Well, hello, and thank you so much for downloading this episode of the Speak Life Podcast. My name is Thomas Thoroughgood, Media Producer at Speak Life, and we are continuing the Pascal chat. So if you listen to our last episode of the Speak Life Podcast, episode 594, Glenn interviewed Graham Tomlin, who's written a book called Blaze Pascal, The Man Who Made the Modern World. Well, in this episode, Glenn is going to zoom in more specifically on Pascal's wager. How do atheists often think of Pascal's wager? Not all, but many. Looking back at some clips from Dawkins and Hitchens, yeah, how how is the argument generally seen? And what did Pascal actually intend when he originally made the argument? So it's a fascinating thing to dive into. I certainly learned a lot while editing this episode. Before we begin, I'd just like to draw your attention once again to our upcoming conference, Responding to the Rebirth, which we are doing as Speak Life in collaboration with ThinkFaith. Glenn will be there, Justin Brierly will be there, and they'll be joined by an amazing lineup of speakers, Professor John Lennox, Elizabeth Oldfield, Mike Royal, Paul Kingsnorth, Rihanna McElear, Al Gordon, and many others will be attending. You can find out more and book your place at speaklife.org.uk forward slash rebirth. It's going to take place on Saturday, the 22nd of November 2025, from 9 a.m. to 4 30 pm at All Souls Langham Place in central London. And tickets are going fast, so if you're thinking of coming along, we'd love to have you go to speaklife.org.uk forward slash rebirth to find out more and to sign up. Looking forward to seeing you there. Well, that's all from me for now. Over to Glenn and his discussion on Pascal's wager. Just to let you know, this uh episode will feature clips from the Graham Tomlin interview. And of course, if you haven't caught the full conversation with Graham Tomlin yet, that's the previous episode of the Speak Life Podcast, episode 594. So do check that out if you would like to.
SPEAKER_06Everybody gets Pascal's wager wrong. Really, really wrong. Pascal is not a rationalist, and he's not trying to reason you to God. He's trying to show you the way you already operate.
SPEAKER_02When Christopher Hitchens talked about this argument, he called it this religious hucksterism of the cheapest, vulgarest, nastiest kind it's possible to imagine.
SPEAKER_06It's known as Pascal's Wager. It is authored by the mathematician, the philosopher, the pioneer of experimental science, Blaise Pascal. But Hitchens is not impressed by Pascal's argument. Here's how he summarizes it.
SPEAKER_02Look, what do you got to lose? Say you believe in God, and if he does exist, you have a chance of his favor. If you go ahead like this and say he doesn't, what if he does exist? You lose everything. That's it. I I don't think I've condensed it in any unfair way. Hitchens has two complaints at this point. The two things that it assumes, needs to assume, are these. One, a fantastically cynical god who's also a bloody fool. A nasty and cynical person who's also so thick that he would be fooled by me saying, tell you what, on the flip coin that you exist and I need a break, I'll say I believe in you. Oh, I'm I'm really impressed now. You've just undergone a moral transformation. Um the second thing it assumes, of course, is the most corrupt and vulgar kind of consumer. The sort of person who would fall for a deal like that and would think, that would be nice. What uh I'll I'll bet correctly.
SPEAKER_06When Richard Dawkins talked about Pascal's wager, he raised other issues.
SPEAKER_05When you get to heaven, it turns out not to be God, but Baal or Mithras or Zeus. And he says, Why did you believe in that dreadful Yahweh instead of believing in me, Baal?
SPEAKER_06Dawkins once gave this very spicy slapdown to a questioner who asked him, What if you're wrong?
SPEAKER_00What if you're wrong?
