LOGIC, PASCAL’S WAGER, AND THEODICY*

Pascal’s famous wager reads in brief: “Let us weigh the gain and theloss in wagering that God is... If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.” The reason behind the wager is whether it is worth living your life as if eternal life depended on it: if God exists, there is eternal life and redemp-tion; if He does not, there is just death and oblivion. So if you live well, so that God, if He exists, will redeem you, then “you gain all. ” But if He does not exist, and you live well anyhow, then you lose nothing, since your life well lived was worth living in any case. The problem with believing that God exists, however, is that so does evil. That is the “theodicy ” problem, a term invented by Leibnitz: If God is good, why is there Evil? How can a good God create a universe in which there is evil? Since the universe was made by God and God is good, and yet evil exists, it follows that God is responsible for evil. And how does that fact feature in eternal life existing or not? This question introduces the world of formal logical argument, as in syllogistic reasoning, in which the deductive arguments are presented somewhat as follows.1 Here is a selection from the total argument: 1. God is omnipotent. 2. God is omnibenevolent. 3. Evil exists. 4. An omnibenevolent God attempts to bring about the best overall situation it can. 5. An omnipotent God can bring about any logically possible state of affairs. * Paper based on a study in a philosophy of religion course taken at Temple University