Not Believing In God

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Pascal uses a peculiar format to argue the practical advantage of believing in God outweighs the disadvantage of not believing in God. Some religious believers argue this way of deciding your faith is an insult to true faith because they believe Pascals over simplify true faith into a simple game of poker. Pascal’s Wager states the possible outcome of being a believer in God and the possible outcomes of not believing in God. With the outcome provided from Pascal’s Wager, people can now decide whether to become a believer or not based on the possible outcomes. In this essay, I shall demonstrate the reasons behind agreeing with this claim. Pascal’s Wager is an argument that it is one’s best interest to believe that god exist. In this argument Pascal …show more content…

Believing in god and god do exist, hence the result of infinite rewards, if God cease to exist, then nothing happens. Not believing in god and god do exist, hence the result of infinite punishment or eternal punishment, if god ceases to exist, then nothing happens. Therefore, it is more beneficial to believe in god because the possibility of eternal punishment outweighs any advantages of believing otherwise. Pascal assumes we do not have other validating reasons to decide our faith, therefore we only decide solely based on this wager. In this case the subject being must decide between believing in god and not believing in god with only the results of Pascal’s Wager. But Pascal did not restrict other theory from interfering with this philosophical reasoning, thus decision theory is forced into this reasoning. In this sense of the problem, Pascal is forcing the person to become a believer because based on decision theory, one will pick the option that seems