SPEAKER_05Well, what if I'm wrong? I mean, anybody could be wrong. We could all be wrong about the flying spaghetti monster and the pink unicorn and the flying teapot. Um you happen to have been brought up, I would presume, in the Christian faith. You know what it's like not to believe in a particular faith because you're not a Muslim, you're not a Hindu. Why aren't you a Hindu? Because you happen to have been brought up in America, not in India. If you've been brought up in India, you'd be a Hindu. If you were brought up in in um Denmark in the time of the Vikings, you'd be believing in Wotan and Thor. If you were brought up in classical Greece, you'd be believing in Zeus. If you were brought up in Central Africa, you'd be believing in the great Juju up the mountain. There's no particular reason to pick on the Judeo-Christian god, in which by the sheerest accident you happen to have been brought up, and ask me the question, what if I'm wrong? What if you're wrong about the great juju at the bottom of the sea?
SPEAKER_06Which god are we supposed to bet on? If Richard Dawkins is asked why he does not bet on the God of the Bible, surely Christians should be asked why they do not bet on Zeus or Mithras or Osiris or any one of a thousand different gods. So that's one problem that Dawkins has. If he's asked to bet on God, his question is, which god? His other problem with the wager is why does this god want our belief?
SPEAKER_05In any case, why would you suppose that God values belief above maybe I would say, well, I didn't believe in you, God, but I was a good man, I was honest, I was kind. Isn't that more important than belief? What's so special about belief?
SPEAKER_06Why is God looking for faith from humanity and not something more useful? And so Pascal's wager is not very popular among atheists. Here is Alex O'Connor memorably summarizing it. A half-hearted ass kissing just in case.
SPEAKER_04He is genetically modified skeptic. I think that there's another argument that goes largely unsaid in the atheist community, and that is if you live your entire life by a certain God's rules, and then it turns out that that god is a fairy tale, then you've really lost a lot. Let me give you a list of examples. You've lost the opportunity to express your sexuality in the way that makes you feel happiest and most comfortable. His rationality rules. And while I still maintain that the man was mathematically brilliant, I find his theological work to be simply insufferable. This is Matt Dillahunty.
SPEAKER_03Pascal's wager is an apologetic argument that attempts to demonstrate that belief in God is warranted based on decision theory and probability.
SPEAKER_06Lots of atheists find Pascal's wager to be not only wrong, but to be embarrassing from this 17th-century so-called genius. Hitchens spoke with absolute derision about how foolish the argument is.
SPEAKER_02Blaise Pascal is considered in the first rank of Christian thinkers, I might add out.
SPEAKER_06Christopher Hitchens dismisses Blaise Pascal at this point as unworthy of our attention, but he does not pause to consider whether he has in fact misunderstood a man who, in any age and by any measure, would be called a genius. Here are just some of Blaise Pascal's accomplishments, as detailed in this book by Graham Tomlin, Blaise Pascal, the man who made the modern world. Pascal was a groundbreaking scientist, mathematician, geometer, physicist, philosopher, polemicist, and theologian, as well as a man of deep spiritual consciousness. He virtually invented probability theory, proved the existence of the vacuum, laid the foundations of integral calculus, performed what has been called the first modern proper scientific experiment, established the principle that made possible the creation of the hydraulic press, demonstrated the air has weight, and on and on and on it goes. If we think that Blaise Pascal was silly, that might not reflect on Blaise Pascal. That might be a sign that we have misunderstood him. So in this video, we're going to learn how all those objections to Blaise Pascal's argument, Blaise has answers to, and we're going to see why everybody gets Pascal's wager wrong. Really, really wrong. But not you guys, because you guys are going to stick to the end and figure out what Pascal was actually saying, why all these critiques are actually flamethrowering, a total straw man of the argument, and what Blaise Pascal can teach us whether we believe in God or not. We're going to see all those things, but please, why don't you hit like on this video and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already, so you can get more content like this. Now I want to introduce to you the author of this book, Graham Toblin. He's a scholar, a writer, a bishop in the Church of England, and he is the author of this book, Blaise Pascal, The Man Who Made the Modern World. I asked him about Pascal's wager, and he busted those myths and showed us what Pascal was really saying.
