PHIL 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Blaise Pascal, Agnosticism
15 Nov 2016
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As we saw with anselm, it seems that we cannot rove that god exists. The strategy is to consider belief in god like a game of chance. You try to guess a coin toss. If you guess correctly i give you . If you guess incorrectly, you give me . Add up all values: we now add up the values of each outcome to give us the expected value, the values of each outcome are respectively and - Now your choice can be informed by the expected return. It will be one way or the other. Believe in god or do not believe in god. If god exists, you believe in him, you go to heaven. If god does not exist and yet you believe in him, you lose nothing. If right, you gain all, if wrong, you lose little. If god exists, and yet you do not believe, you go to hell.
