Blaise Pascal: Pensees
(Turnell Translation, Harvill Press, 1962)
Pascal had through his short life two rather distinct occupations: that of perversely brilliant young mathematician, and then that of irascible religious apologist. He is also known to history for two distinct ideas, one corresponding to each of his creative phases. Pascal the mathematician brought to common knowledge a triangle used for counting (fine, among many other things): Pascal the religious man brought forth an argument for God. Given that my focus is on the Pensees, and that I don't at all like math, I will look into the latter. Besides, there's not much I'd want to say about the triangle besides, "It counts and stuff."
When I see Pascal's Wager these days it is usually when someone calls it out in another's argument in order to trash it. The way it's seen basically goes like this: You can either believe in God or not. If you do, and you are wrong, nothing happens. If you do, and you are right, you go to Paradise. If you don't, and you are wrong, you go to hell. If you don't, and you are right, nothing happens. Thus it seems to be common sense to accept God and have a chance at salvation rather than not and have a chance of damnation.
Pascal's actual argument is like this in a very general way, but the direction he is actually going is much different. To understand what Pascal wanted to do, one should know what Pascal's actual goals are. The first question to perhaps be asked is, "Why does a mathematician, and a great one at that, using such a weird and intellectually dishonest method of argument?" The answer is that Pascal did not see reason as capable of understanding everything about faith: "It is the heart which is aware of God and not reason. That is what faith is: God perceived intuitively by the heart, not by reason." (p. 163) One will not reason purely to God; one must believe in it. "Faith is a gift of God; do not imagine that we are saying that it is the fruit of reasoning." (p. 210) Thus one must incline the hearts of others towards God in order for them to be able to see the truth of religion: "[H]e has given signs of himself which are visible to those who seek him, and not to those who do not seek him." (p. 194) Seek, and ye shall find. If one looks at the world and sees nothing but a clockwork set up by evolutionary necessity, or a mass of chaos where the appearance of order is illusory, and that is one's starting point, God will not be seen. Signs of his creation are everywhere, but one has to be looking for them. I call this bias and frown upon it.
Pascal's response to claims of bias would be that this bias is the bias that makes more sense than being reasonable in any sense. For him faith in God is part of a solution to the essential human problem. What is the essential human problem, according to Pascal? Everything, absolutely everything.
Life to Pascal is utter misery. Looked at simply as-is, without a concept of God or the supernatural, it is the ultimate exercise in futility. We are never given a goal by nature; the world itself doesn't tell us what we are meant to do. And we are apparently no better at finding a goal for ourselves. Pascal spends a good deal of time attacking the problem of 'diversion', a concept we will be seeing much more of later when I start getting into the existentialists. Lacking a purpose, human beings do everything they can to distract themselves. We talk about others or take up hobbies or work work work in order to force out of our minds the world as it really is, painful. "[W]e hate the truth and people hide it from us; we want to be flattered, and people flatter us; we want to be deceived, and people deceive us." (p. 136) That is not to say that any of this actually works, of course. Temporary distractions are just that, temporary. In the end we return back to the world, and in the very end we die, with the result being either bad or worse.
While most people try to hide this fact, it is Christianity that brings it to the light.
Through the image of the Fall, Christianity describes everything there is to say about the situation of man. First, that he has the potential to be great. Men can bring about happiness in others and themselves. They can be heroes. Men are capable of building great things both in the physical and mental realms. However, the Fall sets man so high only to knock him down that much further. Man brings nothing but misery. His life is empty on its own, incomplete, unfulfilled. His contact with others is a best deception and worse misery. The only way to deal with himself is through dishonesty and distraction, which he excels at, though not enough to heal immortal wounds. It is only in Christianity that Pascal finds this image of man so perfectly presented.
