explain mans reason because he does not know(blaise pascal)?

Question

if you know blaise pascal then you could relate to my question.ty

Answer 1

I don't really understand your question, but for what it's worth, Blaise Pascal is famous for "Pascal's Wager," so here is a bit of information on that:

In his Wager, Pascal provides an analytical process to help evaluate options regarding belief in God. As Pascal sets it out, the options are two: believe or not believe. There is no third option.

Therefore, we are faced with the following alternatives:

If you believe in God:
If God exists, you go to heaven: your gain is infinite.
If God does not exist, your loss (the investment in your mistaken belief) is finite and therefore negligible.

If you do not believe in God:
If God exists, you go to hell: your loss is infinite.
If God does not exist, your gain is finite and therefore negligible.

The basic idea is that a rational person should try to believe in God because the potential for gain is great, but the risk is small. Just the inverse is true for atheists. There are several problems with this, but the main problem as I see it can be summed up in a single question: "Which god?" Pascal was thinking in terms of Christianity, but the same wager would work for Muslims, Jews, etc. So if you truly consider this from a non-prejudiced perspective, you have no basis for choosing which god to believe in, and believing in the wrong god could be just as disastrous as believing in no god. Even Buddhists, who make not claims about any sort of god, could offer a similar wager. If you follow the Four Noble Truths and the Eight-fold Path, you gain enlightenment, but if you don't, then you keep reincarnating into the hellish realms, so it seems by this argument that the rational person should stick to the Path, just as a precaution.

Bottom line: This whole argument does not work and won't convince a rational atheist or Pagan of anything. And even if it did, then you would still have to wonder if believing in God out of rational self-interest/fear of punishment is really what God wants.

Answer 2

Where one is unsure ("does not know") and there is an infinite payoff against a finite stake, there really is no room for hesitation. Since you are obliged to play, you must be renouncing reason if you hoard your finite life rather than risk it for infinite gain, all the while expecting to lose it anyway.