Blase Pascal was a mathematician, a physicist, philosopher, and a Roman Catholic. The Libertines were a group of people during Pascal’s time that regarded reason as their guide with respect to religion. In Pascal’s Wager, a piece that he wrote to the Libertines, he explains not why God is real, but why we should believe in God. The Libertines disagreed by saying, “Since it is impossible to know if there is a God, then there is no reason for me to choose one way or the other.” (101) Pascal refuted this argument by stating that we, as humans, must make a choice to either believe or not to believe in God. Being agnostic is not plausible, Pascal states, since the actions of being agnostic are the same as being atheist. Pascal then states how believing in God is the only option that makes sense because if God does not exist, then there is no loss. However, if God does exist, then we either gain eternal happiness for believing, or an infinite amount of time living an infinitely horrible …show more content…
This includes Anselm and his ontological argument, Aquinas’ “five ways” argument, and Descartes’ ontological and cosmological arguments. However, he is only going to provide practical reasons on why we should believe in God. Since the comprehension of God is elusive, we end up leaving whether God exists or not up to chance. As Pascal puts it, “a coin is being spun which will come down heads or tails. How will you wager? Reason cannot make you choose either, reason cannot prove either wrong.” (101) In other words, since we cannot be conclusive on whether God exists, we can only hope that he exists and believe in him in order to get to