My namesake is also known for Pascal’s wager, a pragmatic or decision theory-based approach to faith– resolving that it is better to have faith in God because if you don’t and God does, indeed, exist, you would have considerable downside in being wrong.

From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

“Pascal’s Wager” is the name given to an argument due to Blaise Pascal for believing, or for at least taking steps to believe, in God. The name is somewhat misleading, for in a single paragraph of his Pensées, Pascal apparently presents at least three such arguments, each of which might be called a ‘wager’ — it is only the final of these that is traditionally referred to as "Pascal’s Wager". We find in it the extraordinary confluence of several important strands of thought: the justification of theism; probability theory and decision theory, used here for almost the first time in history; pragmatism; voluntarism (the thesis that belief is a matter of the will); and the use of the concept of infinity.

Related posts:

1. Dialogue on Irshad Manji and Project Ijtihad in ‘On Faith’
2. Einstein on Orthodoxy, Judaism, and Faith
3. Kissinger Eulogizes William F. Buckley and Comments on Knowledge and Faith
4. Einstein, the Conservation of Matter and Energy, and Heaven and Hell– a Stretch or Not?
5. Fighting the Anti-Israel Academic Boycott With an Inter-Faith Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 2nd, 2008 at 8:35 pm and is filed under Interfaith Education, Religion, Religious Pluralism, Spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.