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HITS: Pascal’s Wager … perhaps, we should be more righteous.

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One of the few things I remember from Philosophy 101 is Pascal’s Wager.

In a nutshell, it says that God may or may not exist … and we all have the choice to live righteously or sinfully.

Naturally, that creates a 2 X 2 matrix …

If you choose to live on the wild side and God exists … uh oh.

If you choose to live a clean life, you score big if God exists … and don’t have much downside if she doesn’t.

I often find Pascal’s Wager to be a practical decision-making prop.

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This entry was posted on November 29, 2012 at 6:59 am and is filed under Decision-making, HITS, Problem solving. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “HITS: Pascal’s Wager … perhaps, we should be more righteous.”

  1. Chessy Soccoli's avatar Chessy Soccoli Says:
    November 29, 2012 at 11:20 am | Reply

    Be curious to know what religion was Pascal’s wager was based off of….we know Christianity is out because it’s the only religion based not based on the good works of an individual http://www.gotquestions.org/good-person.html

  2. Tags's avatar Tags Says:
    November 29, 2012 at 3:52 pm | Reply

    Blaise Pascal was Roman Catholic. Not sure how you can draw the conclusion that Christianity does not largely factor in good deeds. The book of James is rather explicit on the role of deeds.

    • Gregory Kelleher's avatar Gregory Kelleher Says:
      November 29, 2012 at 11:59 pm | Reply

      it is these 2 critical failings of Pascal’s Wager that I find most instructive: a false dichotomy and
      conflating truth with preference. While the options are mutually exclusive they aren’t exhaustive due to the great variety of (potential() religious beliefs.

      I understood him to be arguing for the truth of the proposition, yet his argument only establishes the relative personal benefit.

      So, perhaps an illustration of the value of imagination and incremental analysis?

  3. Should you send your kids back to school this fall? | The Homa Files Says:
    July 10, 2020 at 10:00 am | Reply

    […] See HITS: Pascal’s Wager … perhaps, we should be more righteous. […]

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