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Pascal's Waager Rhetorical Analysis

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Argument Against the Argument of Pascal’s Wager In Pascal’s Wager, Pascal pioneered new thoughts and opinions amongst his peers in probability theories by attempting to justify that believing in God is advantageous to one’s personal interest. In this paper, I will argue that Pascal’s argument rationalizing why one should believe in God fails and I will suggest that even if one was to accept Pascal’s wager theory, this will not be a suffice resolution to reap the rewards that God has promised to Christian believers like myself who has chosen to believe in God due to my early childhood teachings, familial and inherited beliefs. Pascal offers a logical reason for believing in God: just as the hypothesis that God's existence is improbable, the …show more content…

Christians are devout believers in one God, the Bible and Heaven and Hell. We believe in God’s omniscience and omnipotence (all-powerful). Therefore, being a Christian myself, I believe that anyone claiming to believe in God when in fact they don’t are no different than an atheist because they are only saying they are believers in hopes of gaining a reward. I find this philosophical theory interesting because I have never heard of betting on God’s existence by pretending to believe in him. Oftentimes people like myself are taught about God and Christianity at an early age in life. Likewise, I was taught about God before I even began attending school. My entire family, including my ancestors practiced the Christian religion. My brother is currently a Pastor at his own church that my children and I attend weekly. It’s difficult for me to change my beliefs after being raised around nothing but believers and taught that through faith, Christians know that God exists. It was interesting to learn of different reasons that others have for believing or nor believing in God. All in all, after examining the arguments that have been put forward against Pascal’s Wager, the wager fails to provide acceptable reasons as to why claiming to believe in God will be beneficial to those who are believing in God

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He introduces the idea with a game, a simple wager of " heads or tails". However, in his game, one side of the coin represents the belief that God exist, while the other means that God does not exist. What we bet on in Pascal's Wager is also more than your ordinary school yard gamble with higher stake. In this wager, betting our entire lives, as well as the infinite beyond which we live on this

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Politicians call for missile defense projects. Many defense projects have failed and cost not only the government but taxpayers over 50 billion dollars. Lee Fang, a writer for The Intercept, shows how ineffective these programs have been in the past. The persuasiveness of Lee's argument in his article “Politicians Use North Korea H-Bomb Fears to Pitch Wasteful Missile Defense Projects” is based on a logical approach using facts, (logos), an emotion approach trying to rally us up (pathos), and on his credibility and the creditability of his sources (ethos). Lee's appeal to our logical (logos) side is based on facts.

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Past leaders such as Andrew Jackson, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Marc Antony are evidence that society does not reward morality and good character in leadership. Society is drawn to leaders that have good rhetoric, propaganda, and charismatic personalities, and society supports them despite their immorality. Society is concerned about stability more than the morality of their leaders and will support immoral leaders in times of crisis to provide stability. In history there have been multiple leaders that have used rhetoric, propaganda and charismatic personalities to gain power, despite their morals.

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For my final project of the semester, Project 4, I decided to revise my rhetorical analysis of project 2. I took your comments and feedback very solemnly, to avail further my inditement. I understood the feedback consummately, and optically discerned precisely what I needed to do. The main thing I wanted to fixate on was understanding that the paper was filled with many conceptions, and constructing it down to precise conceptions, and expounding them exhaustively. I abstracted some conceptions that I believe that weren’t apart of the process of explicating the argument or how it works.

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1. How does Clark defend belief from Clifford? Clark defends against W.K. Clifford's claim that it is wrong to believe anything on the basis of inadequate evidence, and that belief in God without evidence or argument is nevertheless rational. He also concludes that theistic arguments are redundant to understanding God because God would not put the obstacle of difficult thinking between people and Himself. 2.

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When I was 4, I loved playing soccer. My dad used to give me trophies for being good at scoring. As I was scored the goal, there was a photo group taking pictures of me, which were my parents and friends. Sometimes I wonder “Did I really deserve the trophies for just trying”?

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Pascal makes the argument for the belief in God through the use of Decision Theory. He states that there are two options of belief and two possible realities, creating the four combinations: you believe in God and God exists, you believe in God and God doesn’t exist, you don’t believe in God and God exists, and you don’t believe in God and God doesn’t exist. Next Pascal assigns predicted measures of gain or lose for each combination, as if it is proven true. Here he reasons that If a person truly believed in God and God does exist, they will be rewarded infinitely, furthermore he says that if they believe and God doesn’t exist they lose nothing On the Other hand he says that a person doesn 't believe in God and God exists they stand to lose, and if they don’t believe and God doesn’t exist they neither lose nor gain. Through these predicted measures of gain and lose Pascal proves that choosing to believe is not only the most appealing option but the only rational choice.

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13. Explain and evaluate Pascal’s Wager. Would belief based on such an argument get you into heaven? - When reviewing Pascal Wagner’s theory one could say that it does not guarantee you heaven. According to what I read, it stated that there are a lot of different religions and within those religions they have specific beliefs to follow to be part of their religion.

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Reading and writing reflection Reading and writing has had one of the greatest roles in my life,and has made me the person I am today. If I was not able to read or write,my life would be very difficult,school would be very Challenging ,and I would not be able to figure out anything out by myself and for myself. Although I love to read and write,writing not as much,I find some parts very difficult to fully understand. Fully analyzing the text is something i always have trouble with. When I am asked to analyze texts and find rhetorical appeals,I sometimes struggle because I don’t fully understand the story and I do not fully understand some appeals,such as ethos.

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Arguing for the existence of God from a philosophical perspective would need a more solidifying use of reason instead of evidence based logic. Because when trying to qualify your main thesis within an argument using evidence based logic and reasoning would aid in establishing credibility with your audience. So in Pascal's "The Wager" it utilizes argument theory of deductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning or theory is similar to cause and effect inference, an example could be if you drop a ball it will hit the ground. However deductive theory validates the end result through the consequence of the action.

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Pascal’s wager states that believing in God will either lead to infinite gain or finite loss while disbelief leads to infinite loss and finite gain depending on where God exists or not. It is not a way of proving if God exists but to say that believing in God has more benefits than disbelief in God. I don’t believe that the it is that simple with many different factors affecting the gain and loss. The wager itself is made with the idea of the christian God but there are so many religions out there with different beliefs and even different amounts of gods.

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Introduction: Professors Richard Dawkins and John Lennox go head to head in a battle to match their superior intellect. The debate was titled “Has Science Buried God?” Lennox also announced his new book “Gods Undertaker”. The John Lennox - Richard Dawkins Debate - bethinking.org. 2015

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Blaise Paschal was a French mathematician and philosopher who building an argument on why one should believe in God, it is named Paschal’s Wager. According to Paschal’s Wager, it is better to have a belief in God than not believing in Him. God is known for punishing those who go against or do not believe in Him. Therefore, Paschal stated you should believe in God because after death you can be rewarded with an eternity in heaven. However, if you do not believe in God and he does exist you will be damned to the eternal suffering that is brought by hell.

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