SPEAKER_01The way the wager works is like this. One of the things that Pascal would do, he had a lot of friends who were into gambling. And um one day one of his gambling friends set him a uh a test, which is a kind of long-standing mathematical test, which was basically if if you're in a game, maybe a game of cards or a game of tossing coins or whatever, and people have you know bet on the outcome of this game, and the game has to finish halfway through, how do you allocate the stake? And uh, you know, he has a kind of interesting correspondence with Pierre de Fermat, Ferma's last theorem, um, fame, where they kind of work out probability theory, which is basically you you can kind of work out probabilities uh for you know how how how to predict the end of a game where the game is uncertain. Um you know, where the game isn't finished. It's kind of like if you're a cricket fan, the Duckworth Lewis method of trying to work out what the result would have been. Um if you're not a cricket fan, don't worry about those things.
SPEAKER_06Um it's happening in all sports now with the win the win stats. You can go onto Google and whatever game you're playing, you know, the the Chicago Bulls are now 73% more likely to win than the LA Lakers. Yeah, it happens all over the place.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's but that's basic Pascal and Fermer doing that sort of work of probability theory and calculation of what could happen. Now he kind of then says, Well, life is a bit like that. You know, we find ourselves in the middle of life, like the middle of a game, where the outcome is uncertain. Um, we don't know. Is there a god? Is there another god? Um after this life is over, do we just go into nothingness or do we go to a eternal bliss or do we go into something worse, which is you know, eternal torment and so on? Uh we don't know, he says. And so then he says, sits down and says, Well, okay, well, it's you know, he's he's having a conversation with someone. I think the wager would have been in the form of a conversation. And he poses this question. He says, There's a coin being tossed at the far edge of the universe. It's gonna come down head or tails. Which one are you gonna bet? Either God exists or God doesn't exist. Heaven or hell, what are you gonna go for?
SPEAKER_06And he actually says, 'cause I'm I'm quoting from your your own book here on page 325. You say, How will you wager? And then the next sentence he says, Reason cannot make you choose either. Reason cannot prove either wrong, which is interesting.
SPEAKER_01Exactly.
SPEAKER_06That's right. Here is the first reason why people misunderstand Pascal's wager. They think Pascal is offering a reasoned argument for God. He's doing no such thing. He's in fact showing that reason does not get you to God. Pascal is a philosopher of the heart. He was very much reacting against Rene Descartes, who was an older mathematician and philosopher who famously went into his room and closed the door and had a method of doubt. And through his rationalizing, Descartes thought that he could get to some kind of certainty. Cogito ergo sum. I think therefore I am, I doubt, therefore I am. Descartes, alone with his thoughts, tried to piece together reality. He was very much a rationalist. Pascal was very much not a rationalist. Pascal and Descartes did not get on at all. Pascal is famous for saying, the heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing. Pascal was in the great Augustinian tradition, going back to the Apostle Paul and Jesus and the prophets, in which human beings are heart-driven creatures who rationalize what we already love. What our hearts love, our wills then choose, and our minds later justify. What the heart loves, the will chooses, the mind then justifies. Pascal is not a rationalist, and he's not trying to reason you to God. He's trying to show you the way you already operate. And you already operate as somebody who is committed in this world because of your passions, not because of your reason. You haven't chosen your way into the life you now live. You have felt your way into the life that you now live. And when you are confronted with the call to come to Christ, or at least just to come to church, or at least to just to surrender to God or pray, when you're confronted with that, what is first going to motivate you is not your reason, it's actually your heart. That is what Plaise Pascal is trying to prove to you. Let's keep going with Graeme Tomlin.
