Editing Pascal's wager (section)

=== Misunderstanding of the wager ===

Pascal's intent was not to provide an argument to convince [[atheists]] to believe, but (a) to show the fallacy of attempting to use [[logical reasoning]] to prove or disprove God, and (b) to persuade atheists to sinlessness, as an aid to attaining faith ("it is this which will lessen the passions, which are your stumbling-blocks"). As Laurent Thirouin writes (note that the numbering of the items in the ''Pensees'' is not standardized; Thirouin's 418 is this article's 233):

{{quote|The celebrity of fragment 418 has been established at the price of mutilation. By titling this text "the wager", readers have been fixated only on one part of Pascal's reasoning. It doesn't conclude with a QED at the end of the mathematical part. The unbeliever who had provoked this long analysis to counter his previous objection ("Maybe I bet too much") is still not ready to join the apologist on the side of faith. He put forward two new objections, undermining the foundations of the wager: the impossibility to know, and the obligation of playing.<ref>Laurent Thirouin, Le hasard et les règles, le modèle du jeu dans la pensée de Pascal, Vrin, Paris 1991, p.170</ref>}}

To be put at the beginning of Pascal's planned book, the wager was meant to show that logical reasoning cannot support faith or lack thereof:

{{quote|We have to accept reality and accept the reaction of the libertine when he rejects arguments he is unable to counter. The conclusion is evident: if men believe or refuse to believe, it is not how some believers sometimes say and most unbelievers claim because their own reason justifies the position they have adopted. Belief in God doesn't depend upon rational evidence, no matter which position.<ref>Laurent Thirouin, Le hasard et les règles, le modèle du jeu dans la pensée de Pascal, Vrin, Paris 1991, p.176</ref>}}

[[Frederick Copleston]] writes that Pascal did not intend the wager as proof of God's existence or even a substitute for such proofs. He argues that the wager must be understood in the context of Pascal addressing the wager to those who "though they are also unconvinced by the arguments of sceptics and atheists" also "remain in a state of suspended judgment". Pascal's aim was to prepare "their minds and the production of dispositions favourable to belief".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Copleston |first1=Frederick |title=A History of Philosophy - Volume IV |date=1994 |publisher=Image Books |pages=169}}</ref>