Man is thus lost, a hole seeking to be filled. Man needs a God to complete him. The stakes are as high as is possible, for it is eternity that is at stake. "Nothing is of more importance to man than his state, nothing is so redoubtable to him as eternity. And so the fact that there are men who are indifferent to the loss of their life and to the peril of an eternity of unhappiness is not natural." (p. 106) We should be seeking nothing else but a way to know the state of our souls and a way to save them. The only way to do this is through God.
The only way we can find happiness is through something far beyond ourselves. The only way to realize our own capabilities for greatness is to find that which gave us that potential. In other words, saving man requires finding God. This is the disposition that man should be having. It's not bias either, according to Pascal, since the natural state of man without God makes the search for him a part of common sense, an essential part of humanity. And into this comes the wager.
This is the wager. There are fallacies within it, of course, one being that the wager is not 50-50, since the argument is only about God's existence, and makes no guarantees of salvation. This is effectively countered by the stakes, however; winning eternal bliss makes any odds good. The second counter is that it is possible that choosing God could lead to negative consequences; perhaps some spirits will torture us for being intellectually dishonest.
There may be more issues, but my point isn't to attack the wager, but to understand it. And it must be known: this is not a proof of God. Religion questions are never concluded with certainty: "If it were unnecessary to do anything except when dealing with certainties, we should do nothing for religion because it is not a certainty." (p. 205) The wager only inclines one towards God, causes one to seek him out. And recall, one who seeks will find. Then we will see the proofs themselves. Pascal focuses primarily on miracles, and in the area of miracles the prophecies especially. But then again, he also says some interesting things, like that the Jews are the oldest people in the world (p. 270) and that Moses taught the doctrine of the Trinity (p. 285). The point here is that, once one is looking for God and sees the necessity of God, one will see God as he has presented himself in the world, through the truths of the Bible and the words and acts of men. And so the wager is a part of a program who's goal is to shift one's view from the world to meaning in the world and, through that, the need of God in the world. I still call it bias, but that's not to say Pascal doesn't make us stop and think just what we are in the world, and what God, even if it's only an idea, does for us.
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Next, it's that book by Spinoza. No, not the Ethics. The other one. What was it again? Oh, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Onward!
Pascal had through his short life two rather distinct occupations: that of perversely brilliant young mathematician, and then that of irascible religious apologist. He is also known to history for two distinct ideas, one corresponding to each of his creative phases. Pascal the mathematician brought to common knowledge a triangle used for counting (fine, among many other things): Pascal the religious man brought forth an argument for God. Given that my focus is on the Pensees, and that I don't at all like math, I will look into the latter. Besides, there's not much I'd want to say about the triangle besides, "It counts and stuff."
When I see Pascal's Wager these days it is usually when someone calls it out in another's argument in order to trash it. The way it's seen basically goes like this: You can either believe in God or not. If you do, and you are wrong, nothing happens. If you do, and you are right, you go to Paradise. If you don't, and you are wrong, you go to hell. If you don't, and you are right, nothing happens. Thus it seems to be common sense to accept God and have a chance at salvation rather than not and have a chance of damnation.
Pascal's actual argument is like this in a very general way, but the direction he is actually going is much different. To understand what Pascal wanted to do, one should know what Pascal's actual goals are. The first question to perhaps be asked is, "Why does a mathematician, and a great one at that, using such a weird and intellectually dishonest method of argument?" The answer is that Pascal did not see reason as capable of understanding everything about faith: "It is the heart which is aware of God and not reason. That is what faith is: God perceived intuitively by the heart, not by reason." (p. 163) One will not reason purely to God; one must believe in it. "Faith is a gift of God; do not imagine that we are saying that it is the fruit of reasoning." (p. 210) Thus one must incline the hearts of others towards God in order for them to be able to see the truth of religion: "[H]e has given signs of himself which are visible to those who seek him, and not to those who do not seek him." (p. 194) Seek, and ye shall find. If one looks at the world and sees nothing but a clockwork set up by evolutionary necessity, or a mass of chaos where the appearance of order is illusory, and that is one's starting point, God will not be seen. Signs of his creation are everywhere, but one has to be looking for them. I call this bias and frown upon it.
