Philosophy Now Forum

Pascal (1670) argued that life without God is meaningless and miserable. When people are confronted with their own emptiness, they create obstacles to overcome, attempting to escape boredom. These token victories are merely diversions that distract from spiritual poverty and the recognition that one day they will die.

According to Pascal, this awareness of mortal reality is a strong reason not to be atheistic. He famously presented his “wager”, where the believer has everything to gain and nothing to lose by placing hope in God, while the unbeliever has nothing to gain and everything to lose by denying God.

What are your thoughts on this?

It would depend on the God.

Yahweh is supposed to create all us living souls perfect, as befits a God.

As to atheists.
Who can blame them for rejecting the Gods on offer. The Trinity is especially evil.

abdullah masud wrote: ↑Tue Nov 11, 2025 2:18 pm According to Pascal, this awareness of mortal reality is a strong reason not to be atheistic. He famously presented his “wager”, where the believer has everything to gain and nothing to lose by placing hope in God, while the unbeliever has nothing to gain and everything to lose by denying God.

What are your thoughts on this?

What I personally think is that we are all (each and every one of us) God's literal offspring (children/progeny), and as such we have each been imbued with the exact same potential and eternal purpose as God (our Ultimate Parent).

In which case, it doesn't matter what any human "believes" during their momentary "gestation period" here in the temporary (low conscious) darkness of God's "cosmic womb" (this universe).

And that's because our ultimate form (the same form as God) and eternal destiny...

(a form and destiny that will be absolutely equal and perfect for everyone)

...have already been pre-established for us and will be fully revealed to us after we have each experienced our second and final birth via the process we call death.

The bottom line is that just as your eternal destiny is not dependent on what religion you may have held to be true while on Earth, likewise, it doesn't matter one way or the other how you feel about Pascal's "wager."
_______

It can convince only until one discovers the theory of the Eternal Return (Recurrence). Pascal's Wager's becomes poison after that point. Spiritual suicide.

abdullah masud wrote: ↑Tue Nov 11, 2025 2:18 pm Pascal (1670) argued that life without God is meaningless and miserable. When people are confronted with their own emptiness, they create obstacles to overcome, attempting to escape boredom. These token victories are merely diversions that distract from spiritual poverty and the recognition that one day they will die.

According to Pascal, this awareness of mortal reality is a strong reason not to be atheistic. He famously presented his “wager”, where the believer has everything to gain and nothing to lose by placing hope in God, while the unbeliever has nothing to gain and everything to lose by denying God.

What are your thoughts on this?

It is said,
"There are no atheists in foxholes"
which is in a way is true and many atheists [not all] has turned theists in wars.

The very world famous atheist, Anthony Flew, turned to God as a deists during when he got older and such an event common among older people is suggest by research:
Belief in God rises with age, even in atheist nations
https://news.uchicago.edu/story/belief- ... st-nations
I won't be surprised if Richard Dawkins [and other atheists] turned to God as he got more older and his inhibitors atrophized.

But people like Pascal and those who converted to theism do not have the ability to think deep and wide rationally, objectively and philosophically.

In the manner humans has evolved with plus self-awareness, an awareness of mortality triggers the most fundamental and terrible primal pains [sufferings] any human could ever experience.
Fortunately all humans [normal] are also programmed with inhibitors to suppress the above unavoidable existential pains so there would not be a paralysis due to primal existential fears.
But the inhibitors are not super perfect and thus there are weakness and cracks that generate uncomfortable dreadful existential angst that need to be soothed.

Fortunately, humans has a balm, i.e. religions and gods provide immediate relief to the existential pains; just submit and believe, Viola! one is immediately saved with a promised of assured continuity of life in paradise. This is why the majority 90% of humans are theists, deists, pantheists, etc. or into non-theistic religions.

Those who are not theists resort to secular means, pain killers, opioids, hallucinogens, perversions, addictions to relieve the unavoidable existential pains.

However, non-theists who can think wider and deeper attempt to understand the full mechanism how the existential crisis arise that turned humans to God, gods, drugs, pain-killers etc. with is evil consequences which at present the trade-off is in favor of theism.

Rationally, there is a neural mechanism in the brain that enable the above actions and consequences.
Once we can chart the full mechanisms we can take more effective steps other than rely on a God which can lead to other consequence of god-related evil, e.g. 67,000 Islamic attacks since 1979 and a 1400 trail of terror and evil. Also we can understand why humans turned to pain-killers [fentanyl], and other perversions.

Non-theistic religions like Buddhism had intuitive knowledge of the above mechanisms and they promote the methodology of mindfulness to modulate the primal existential fears.

Humanity must take steps to understand the neural mechanism of theism and secular evils so that objective fool proof secular methodology and practices [no potential evil] can be adopted to modulate to minimize the impact of the leaking existential angst.

Pascal never trained in philosophy or theology. Being, trained in language and mathematics. Believing, human choices are the desires of each individual. Relying, on personal choice about the supernatural. Religious faith is a genuine, pure gift from God [a radical theological position]. Pascal's Wager is a pragmatic approach, a should or should not exist approach. Should in Latin is exhorting and encouraging, not pointing out which is the indicative mood. The pick is long-term, there is not a reason to pick one over the other [this does not apply to the atheist or agnostic]. Notes from my undergraduate paper on Blaise Pascal's Wager. By the way, the languages taught to him by his father were Greek and Latin. The probability as it applies to religion.

Pascal's Wager might make some sense if most theists didn't care which god or gods folks believed in, as long as they believed in the concept of gods. Alas, most religions reject all other gods as False Idols, thus the retort to Pascal (and his Wager) is: which god? Of the 18,000 humans have invented, your chance of winning the Wager is way, way less than 1%.

Wait, i gotta revise that Pascal contra ER bit. Only if somehow a recurring life could feel the compiled effect of all the past failed lives, the lives in which every time Joe said "no" and not "yes!" and let something get over on em... only if Joe could remember and feel again the aggregate effect of those, would there be any sense of emergency in amor fati.

So unless i could argue that this monster universe that repeats itself again and again with every gruesome detail is offensive enough in principle alone and need not be experienced a posteriori to conclude that one should not ever want to see it, want it or allow it to happen, i really have nothing solid for or against the ER. It just very well may be the case that we are involved in a godless, timeless circle of fixed events. What would look like a single marble turning on its axis to a god's eye view. An incredibly simple and possible thing, not unimaginable at all. A lump of energy breathing in a void or something. In and out. Over and over. Wtf, man.

Pascal may, in fact, win this one only because of this point; it wouldn't matter if you "lived like you would live if you had to live over and over again and there were no rules other than your own and those that are stronger than you" if each time you live your mind is wiped... you, like us here now, sense the possibility of an ER but can't know it's actually true. Wtf, man.

... so there's no experienced loss or gain in placing the ER wager whereas the Pascal wager gets you consolation even if that consolation is imaginary, you're wrong, there is no god and you lost the bet. None of that would matter if you don't exist to experience it, which is P's point. What's to lose? Fuckin A.