Blaise Pascal's Argumentative Essay

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In his book, ‘Pensées’, Blaise Pascal raises a wager which seeks to prove that it is more rational to believe in God rather than to not believe because you gain more by believing. In this paper, I will provide support to this wager in showing that you acquire a greater reward by believing in God. I will primarily outline Pascal’s Wager, then respond to one criticism raised that attempts to refute premise two (the expected results of belief and disbelief). This criticism states that there are many other gods that the wager does not account for and therefore there are many more possibilities. I will then raise an objection to my response from the view of the “Many God’s Objection”. Pascal’s argument that we should believe in God centers around …show more content…
Suppose Sarah found herself with the choice of either entering door X, Y or Z. The option of entering door X comes with certainty of entering heaven, door Y comes with a one in a million chance of her getting into heaven while the choice of entering door Y gives her no chance of entering heaven and will absolutely result in hell. If Sarah wants to get into heaven, then the rational thing for her to do is to enter the door that gives her the most chance. Even minute probability at infinite success is still better than no chance of success whatsoever. The same goes for Pascal’s Argument when it comes to the different possibilities of gods. The Christian God provides empirical evidence and respective payoffs in which no other god does and therefore has the best probability. Let us refer to the Islam God. The Islam God requires strict devotion to good deeds in order to enter heaven. Allah requires you to go to the mosque, recite a specific verse after prayer, help an orphan, achieve concentration and humility in prayer, maintain prayers on time, and ultimately requires for your good deeds to outweigh your bad For the Islam God, Heaven in attained by living by the strict principles laid out by God. However, for the Christian God, Heaven is attained through believing and having a relationship with God. The Christian God does not require any of these specific tasks in order to enter

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