Pascal's response to claims of bias would be that this bias is the bias that makes more sense than being reasonable in any sense. For him faith in God is part of a solution to the essential human problem. What is the essential human problem, according to Pascal? Everything, absolutely everything.
We do not need to be very high-souled to realise that there is no true and solid satisfaction to be had in the world, that all our pleasures are only vanity, that our misfortunes are infinite and that death, which dogs us at every moment, must in the space of a few years inevitably bring us face to face with the dreadful necessity of being either eternally annihilated or eternally unhappy. (p. 104)
Life to Pascal is utter misery. Looked at simply as-is, without a concept of God or the supernatural, it is the ultimate exercise in futility. We are never given a goal by nature; the world itself doesn't tell us what we are meant to do. And we are apparently no better at finding a goal for ourselves. Pascal spends a good deal of time attacking the problem of 'diversion', a concept we will be seeing much more of later when I start getting into the existentialists. Lacking a purpose, human beings do everything they can to distract themselves. We talk about others or take up hobbies or work work work in order to force out of our minds the world as it really is, painful. "[W]e hate the truth and people hide it from us; we want to be flattered, and people flatter us; we want to be deceived, and people deceive us." (p. 136) That is not to say that any of this actually works, of course. Temporary distractions are just that, temporary. In the end we return back to the world, and in the very end we die, with the result being either bad or worse.
While most people try to hide this fact, it is Christianity that brings it to the light.
I myself admit that as soon as the Christian religion reveals the principle that human nature is corrupt and separated from God, it opens our eyes so that wherever we look we discover the evidence of the truth of its teaching; because nature is such that it bears witness everywhere to a lost God, both in man and outside him, and a fallen nature. (p. 144)
Through the image of the Fall, Christianity describes everything there is to say about the situation of man. First, that he has the potential to be great. Men can bring about happiness in others and themselves. They can be heroes. Men are capable of building great things both in the physical and mental realms. However, the Fall sets man so high only to knock him down that much further. Man brings nothing but misery. His life is empty on its own, incomplete, unfulfilled. His contact with others is a best deception and worse misery. The only way to deal with himself is through dishonesty and distraction, which he excels at, though not enough to heal immortal wounds. It is only in Christianity that Pascal finds this image of man so perfectly presented.
Man is thus lost, a hole seeking to be filled. Man needs a God to complete him. The stakes are as high as is possible, for it is eternity that is at stake. "Nothing is of more importance to man than his state, nothing is so redoubtable to him as eternity. And so the fact that there are men who are indifferent to the loss of their life and to the peril of an eternity of unhappiness is not natural." (p. 106) We should be seeking nothing else but a way to know the state of our souls and a way to save them. The only way to do this is through God.
Nothing betrays more clearly an extreme weakness of intellect than not to recognise the unhappiness of a man without God; nothing betrays more clearly a bad nature than not to want eternal promises to be true; nothing is more cowardly than to brave God. (p. 108)
The only way we can find happiness is through something far beyond ourselves. The only way to realize our own capabilities for greatness is to find that which gave us that potential. In other words, saving man requires finding God. This is the disposition that man should be having. It's not bias either, according to Pascal, since the natural state of man without God makes the search for him a part of common sense, an essential part of humanity. And into this comes the wager.
Let us consider the point and say: 'Either God exists, or he does not exist.' But which of the alternatives shall we choose? . . . If you rely on reason you cannot settle for either, or defend either position.
'[T]he right course is not to wager.' 'Yes, but we have to wager. You are not a free agent, you are committed. Which will you have then? . . . Your reason is not more deeply wounded by choosing one rather than the other because it is bound to choose . . . . Let us compare the two cases; if you win, you win everything; if you lose, you lose nothing. Don't hesitate then. Take a bet that he exists.
'[B]ut perhaps I am staking too much.'
