to do neither one thing nor the other. And if Pascal’s wagertells us that it is rational to believe only in a good God and that it is rationalto believe only in an evil one, then it tells us to believe neither one thing northe other. Hence, in thereby apparently establishing too much, Pascal’swager establishes, in effect, nothing at all.

Heythrop College, University of London



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