Pascal's Wager: Does God Exist?

I. Introduction Over the last few thousand years or so, the question of whether God exists or not has been under serious examination. There are only two answers to this question: either you do believe in God’s existence or you don’t. Even if all the evidence in the entire universe leans towards the latter, some people still assume that a supernatural being exists. Blaise Pascal was one of these individuals, and he also believes that regardless of whether it’s probable or not, it’s in your best interest to believe in the existence of God. This idea is called Pascal’s Wager, and it states that although the odds may be against it, the payoff for believing in God is much more fulfilling than not believing. I for one believe that Pascal is irrational …show more content…
In this subsection, I want to mainly focus on the former. Evidential reasoning, as implied, is reasoning based off evidence and facts that prove something is true or false. An example of evidential reasoning is simply stating that there are walls in a classroom. You can prove this by going into a classroom and distinguishing the walls, and no matter how many times you walk into that classroom, there will always be those same walls. Evidential reasoning is reasoning that no matter when or where, the answer will always be either true or …show more content…
Pascal mentions that the only way you could possibly get into heaven if God existed would be if you believed in God’s existence to begin with. However, Sober notes that this is a very big assumption; why would God only send the believers to heaven and the nonbelievers to hell? Pascal is making notions that assume the nature of God for one religious group but not for others. Sober acknowledge other conceptions, like the conception that God sends those who lead a good life to heaven whereas those who commit dishonorable acts to hell. If this is the case, then Pascal’s Wager is entirely