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Single Idea 7455

[filed under theme 28. God / B. Proving God / 2. Proofs of Reason / d. Pascal's Wager ]

Full Idea

Pascal knows that one cannot decide to believe in God, but he thinks one can act so that one will very probably come to believe in God, by following a life of 'holy water and sacraments'.

Gist of Idea

Pascal knows you can't force belief, but you can make it much more probable

Source

report of Blaise Pascal (Pensées [1662], 418 (233)) by Ian Hacking - The Emergence of Probability Ch.8

Book Ref

Hacking,Ian: 'The Emergence of Probability' [CUP 1975], p.66

A Reaction

This meets the most obvious and simple objection to Pascal's idea, and Pascal may well be right. I'm not sure I could resist belief after ten years in a monastery.

The 15 ideas from Blaise Pascal

6677 Imagination creates beauty, justice and happiness, which is the supreme good [Pascal]
6678 We live for the past or future, and so are never happy in the present [Pascal]
6679 It is not good to be too free [Pascal]
6680 It is a funny sort of justice whose limits are marked by a river [Pascal]
6681 We only want to know things so that we can talk about them [Pascal]
6682 Majority opinion is visible and authoritative, although not very clever [Pascal]
22011 The first principles of truth are not rational, but are known by the heart [Pascal]
6676 Painting makes us admire things of which we do not admire the originals [Pascal]
7457 Pascal is right, but relies on the unsupported claim of a half as the chance of God's existence [Hacking on Pascal]
7455 Pascal knows you can't force belief, but you can make it much more probable [Pascal, by Hacking]
7456 The libertine would lose a life of enjoyable sin if he chose the cloisters [Hacking on Pascal]
6684 If you win the wager on God's existence you win everything, if you lose you lose nothing [Pascal]
6675 The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing [Pascal]
20732 If man considers himself as lost and imprisoned in the universe, he will be terrified [Pascal]
10121 Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor lack of contradiction a sign of truth [Pascal]