Will this get people into Heaven ? Pascal's wager?

Question

Pascal's Wager; he basically says to believe in God "just in case"

I always wondered from PHI classes, if people go by this, does it work for them.

Answer 1

"Pascal's Wager," so-called because it was devised by the brilliant Catholic philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), is an apologetics method in the form of a wager aimed at getting atheists and agnostics to consider the possibility that God exists and that there is a heaven and hell. The beauty of Pascal's Wager is that it is an appeal to the chief God worshipped by atheists; their reason.



Pascal addresses his argument to the typical man of the world who regards making money and amusing himself, not as a means to an end, but the real purpose of existence. Even if he refuses to consider his ultimate destiny, Pascal maintains such a man cannot avoid wagering about it. In practice, he must stake everything on one of two propositions, either (A) that there is a purpose in life (God made us for life with him); or (B) that there is not. Man cannot refuse to wager for by doing so he implies that there is no purpose in life.



Under one guise or another, human selfishness is always urging man to stake everything on "B." Pascal tries to show that it is far more reasonable--even from the viewpoint of self-interest--to stake all on "A." If you bet everything on "B" and "A" is the truth, you lose an eternal good. But if you stake all on "A" and "B" is the truth, you lose only a few temporal pleasures.



Pascal describes the thoughts of the typical man in these words: "I know not whence I came or whither I go. I only know that on quitting this world, I shall fall forever either into nothingness or into the hands of an angry God (Heb. 10:31) . . . And yet I conclude that I should pass all the days of my life without bothering to inquire into what must happen to me. Perhaps I might find some solution to my doubts, but I do not want to take the trouble . . . I intend to go forward without looking ahead and without fear toward this great event, facing death carelessly, still uncertain as to the eternity of my future state... (Pensees III, 194). . . . In other words, Pascal thinks it is not merely a moral tragedy but an intellectual blunder to wager on "B," that is, to refuse to recognize a purpose in life. He feels sure the typical man would soon have faith if he renounces pleasure. At least he should search for the truth. "According to the doctrines of chance, you should search earnestly for the truth, for if you die without worshipping the True Cause, you are lost. 'But,' you say, 'if God had wished me to worship him, he would have left me signs of his will.' Indeed, God has done so (Rom. 1:18-21; 2:14-16); but you ignore them."



Actually getting into Heaven is complicated, but relatively simple. Kind of like the Bible, complex, but simple.



NO ONE ON THIS EARTH IS GUARANTEED TO GO TO HEAVEN JUST BECAUSE THEY BELIEVE IN JESUS CHRIST!



I can only pray that Jesus judges me worthy...



I know that I can only get to heaven through Jesus. Also, it is not just by this faith in Jesus, nor just the Grace of God, nor just the works that I do. It is a combination of many things.



We receive God's saving and sanctifying grace in many ways, and Christ Himself, into our souls when we are baptized. Yet they also know that Christ Himself has established certain conditions for entry into eternal happiness in Heaven.



"Jesus said to them, "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever."" (John 6:53-58)



We will be judged by this as well, so be warned...



"Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord. A person should examine himself, and so eat the bread and drink the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself." (1 Cor. 11:27-29).



We will also be judged by our faith, but not by this alone, we will also be judged by the works that we do (Justification by faith alone is a Protestant doctrine; it was unheard of in the Christian community before the sixteenth century.)...



If St. Paul meant that faith ruled out the necessity of good works for salvation, he would not have written:



". . . and if I should have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing." (1 Cor. 13:2).



If faith ruled out the necessity of good works for salvation, the Apostle James would not have written:



"Do you see that by works a man is justified; and not by faith only'? . . . For even as the body without the spirit is dead; so also faith without works is dead." (James 2:24-26).



If faith ruled out the necessity of good works for salvation, the Apostle Peter would not have written:



"Therefore, brothers, be all the more eager to make your call and election firm, for, in doing so, you will never stumble. For, in this way, entry into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ will be richly provided for you." (2 Peter 1:10-11).



If faith was the only necessity for salvation, the Apostle James would not have written:



"If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, his religion is vain. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained by the world." (James 1:26-27)



Christ Himself stated:



"For the Son of man . . . will render to every man according to his works." (Matt. 16:27).



"‘Not everyone who says to me, "Lord, Lord," shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven’" (Matt. 7:21).



I need my faith also...



