Philosophy 1020 Lecture Notes - Christian Eschatology, Blaise Pascal
2 Dec 2012
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Document Summary
October 4, 2011: pascal"s wager, some biographical details about blaise pascal. An argument for the rationality of religious belief. Religious thinker and write: pascal"s fundamental vision: in a situation of unsurmountable unceertainty the best we can do is think about probabilities and make a rational best guess. Pascal thought the arguments for the existence of god were not compelling also for the agruments against. He thought we were caught in inescapable ignorance about whether bad exists or not. What the best bet: constructing the wager, the rational calculation: Where g stands for the proposition that god exists, along with the traditional (christian) eschatological story. G may be true or may be false and i may believe g or not believe g. Cross dividing these we get 4 options. The only way to avoid this big loss is to believe in g.