SPEAKER_01You know, his conversation partner says to him, says to him, Well, is there, you know, how how do I choose? You know, is there are there good reasons one way or the other? And he said, Well, reasons pretty limited in how he can help you in this, in this, this, this regard. Um So the guy says, Well, what do I do? And so Pascal says, Well, let's work out the probability. And he goes through a bit of mathematical exploration where he kind of says, Well, okay, let's think about it. If you bet if you if you bet that God doesn't exist and you're right, well, you know, you haven't gained much, you haven't lost much. But if you're wrong, you stand to lose a great deal if you're wrong and God does exist. Um God does exist and you're wrong, well, again, you haven't lost a great deal, maybe a little bit of sacrifice in this life, but you know, then you go into nothingness and that's it. But if you're right, you stand to gain a huge amount, which is you you you stand to basically win the jackpot, eternal bliss. So he's saying if you purely go on probability, if you were being entirely rational about it, you would always bet on belief. You'd always bet that God exists, because you stand to gain a lot more that way, whereas the other way you stand to lose uh uh lose a lot more.
SPEAKER_06Do you get it? Blaise Pascal is addressing his skeptical, gambling loving, philosophical friends who are not going to church with him on a Sunday. He is addressing those guys, and he's saying, listen, if you were actually calculating about it, you would join me in church on a Sunday because let's just do the probability. And Blaise Pascal was inventing probability theory. He was much better at doing probability theory than anyone else on planet Earth. He was incredibly rational. He could outreason all of his philosophical friends on this subject. And he's telling them, I know where reason would take you if you were a reason-driven creature. And we can now do these two by two grids, and we can say, well, look, if God exists, then you can wager on him and you win a lot. If God exists and you do not wager on him, you lose a lot. If God doesn't exist and you wager on him, you haven't lost that much really. Just a Sunday morning, no big loss. And if God doesn't exist and you haven't wagered on him, you haven't lost or won anything. So if you are being clever about it, if reason was dominating you the way you think it does, you would join me in church, wouldn't you? That's the argument of Pascal's wager. It's not the way Hitchens has portrayed it, it's not the way Dawkins has portrayed it. Let's keep hearing Graeme Tolman.
SPEAKER_01Anyway, so that's that's a kind of bit of mathematical reasoning. And then his course his kind of conversation partner comes back and says, Well, yeah, but hang on, I can't just believe something. Um, I can't make myself believe something that I don't. And Pascal says, Well, okay, fair enough, I get that. But then he says, this is the killer point, I think. He says, at least get it into your head that the reason you don't believe is not because of your reason, it's because of your passions. In other words, that's what he's driving at. He's trying to get this person to realize why they don't believe. It's not because of their reason, it's not rationality, it's not that they're being properly rational and Christians are being every rational, faith-based people. It's because they don't want to believe. Because if you were really following a reason and probability, you'd always bet on belief. So that's the kind of way the thing goes.
SPEAKER_06At least get it into your head that it is not your reason that is leading you, it is your passions. It is your heart that is driving you, not your intelligence. The point of Pascal's wager is not to prove God. The point of Pascal's wager is to prove the kind of people that we are. It's not about the rationality of God, it's about the irrationality or the non-rationality of human beings. Pascal is pointing out that the reason that his philosophical friends in the 17th century didn't go to church is because they didn't want to. And the reason that 21st century atheists don't go to church is because they don't want to. And that is just patently obvious. Just take the case of Richard Dawkins. He was once asked by Peter Bogosian, another skeptic, what would convince you that God exists? Here is Richard Dawkins' answer. What what would it take for you to believe in God?
SPEAKER_05Well, I used to say uh it would be very simple. It would be uh, you know, the second coming of Jesus or or a great big, deep, booming bass Paul Robeson voice. Um uh saying, I am God and and and I I created But I was persuaded mostly by actually uh Steve Zara, who's a who's a regular contributor to my website, Richard Dawkins.net. Um he he more or less persuaded me that if you even if there was this this booming voice and the second coming in clouds of glory, the more probable explanation is that it's a hallucination or a conjuring trick by David Copperfield or something. Um I mean he he he made the point that a supernatural explanation for anything is incoherent. That that it d just doesn't sort of it it it doesn't add up to an explanation for for anything.
