Pascal's wager discoverer or inventor Blaise Pascal
Pascal's wager is a philosophical argument presented by the seventeenth-century French mathematician, philosopher, physicist and theologian Blaise Pascal (1623–1662). It posits that human beings wager with their lives that God either exists or does not.
Pascal argues that a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. If God does not exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.), whereas if God does exist, they stand to receive infinite gains (as represented by eternity in Heaven) and avoid infinite losses (an eternity in Hell).The original wager was set out in Pascal's posthumously published Pensées ("Thoughts"), an assembly of previously unpublished notes. Pascal's wager marked the first formal use of decision theory, existentialism, pragmatism, and voluntarism.The wager is commonly criticized with counterarguments such as the failure to prove the existence of God, the argument from inconsistent revelations, and the argument from inauthentic belief.
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