Analyzing Pascal's Wager Argument

Pascal's wager argument uses religious belief as a possible solution to an individual's personal benefits. Pascal argues more specifically how the advantage of believing in God greatly outweighs the effectiveness of not believing in God. Therefore, giving each individual good reasoning to believe in God. There are two explanations of reasoning for belief, or reasoning in order to execute some type of action. The first kind is prudential reason, this reasoning is used to persuade that you are better off believing something, rather than not believing it. An example proposes that it is a prudential reason to believe that god exist if believing the existence of god would have the greatest benefits and leave you with little to lose. The second kind of reasoning is evidential reason, which is surrounded by the truth. An …show more content…
Second, is you believe in god and god does not exist, the time spent on believing is wasted but the result isn't terrible. Third, says that you don't believe in god but god actually does exist, Pascal says then you would suffer from an eternal punishment. Last, proposes that you don't believe in god and god does not exist, then you would not gain or lose any benefits from this outcome. Pascal's assumptions to his argument may seem extreme since there are only four outcomes, but I find them somewhat fair. The equation of his argument can be taken and applied to almost anything and still cover the four basic outcomes. Although, there are two criticisms of Pascal's argument, the first refers to the objection philosophers have for treating belief as an action. In other words, they are insisting that an individual cannot decide to believe an idea. Furthermore emphasizing that belief is not and action in which we can control. Perhaps believing in God would make you better off, but that does not automatically force you to believe in that