SPEAKER_00What would what would persuade you?
SPEAKER_05Well, I'm starting to think nothing would. Uh which which is which in in a way goes against the grain because I've always paid lip service to the view that a scientist should change his mind when evidence is forthcoming. Trouble is I can't think what that evidence would look like.
SPEAKER_06There's nothing particularly reasoned about that response, it is a gut response. It is a response of the passions. And Blaise Pascal is here to say, the heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing. We consistently follow our hearts, not our heads. So whatever you do with Pascal's wager and whatever you do with Pascal's invitation to church, at least, says Pascal, get it into your head that it is not your head that is leading you. It is your heart. And this for Pascal is not just a question of whether you come to church or not, whether you consider Christianity or not. This is how all life is lived. We have already embarked on life. We are already in the game. This is another misunderstanding of Blaise Pascal. People think that Pascal, through his wager, is just encouraging people to mouth a few pieties on a Sunday morning and not actually invest in life. That is the reverse of what Blaise Pascal is saying. He is saying we are already wagering. It's not really about the end of life and what will happen after you die. It is really about right now. We are already wagering one way or another. It's something that I said to Matt Dillahunty in our debate a few years ago. Because I mean, life is a wager. I am constantly, you know, I don't mean this in in the religious sense at all. Life life is an act of faith. You know, I step out into the world not knowing what's going to hit me. Um am I gonna open myself out to the world in a certain way uh that will make me vulnerable, that will m make me weak, that could get me attacked, but in another sense it could help people. Um all of life is is a venture of faith. Uh and if it's not true, um then I'm a fool, you know. And and I think you know, Christianity is a venture to be in Jesus and with Jesus, extending my arms out to the world the same way that he was in sacrificial love. Um, if God is not on the other side of that raising me up again, which is the Easter story, cross and resurrection, uh then I am to be pitied more than all men, which is what the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15. So it's also something that Tim Keller has said.
SPEAKER_03Pascal says, if you can't prove that there's a God, but you also can't prove that there's no God, then whether you're an atheist or you're a believer in God, you're actually taking your life in your hands. It's an act it's a risk. It's an act of faith. If you can't prove there's no God and you decide to live as if there's no God, it's a risk to say he isn't when he might be. And if, on the other hand, you decide to believe in God and say he is when he's not, that's a risk. That could be a kind of odds, right? Well, I mean there's got to be more than faith and believing in something other than playing the odds. I I don't know whether Pascal wanted to say that. See, to disbelieve in God, you are it's a risk, it's an act of faith because you can't prove there's no God. You're living as if he's not there, you're kind of hoping he isn't, and therefore you're in a sense taking your life into your hands. But I, as a believer, I'm also taking my life into my hands, and therefore, to say you have faith and you have re, you know, the atheist has reason and Christians have faith isn't true. Life is already a wager.
SPEAKER_06You are already leaning into some kind of way of life, and that way of life is first of all driven by your passions. Proverbs chapter 4 in the Old Testament says, From the heart are all the issues of life. Jesus said, From the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. Your heart sets the course for your life. And that answers Richard Dawkins' questions. Why should God be so interested in faith? What God is not interested in is the fact that you can tick off some statements from a from a creed. That is not what God is interested in, but he is interested in your heart and how you lean into him and how you lean into your neighbor in the way that Jesus commanded. He wants your trust, he wants your fidelity, he wants you to lean into him because. All of life is a matter of faith. We are always wagering one way or another. So, what do I do if I'm awakened to the fact that my reason is not leading me and I don't actually want to go to church right now? I don't actually want God. But Pascal is telling me that infinite blessing is being offered that begins now and keeps going into eternity. What do I do about that? Well, here's where Graham Tomlin gets to.
