25th
Pascal’s Wager
spoo posted a quote from Scott Adams regarding the mathematical odds being in favor of those believing in at least some deity. While Adams looked at a more general application of the theory, recognizing that you’re more likely to pick the wrong religion, to me it echoed Pascal’s Wager (published 1670), written by the French philosopher and mathmetician Blaise Pascal.
Pascal says in effect that it is better to believe in God because if you do so, and you’re wrong and God doesn’t exist, you lose nothing, but if you don’t believe in God and are wrong, you’re obviously fucked.
Of course, since it’s been 330 years, there’s been plenty of time for numerous criticisms of Pascal’s Wager to develop. One of these is that since God is omnipotent, he would see through any perfunctory attempt to believe in Him to follow the wager. Of course, Jacques Prévert wrote a much more elegant response, a poem titled “Stupid Wagers”, reproduced here in its entirety:
Un certain Blaise Pascal, etc. etc.