"Who were those who rebelled when they heard? Was it not all those who came out of Egypt under Moses? With whom was he "provoked for forty years"? Was it not those who had sinned, whose corpses fell in the desert? And to whom did he "swear that they should not enter into his rest," if not to those who were disobedient? And we see that they could not enter for lack of faith."(Hebrews 3:16-19)



When I die, I will not enter the kingdom of Heaven immediately, either...



The Bible distinguishes between those who enter Heaven straightaway, calling them "the church of the firstborn" (Heb. 12:23), and those who enter after having undergone a purgation, calling them "the spirits of the just made perfect." (Heb. 12:23).



Christ Himself stated:



"Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court with him. Otherwise your opponent will hand you over to the judge, and the judge will hand you over to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Amen, I say to you, you will not be released until you have paid the last penny." (Matt. 5 :26).



And:



"I tell you, on the day of judgment people will render an account for every careless word they speak. By your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned." (Matt. 12:36-37).

Answer 2

Actually, it IS Pascal's Wager. This states that the expected value = the sum of the odds times the outcomes. This theory can be explained using a simple card game like 3 card monte. In this game you have 3 cards that are shuffled rapidly and you have to pick the queen. You have a 1 in 3 chance of winning. That also means you have a 2/3 chance of losing. If you bet $10 you have once chance to double your money and win $20. You have 2 chances to lose your money. This can be shown mathematically by 1/3 x ($20) + 2/3 X (-10) which equals out to 0. In other words, if you play long enough, you break even, right?

Wrong. You forgot the cost to play. That first $10. If you win you aren't winning $20. $10 of that was already yours. you only win $10! This makes the new math 1/3 ($10) + 2/3 (-10) = -10/3. The dealer has an obvious advantage.



Pascals wager in specific was the "god believing game". In this you had 2 choices. if you believe in god you have the expected value = 1/2 X Eternal happiness + 1/2 X Nothing. you might be eternally happy, you might get nothing. since nothing is 0, the Expected value of the God believing game is Eternal Happiness. The problem with this wager is that it only takes into account that Christianity is right, or there is nothing. If you consider all possabilities though, you get a whole new equation. The end result of that problem (too long to write out mathematically here) is "lose a life". You can't mathematically choose a religion, because the end result is that you die, for nothing.



Pascal also explained how the non-believer could become a believer, by going to church and pretending to be a believer. According to Pascal eventually you would become what you pretended to believe and would truly believe. This seems a lot more like hypocracy than belief to me.



Descartes argument by the way was the Ontological Argument. This was :

God is that being of which nothing greater can be concieved.

It is greater to exist in reality that thought.

Therefore, God must exist.



Another way this was phrased by Descartes was:

God has all perfections.

Existance is a perfection.

Therefore, God has existance.



This argument was refuted by Anselm with the Lost Island. Anselm said that there is a lost island that is greater than any other island that can be concieved. It is greater to exist than not to exist, therefore the lost island must exist. This shows that this argument is flawed. It is a circular argument. Consider this ...

If God were to exist, he would be the greatest being conceivable.

If God is the Greatest being conceivable than he exists.

Therefore if God were to exist, than he exists.



These arguments are flawed and though famous, still invalid. No one has ever created a truly valid philisophical proof of God's existance. The closest that has come is the Teleological arguments, which are not proofs, but Inductive arguments.

Answer 3

You need to read the full thing. Most Phil texts do not give the full wager. The whole wager is a setup for moving people into developing a Christian outlook and ultimately entering the Catholic Church. It doesn't end at "just in case". Immediately following the close of the wager, Pascal says that once you believe that it is reasonable to believe then you need to start to develop belief and faith by entering into the means and modes of Catholic worship and prayer. For Catholic, faith is something that is developed, learned, and formed over time and often from the starting point of "this is what is most reasonable".



One of the great Catholic prayers is "Lord I believe, help my unbelief!"



http://www.leaderu.com/cyber/books/pensees/pensees.html

Answer 4

"If God does exist, presumably He'll know I don't really believe in Him, that I'm pretending to believe in him on the off chance that He might really exist. If He's willing to accept me if I just "Go through the motions" then I suspect just being a good person will also be enough. Pascal's own answer to this point was that this is why we have churches, to help us grow in faith. In other words, if I submit to a church-approved brainwashing program, they can make me believe. I do not find this comforting."

-The Reverend Jim Huber



As the good Reverend says, Pascals Wager is a suckers bet.

-SD-

Answer 5

Pascal's Wager has been refuted a million times in a dozen different ways. It stinks. Throw it out. Pascal would have wanted you to become a Catholic anyway, like he was.



http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/manufall.html

Answer 6

No. Either you believe fully and freely or you don't. Either your heart is honest or it's not. Besides, if all you care about is going to Heaven, you're not living in the present and you're missing the opportunity to help make the world a better place by doing simple little positive things to those around you.

Answer 7

We're talking two different definitions of the phrase "Believe in God."



Here are the interpretations, as I see them:



Believing God exists gets you nowhere. What's the point of that? That by itself would do no one any good. God's point isn't to get people to believe in his existence. Even Satan believes God exists.



Trusting in God is what will get you into Heaven. If you try to do it your way, you'll fail. If you half-trust God, but don't actually act on it, you'll be on the right path, but still stuck at the beginning. Only if you trust God to lead you to Heaven will you actually safely arrive there. See, it's God bringing you to Heaven, rather than you getting there yourself.



If you "believe in" God in the same way you "believe in" your best friend--you trust Him and believe everything He says--that is what makes God happy, and will get you to Heaven.

Answer 8

It's Descartes' wager.... not Pascal's.... and all you need to go to heaven according to Christianity is accept Jesus Christ as your savior.... so yeah... it's good enough.

Answer 9

I really don't know by which measurement will God judge in this case, but i guess he will be a lot less strict than with people who wouldn't consider believing in God at all.

Answer 10

If there is a God, he would not be worth worshiping if preferred a dishonest believer (one who believed in God just to make sure) to an honest atheist.

Answer 11

Only way to heaven is if you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.

Answer 12

thats crap

God doesnt want you to believe in him "just in case"

yeah u accept Jesus as ur saviour but thats not where it ends

you can lose your salvation

Answer 13

Do you really think that God couldn't see past that and see through it?

Answer 14

Hold on, let me ask some people.... They're not responding. Let me ask Jebus real quick.... Not responding either. I'll have to get back to you.

Answer 15

Pascal's argument is seriously flawed. The religious environment that Pascal lived in was simple. Belief and disbelief only boiled down to two choices: Roman Catholicism and atheism. With a finite choice, his argument would be sound. But on Pascal's own premise that God is infinitely incomprehensible, then in theory, there would be an infinite number of possible theologies about God, all of which are equally probable.



First, let us look at the more obvious possibilities we know of today - possibilities that were either unknown to, or ignored by, Pascal. In the Calvinistic theological doctrine of predestination, it makes no difference what one chooses to believe since, in the final analysis, who actually gets rewarded is an arbitrary choice of God. Furthermore we know of many more gods of many different religions, all of which have different schemes of rewards and punishments. Given that there are more than 2,500 gods known to man [2], and given Pascal's own assumptions that one cannot comprehend God (or gods), then it follows that, even the best case scenario (i.e. that God exists and that one of the known Gods and theologies happen to be the correct one) the chances of making a successful choice is less than one in 2,500.



Second, Pascal's negative theology does not exclude the possibility that the true God and true theology is not one that is currently known to the world. For instance it is possible to think of a God who rewards, say, only those who purposely step on sidewalk cracks. This sounds absurd, but given the premise that we cannot understand God, this possible theology cannot be dismissed. In such a case, the choice of what God to believe would be irrelevant as one would be rewarded on a premise totally distinct from what one actually believes. Furthermore as many atheist philosophers have pointed out, it is also possible to conceive of a deity who rewards intellectual honesty, a God who rewards atheists with eternal bliss simply because they dared to follow where the evidence leads - that given the available evidence, no God exists! Finally we should also note that given Pascal's premise, it is possible to conceive of a God who is evil and who punishes the good and rewards the evil. [3]



Thus Pascal's call for us not to consider the evidence but to simply believe on prudential grounds fails. As the atheist philosopher, J.L. Mackie wrote:



Once the full range of such possibilities is taken into account, Pascal's argument from comparative expectations falls to the ground. The cultivation of non-rational belief is not even practically reasonable. [4]



This is a call for the rejection of Pascal's wager. A call for all of us to use our reason to decide whether the central claims of Christianity are true or false. It is also a reminder that our choices have a moral dimension that cannot be ignored.



