In the gambling world bets are made based on odds, the probability or likelihood that something would happen. In the court law, cases are decided upon by the weight evidence presented by the respective parties. The common link between these general scenarios is that decisions are made based on some outside evidential factor. The more probable something is likely to happen, or the more evidence presented in favor or opposed to something, the greater the tendency that a decision will coincide with that probability or evidence. This kind of logic has also been used when arguing about the existence of God. It has been argued that God’s existence is necessary based on the logic that it is neither contingent not impossible and therefore must exist; it has also been argued that the presence of evil in the world is evidence enough that God, or at least God as we make Him out to be, does not exist. The decisions that people a make about their personal relationship with the being that has been dubbed “God” is usually based on this kind of criteria. But what if someone were to make a decision concerning God’s existence without having any evidence to sway us, how would that someone choose? This problem is addressed by Blaise Pascal in his essay entitled The Wager. Pascal argues that the only rational choice to make about the existence of God with no evidence would be to believe that He does. The following pages of this essay will be a critical analysis and also critique of Pascal’s argument, for it is the argument of the author of this paper that a sincere decision would be impossible under these circumstances and without evidence we would not be able to make a rational choice concerning the issue of God’s existence. Before the discussion is started let me first clarify some terminology is order to make my argument more clear. In my thesis statement I offered the premise that when given to the criter...
