Editing Pascal's wager (section)

=== Failure to prove the existence of God ===

[[Voltaire]] (another prominent French writer of the [[age of Enlightenment]]), a generation after Pascal, regarded the idea of the wager as a "proof of God" as "indecent and childish", adding, "the interest I have to believe a thing is no proof that such a thing exists".<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.voltaire-integral.com/Html/22/07_Pascal.html|title=Remarques (Premiéres) sur les Pensées de Pascal|last=Voltaire|author-link=Voltaire|year=1728|website=Oeuvres Complétes de Voltaire|series=Mélanges I|language=fr|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120418162422/http://www.voltaire-integral.com/Html/22/07_Pascal.html|archive-date=April 18, 2012|url-status=dead|access-date=April 24, 2016}}</ref> Pascal, however, did not advance the wager as a proof of God's existence but rather as a necessary pragmatic decision which is "impossible to avoid" for any living person.<ref name="Durant-Voltaire">{{cite book
  | last = Durant
  | first = Will and Ariel
  | author-link= Will Durant
  | title = The Age of Voltaire
  | url = https://archive.org/details/ageofvoltairevol00dura
  | url-access = registration
  | year = 1965
  | pages = [https://archive.org/details/ageofvoltairevol00dura/page/370 370]
| publisher = Tapei
 }}</ref> He argued that abstaining from making a wager is not an option and that "reason is incapable of divining the truth"; thus, a decision of whether to believe in the existence of God must be made by "considering the consequences of each possibility".

Voltaire's critique concerns not the nature of the Pascalian wager as proof of God's existence, but the contention that the very belief Pascal tried to promote is not convincing. Voltaire hints at the fact that Pascal, as a [[Jansenist]], believed that only a small, and already predestined, portion of humanity would eventually be saved by God.

Voltaire explained that no matter how far someone is tempted with rewards to believe in [[Christian salvation]], the result will be at best a faint belief.{{efn|Vous me promettez l’empire du monde si je crois que vous avez raison: je souhaite alors, de tout mon coeur, que vous ayez raison; mais jusqu’à ce que vous me l’ayez prouvé, je ne puis vous croire. […] J’ai intérêt, sans doute, qu’il y ait un Dieu; mais si dans votre système Dieu n’est venu que pour si peu de personnes; si le petit nombre des élus est si effrayant; si je ne puis rien du tout par moi-même, dites-moi, je vous prie, quel intérêt j’ai à vous croire? N’ai-je pas un intérêt visible à être persuadé du contraire? De quel front osez-vous me montrer un bonheur infini, auquel d’un million d’hommes un seul à peine a droit d’aspirer?{{cq|date=July 2024}} [You promise me the empire of the world if I believe you are right: I then hope, with all my heart, that you are right; but until you prove it to me, I cannot believe you. […] It is in my interest, no doubt, that there is a God; but if in your system God only came for so few people; if the number of the elect is so frighteningly small; if I can do nothing at all for myself, please tell me, what interest do I have in believing you? Don’t I have a visible interest in being convinced otherwise? How dare you show me an infinite happiness, to which barely one in a million men can aspire?]}}  Pascal, in his ''Pensées'', agrees with this, not stating that people can choose to believe (and therefore make a safe wager), but rather that some cannot believe.

As [[Étienne Souriau]] explained, in order to accept Pascal's argument, the bettor needs to be certain that God seriously intends to honour the bet; he says that the wager assumes that God also accepts the bet, which is not proved; Pascal's bettor is here like the fool who seeing a leaf floating on a river's waters and quivering at some point, for a few seconds, between the two sides of a stone, says: "I bet a million with Rothschild that it takes finally the left path." And, effectively, the leaf passed on the left side of the stone, but unfortunately for the fool Rothschild never said "I [will take that] bet".<ref>À vrai dire le célèbre pari de Pascal, ou plutôt le pari que Pascal propose au libertin n'est pas une option désintéressée mais un pari de joueur. Si le libertin joue «croix», parie que Dieu existe, il gagne (si Dieu existe) la vie éternelle et la béatitude infinie, et risque seulement de perdre les misérables plaisirs de sa vie actuelle. Cette mise ne compte pas au regard du gain possible qui est infini. Seulement, l'argument suppose que Dieu accepte le pari, que Dieu dit «je tiens». Sans quoi, nous dit Souriau, le libertin « est comme ce fou : il voit une feuille au fil de l'eau, hésiter entre deux côtés d'un caillou. Il dit : «je parie un million avec Rothschild qu'elle passera à droite». La feuille passe à droite et le fou dit : «j'ai gagné un million». Où est sa folie? Ce n'est pas que le million n'existe pas, c'est que Rothschild n'a pas dit : «je tiens». ». (Cf. l'admirable analyse du pari de Pascal in Souriau, L'ombre de Dieu, p. 47 sq.) – La Philosophie, Tome 2 (La Connaissance), [[Denis Huisman]], André Vergez, Marabout 1994, pp. 462–63</ref>