We have seen that many important details about Jesus' life given in the gospels are either false or historically suspect. And we will examine Christian Theology as it is and show that it is a confused irrational system. The balance of evidence, far from being inconclusive, shows that the major teachings and claims of Christianity are false. These parts show that one of the main assumptions of Pascal's wager, that we cannot know the truth or falsity or religious claims and are thus forced to make a wager, is false.



As we have mentioned above, there is a moral dimension to Pascal's wager. We have seen Christianity, in all its forms - Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox, Protestantism and the Fringe Churches - has inflicted tremendous harm on civilization. When one makes a wager to believe, then one becomes morally responsible for the propagation of suffering that Christianity have been bringing and will continue to bring upon the world.



The Roman Catholic Church continues its horrible track record of bringing misery to its followers and to non-Catholics. It's illogical stance on contraception leads to millions of unwanted pregnancies and, indirectly, to many thousands maternal and infant deaths. It also means that poor third world countries with Catholic majorities, such as the Philippines and Brazil, continue to be burdened by overpopulation, poverty, hunger and disease. It is widely recognized that the opposition of the Catholic Church to the use of condoms in the fight against HIV/AIDS is at least partially responsible for the high rate of new infections in Africa and elsewhere. Its irrational position on this has led to the pronouncement that if a husband infected with HIV/AIDS wants a normal conjugal relationship with his wife, he should do so without a condom. Life takes a back seat to theological nonsense. The moribund structure of the Church also allows for the horrendously high number of sex abuse committed by its clergy on innocent young Catholics. The recently departed pope, John Paul II bears a huge responsibility for this continuing infliction of suffering on humankind.



The Fundamentalist Protestant churches inflict their own brand of horror on the world. With scientific creationism and intelligent design creationism, they are trying to bring science, and the world, back into the dark ages where faith and ignorance reign supreme. The fundamental irrationalism of this branch of Christianity has meant that many of the flock have been fleeced by TV evangelists, some of whose have sexual escapades comparable to the infamous Pope Alexander VI. This irrationalism breeds belief in the efficacy of faith healing to the detriment, and death, of many. Needless to say, fundamentalism breeds intolerance.



The fundamentalists have joined forces with the Catholic Church in their absolutist opposition to abortion, leading the current fundamentalist leaning U.S. government to withhold funds from organizations that aid poor women in third world countries. It has been estimated that almost 5,000 women needlessly die each year due to this misnamed "culture of life" policy.



This moral responsibility for all these also partially falls on the so-called liberal Christians. While this group of Christians may do little harm directly, they provide the raw material (in "lukewarm" believers who are already positively disposed towards Christianity) from which fundamentalism builds itself. Furthermore by putting a "respectable" veneer on religious discourse, they prevent a much needed and long overdue logical, philosophical and scientific demolition of religious claims - since to even attempt to question religion per se is considered politically incorrect. As Sam Harris rightly noted in his book The End of Faith:



Religious moderates are, in a large part, responsible for the religious conflict in our world, because their beliefs provide the context in which scriptural literalism and religious violence can never be adequately opposed.[5]



It is time for liberal Christians to think through their belief system, whether applying words which lose all sense of their normal meaning just to keep some semblance of the religious life, is really worth the harm they indirectly help inflict on the world.



Furthermore amidst all this proven negative effects of Christianity, it is hard to see if there is much good that comes out of it. Some believers have tried to argue that Christians lead healthier lives than non-Christians, but the studies cited have been shown to be seriously flawed. Furthermore it is debatable whether Christianity actually makes a person moral. History seems to tell us otherwise. Many of the popes throughout history had been morally deficient human beings; so too were many of the church fathers, Protestant reformers and some modern evangelical preachers. For they preached intolerance and hate and sometimes actively encouraged the torture and murders of innocent people. Indeed recent sociological studies have shown that there is a negative correlation between religiosity and morality.



The world today, perhaps more than ever, is in need of our undivided, moral and rational, attention. The problems of the world, both natural and man-made are many: famine, floods, the greenhouse effect, the ozone hole and the irreversible extinction of countless species of plants and animals. The only chance the world has is for humankind to understand that this world is all we have, there is no other, no afterlife. Only we can solve the world's problems. The solutions for the problems of the world and for life in general are not to be found in Christianity. Christianity, in fact, is part of the problem.



On both intellectual and moral grounds the only course for a person to take is the rejection of Pascal's wager.

Answer 16

no