'Come. Since there is an equal chance of gain and loss, if you were to only win too lives for one, you could still wager; but if there were three to be won, you would have to gamble . . . . But there is an eternity of life and happiness at stake . . . . That settles it: wherever there is infinity, and where there is not an infinity of chances of losing against the chance of winning, there is no room for hesitation: you must stake everything.'
'[B]ut my hands are tied and my lips sealed . . . I am made in such a way that I cannot believe. What do you expect me to do?'
'That's true. But at any rate, you mus realise that since your reason inclines you to believe and yet you cannot believe, your inability to believe comes from your passions . . . . You want to find faith but you do not know the way; you want to cure yourself of unbelief, and you ask for the remedies: learn from the examples of those who like yourself were in bondage and who now stake their own fortune . . . . That will naturally make you inclined to believe and will calm you. (pp. 202-204)
This is the wager. There are fallacies within it, of course, one being that the wager is not 50-50, since the argument is only about God's existence, and makes no guarantees of salvation. This is effectively countered by the stakes, however; winning eternal bliss makes any odds good. The second counter is that it is possible that choosing God could lead to negative consequences; perhaps some spirits will torture us for being intellectually dishonest.
There may be more issues, but my point isn't to attack the wager, but to understand it. And it must be known: this is not a proof of God. Religion questions are never concluded with certainty: "If it were unnecessary to do anything except when dealing with certainties, we should do nothing for religion because it is not a certainty." (p. 205) The wager only inclines one towards God, causes one to seek him out. And recall, one who seeks will find. Then we will see the proofs themselves. Pascal focuses primarily on miracles, and in the area of miracles the prophecies especially. But then again, he also says some interesting things, like that the Jews are the oldest people in the world (p. 270) and that Moses taught the doctrine of the Trinity (p. 285). The point here is that, once one is looking for God and sees the necessity of God, one will see God as he has presented himself in the world, through the truths of the Bible and the words and acts of men. And so the wager is a part of a program who's goal is to shift one's view from the world to meaning in the world and, through that, the need of God in the world. I still call it bias, but that's not to say Pascal doesn't make us stop and think just what we are in the world, and what God, even if it's only an idea, does for us.
If the argument appeals to you and appears well founded, you must know that it was composed by a man who went down on his knees, before and after it, to pray to the Infinite Indivisible Being to whom he submitted the whole of his being that God might grant the submission of the whole of your being for your own good and for his glory, and that in this way strength might be given to lowliness. (pp. 204-205)
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Next, it's that book by Spinoza. No, not the Ethics. The other one. What was it again? Oh, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Onward!
posted by Derek at 8:54 PM
2 Comments:
Okay, I have to make a comment after reading the first paragraph. First, why don't you like math? And second, Pascal's triangle was revolutionary. It was meant to count the rolls of dice. It was the first time that mathematics was used to place an expected value on a random variable. It was the birth of statistics. The very idea that the complexity of God's creation could be understood, much less quantified, was almost blasphemous in his day.
The triangle eventually became the binomial theorem, which is used throughout mathematics. For instance, I've used the binomial theorem to find solutions to problems in polymer science.
Another uncelebrated achievement of his was his construction of a mechanical device that could add, subtract, multiply, and divide. The cost of the machine made it unmarketable, thus it died only to be re-'invented' a couple centuries later.
He also made major contributions to physics, especially fluid dynamics. There's a reason that pressure can be measured in Pascals. He also experimentally demonstrated the existence of vacuums. This was scientific blasphemy at the time since Aristotle stated that nature abhors a vacuum.
Okay, now that I got that out of my system, I'm on to read the rest of your post (as time permits).
Why don't I like math?
Personal preference. That's about it. Never got into it, not doing any better now. It would seem the paragraph I wrote demonstrates that point.
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No, I don't really hate math, and I have boundless respect for mathematicians. But I took math throughout high school, I'm re-learning some math now, and I've read things by logicians and some mathematicians, and yet it just doesn't grab me. My lack of interest actually confuses even me sometimes. I'd probably have as much success explaining why my favorite color is blue.
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