SPEAKER_01Then the guy says, Well, what what do I do then? And this is where this was a long answer to your your original question. Um He says, Well act as if it's true. He says, even if you can't make yourself believe something, well, just try an experiment. Try living as if this thing really is true. Um so in our terms he would say something like, Okay, well start reading the Bible as if it is God's word to you, even if you don't you're not sure whether it is or not. Start praying to God as if God really is there. Start going to church as if this really is God's people meeting on a Sunday to learn his way. Try start treating every person you meet as if they are someone made in the image of God, loved by God, through whist died. And see what happens. Live as if it's true. Um and then he says, Well, it 'cause it may well be that if you l if you do that, you will place yourself in a position where you might just be open to receiving the touch of God's grace, and suddenly the things begin to fall into place. Now, just on a personal note, I I've often often found, I've often used that bit of advice with people I've known who um who are in that position, you know, not quite sure whether to believe or not to believe, and I've often said, well, go and try it for a few weeks. And time and time again I've had people coming back to me and saying, once I'd actually started to live as if it was true, I suddenly realize it was. And so that I think is the advice Pascal would give.
SPEAKER_06Now, this for Pascal is not fake it till you make it. This is naming the way that you are already living. You might be a Muslim, you're leaning into certain Muslim accounts of the world, and that is shaping you in all sorts of ways. You might be a Hindu and you're leaning into that. You might be a materialist and just think that all of reality is just matter in motion. You're leaning into that already. And what Pascal is saying is be attentive to where your heart is already taking you. And instead of trying to think your way into a new way of living, why don't you live your way into a new way of thinking? Why not come along to church? Because going for brunch on the left bank of the Seine is going to form you into a spiritual community, but coming with Pascal to Mass on a Sunday is going to form you in a different way. That's Pascal's argument. It's not suddenly become a hypocrite by going to church. It's recognize that you're all always wagering. You are always putting skin in the game. And there is this one game with infinite blessing. Will you at least put yourself in the way of the gospel so that you can hear that gospel, experience that gospel, walk alongside others who will tell you that gospel? Will you be formed by Christian truth as you go? That is the context in which you will find faith. If you ask and seek and knock, the door will be opened to you. That is Pascal's wager. It is not what is popularly understood by Hitchens and Dawkins and all the rest of those guys. Blaise Pascal is not making a rational argument for God. He's making an argument for the irrationality of human beings. You are already committed, you are already a faith-based creature, and that faith is based on your heart, which has reasons which reason knows nothing of. And Pascal says to his 17th century French friends, I can demonstrate to you that the reason you don't show up with me in church on a Sunday is not because you're clever. It's because you don't want to. If you were clever, you would play the odds, but you don't play the odds because you're not like that and human beings are not like that, and God doesn't want you like that. He's just pointing out that you're already invested in a way of life that has certain payoffs, if you want to put it like that. And the fact that you don't take Pascal's wager proves that you're not the rational person you thought you were. What do you need? Well, Blaise Pascal had his own night of fire in which he encountered the God of Jesus Christ, not the God of philosophers. Here's just some of the things he said: God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and of the learned. Certitude, certitude, feeling, joy, peace, God of Jesus Christ, my God and your God. Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy. Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, let me never be separated from him. This is what we need. Descartes went into his room and had his encounter with rationality. Pascal had his moment alone with God, the God of Jesus Christ. That's what we need for faith. And the environment in which that will happen is to join Pascal in going to church, in opening up the scriptures, in praying, in opening yourself out to Christian community. It's in that environment that faith finally happens. I hope that clears things up about Pascal's wager. One thing you can really do to open yourself up to faith is to go to 321course.com and do our course. It's an introduction to Christian faith. It'll take you a couple of hours to binge, or you can do it over eight sessions. You can also do it in person. You can find churches near you that are doing the 321 course. Why don't you start an account, log in, and discover life according to Jesus? Well, that'll do us on this video. We'd love to see you on the next one. So do hit subscribe and we'll see you soon.