Pascal's wager is
Blaise Pascal's famous argument that belief in
God is justified as a "good bet", regardless of any metaphysical uncertainty, because disbelief has great cost if wrong, while belief if wrong costs nothing. Pascal's wager suffers from the logical fallacy of
false dilemma, relying on the assumption that the only possibilities are that the Christian God exists or that no God exists. The wager cannot rule out the possibility that there is a God who instead rewards skepticism and punishes blind faith, for example. Variations of this argument can be found in other religious philosophies, such as
Hinduism. In his own time, Pascal was severely criticized by
Voltaire.
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