Pascal's Wager: Will you play?

When it comes to proving the existence of God, Pascal's Wager is the philosophical equivalent of Chanel ear loops or Cartier wristwatches : absolutely stunning in its rationality, yes, but ultimately useless.

In essence, Pascal's Wager states the following: according to probability, one's chances of happiness are greater if one is religious. Therefore, the logical thing to do is to become religious. Pascal posits that there are four possible outcomes which can occur with religious belief (or lack thereof). These are nicely summarised below:

	God Exists	God does not Exist
Belief	Eternal bliss	Finite suffering
Disbelief	Eternal suffering	Finite happiness

So--even if the probability that God exists is infinitesimally small, the logical course of action would still be to remain steadfastly devout. Yes, the odds for his existence are poor, but the potential gain is infinite-- after all, no Earthly pleasure could ever match the eternal bliss one finds in heaven. On the other hand, if it turns out that God does exist, and you, in your foolish atheistic ways, haven't bothered with your Amens, you're going to be sodomised by Satan for eternity. Furthermore, if it turns out that God did not exist when you believed in him, the consequences are not as damning-- after all, a lifetime of some suffering is relatively better than an eternity of torture. Hence, the best option, probabilistically speaking, is to believe in God.

You may be beginning to see why Pascal's Wager is like a fine piece of jewellery: in a remarkable feat of elegance, it categorises the problem of religious belief into four simple possibilities. Why, then, declare it useless? Well, it's been proven so. The counterargument is as follows: If you worship God based on the conclusions from the Wager, your belief for him would be inauthentic. God, being omniscient, would see right through your deviousness. After all, if you believe in God based on Pascal's Wager, you don't believe in Him out of your own moral scrupulousness-- you're doing it to maximise your own personal gain. Hence the futility of the Wager.

However, would it not be fun-- and perhaps even useful-- to use Pascal's Wager to model situations where we are blatantly trying to maximise personal happiness? What about, for example, explaining hobbies or personal convictions? Eric Rohmer, the French filmmaker, trod on this philosophical pathway in his revelatory film Ma Nuit Chez Maude. Rohmer manages to translate Pascal's wager into the conflict that plagues modernity: the existential concern. What was once an argument for God becomes a very personalised argument: in the scene below, Vitez retailors the Wager to model his own raison d'etre-- he is quite literally gambling on his life (the relevant bit starts at 1:58). 

In this existential version of the wager, the stakes are different, though just as high: Vitez's entire life meaning clings onto his devotion to politics. Even if he knows there is zero chance that a worldwide Marxist Revolution will occur, he remains a communist to the core because it is the hope of the revolution that lets him continue living. This vested hope (ie: that politics and society have a meaning), like worshipping God, affords him infinite happiness.

From this clip alone, the vagaries of human behaviour suddenly become explainable; countless seemingly irrational decisions are now understandable: Pascal's Wager explains why we attempt to succeed in situations where the odds are so against us; where the chance of a favorable outcome is nil. Pascal's Wager explains why the small-town Midwestern girl to move to Hollywood, even when she knows she has no acting experience; it's what drives naive undergraduates to apply to medical school, despite the 8 percent acceptance. You can hear Pascal's Wager whenever a construction worker whistles lustfully at passing women. You can smell it in the bar of every nightclub; in the boardroom of every corporation; in the sweat of every striving athlete. Our lives are nothing but a perpetual parade of Pascalian situations; games of chance with four meagre categories of possible outcomes.