Criticisms of Pascal

One of the most obvious objections to the Wager is based on the nature of belief. Can we "will" to believe a proposition? Even if belief in a specific proposition has a tremendous payoff, will the payoff force me to believe sincerely in the proposition? For example, if I offered you a million dollars to believe in the proposition "the law of gravity no longer applies to me" could you "will" yourself to believe the proposition? You might act as if you really believed it but would you really believe that the law of gravity no longer applies to you?

Intellectualists deny the statement that believing and disbelieving are choices that are up to us to make. They say it's impossible to adopt a belief simply because we decide to. If I offered to pay you $1000 for believing the sky is green, for instance, could you sincerely adopt this belief simply by wishing to? Evidently not. Therefore, some say, Pascal's wager does not give legitimate grounds for believing in God.

It is impossible for us to believe in whatever we want. We can't simply decide to believe something. We can't decide to believe that an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God exists. We need to be believed it is true before we can believe it, but Pascal's wager provides no evidence whatsoever to convince us that God does exist. It only tells us that as a gambler we would be well-advised to bring ourselves to believe this to be so.

Pascal had a solution to this problem of how to make ourselves believe that God exists if this goes against our feelings on the matter. Although we cannot adopt a belief simply by deciding to,we can act as if we already believed that God existed.

The same is true for other actions. For instance, we cannot go to school simply by deciding to; rather, we have to wake up by a certain time (which may mean first developing a certain kind of habit), we must get dressed, we must put one foot in front of another, etc. Then if we are lucky we will end up at our destination, though this is far from guaranteed. Likewise for any other endeavor in life: one chooses to become a doctor, or to marry by age 30, or to live in the tropics -- the attainment of such goals can be facilitated, though not purely willed, by appropriate micro-steps that are more nearly under voluntary control. Indeed, even twitching your little finger is not entirely a matter of volition, as its success depends on a functioning neural system running from your brain, through your spine, and down your arm. Your minutest action is a joint product of internal volition and external contingencies. The same applies to theistic belief: although you cannot simply decide to be a theist, you can choose to read one-sided literature, you can choose to join a highly religious community, you can try to induce mystical experiences by ingesting LSD, and you can choose to chant and pray. No mere exercise of will can guarantee that you will end up believing in God, but neither can any exercise of will guarantee that you succeed in doing anything else you decide to do. If there is a difference between our ability to voluntarily believe something and our ability to voluntarily wiggle our toe, it is a difference in degree of likely success, and not a difference in logical kind.

Yet a difference in degree may be significant, and it is worth noting that theists and atheists may disagree on the power of prayer to change one's beliefs. Theists generally think that prayer tends to bring one into contact with God, in which case one is likely to notice, recognize, and believe in God's existence. Atheists, on the other hand, have no particular reason to think that mere praying should notably effect conversion. An agnostic would do well then to try; for it would be precisely in the case where success matters that trying is likely to be most efficacious.

Go to Moral Objection

Reference:

1. http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/p/pasc-wag.htm#The%20Intellectualist%20Objection:%20Is%20Belief%20a%20Matter%20of%20Choice?

2. N.Warburton, Philosophy: the basics,( London, Routledge,1999).P31-33

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws