James And Pascal's Argument Analysis

James and Pascal’s defences of faith in some of their most famous arguments, specifically Pascal’s, devalue faith by making faith selfish, providing an obvious out to faith, and making the decision of faith into a gamble, oddly, his devaluation of faith does not hurt his argument, it makes it easier to convince the skeptics. To prove that Pascal’s argument devalues faith and to understand why it doesn’t negatively affect his argument, it’s necessary to understand the whole argument. His argument can be split into quite a few premises. He starts with the possibility of God, which is the main idea of his argument. Basically, it’s possible that God does exists, and it’s also possible that God does not exist, something nearly everyone agrees on. Next, if one has faith in God and God does exist, they will be infinitely rewarded. If they do believe, and he does not exist they lose nothing. Thirdly, if one does not believe in God and God does exist they will be punished for not believing. In simple terms, believe in God because you have nothing to lose if you do, but if you don’t you could have everything to lose. Ultimately saying it’s the most …show more content…
To put an escape route into perspective an example would be a quiz that isn’t graded. The chances that a student wouldn’t try would be much higher than if it was graded. It doesn’t put the desire into doing well or in this case it doesn’t accurately portray faith and what it takes to have faith. One of the premises of his argument is that if you believe in God and God is not real you do not lose. This doesn’t promote true faith or the true belief and confidence in God. To fully value faith, he would argue without hesitation or without this escape route that one hundred percent God is real. That isn’t saying that faith cannot be lost or broken when new evidence arises, just that if you have faith that is what you believe