Philosophical Essay

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Philosophical Essay

Pensées, the work of Blaise Pascal is one of the most profound and contentious piece because of its content “Pascal’s Wager”. Pensées manifests the argument on the existence of God. According to Blaise Pascal, it is a choice to have faith in God. If someone has faith in God, he should carry substantial weight to show his faith. In other words, an individual who has faith in God, spends his life for eternity and happiness by obeying the orders of God in true letter and spirits. However, one who does not believe, advances to nourish negative sentiments pertinent to the existence of God underpinned in eternal sorrow and outweighs the outcome of a piousness lifetime. Primarily, Blaise Pascal advanced to distinguish between the people who believed in God and refrained from adhering. Christians oppose the view of Pascal because of several reasons. For instance, according to Christianity, a person who believes in God and spends his life worshiping God to avoid hell will get reward afterlife. However, Pascal gambles the concept of existence of God. He highlights the way one should spend life with the fundamental belief that God exists. He lacked the provision of profound argument and evidence to identify whether God exists or not. Therefore, it can be considered as a motivational theory for the individuals who have faith in God.

The strongest part of Pascal’s argument is not manifested in the refutation of atheism. Instead, it is delineated by refutation of dissent as an impossible endeavor. Irrefutably, agnosticism is highlighted as the plausible option which nourishes an uncommitted and skeptical attitude. For instance, Pascal replies to the agnostic as, “But you must wager” when confronted with the claim of not wagering fundamentally ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"kvqcCe1g","properties":{"formattedCitation":"({\\i{}Blaise Pascal, \\uc0\\u8220{}The Wager\\uc0\\u8221{}})","plainCitation":"(Blaise Pascal, “The Wager”)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":229,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/h6KbaPMu/items/BV94CI5M"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/h6KbaPMu/items/BV94CI5M"],"itemData":{"id":229,"type":"webpage","title":"Blaise Pascal, \"The Wager\"","URL":"https://philosophy.lander.edu/ethics/notes-pascal.html","accessed":{"date-parts":[["2019",3,27]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Blaise Pascal, “The Wager”). It is an intricate aspect that postulates humans are the participants of life, not merely observers. They are similar to the ships which ought to reach destination while sailing past a spot with signs proclaiming that it is true happiness and home. These signs on the spot reflect God while the ships are human lives. The agnostic advances to adopt a radical attitude by neither disbelieving nor believing. Such significant are the manifestations of gamble in The Wager. For instance, the dissents are not staying on the spot, refraining from running away from it and hence living an ambiguous life. In essence, they are anchored at an optimal distance away till the weather is clear and they can witness the credibility of the spot as mystical or realistic. It raises a critical question. Why is this behavior unreasonable or even impossible?

Furthermore, the strongest argument can be explored as the ship of life is always moving. It passes across the detrimental and productive waters of time. In the journey, a place surfaces which has a dead end. It is the point where the fuel runs out and it gets too late to traverse in the past. Primarily, the gamble in the argument strengthens under the influence of death. Had humans been immortal, the wager would be absolute imprudent or irrational. The instance of death strengthens the argument and constructs the strongest argument as deliberated above. Pascal lived in the days when skepticism dominated the theoretical paradigms related to a wide range of dogmas and realities. The classical postulates highlighting the existence of God were no longer adhered by majority of the population. Under these circumstances, Pascal coined the mystical wager. Though majority of the arguments were weakly supplemented with evidence, the rejection of agnosticism as an impossible aspect sounded the strongest.

Works Cited

ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"uncited":[],"omitted":[],"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Blaise Pascal, “The Wager.” https://philosophy.lander.edu/ethics/notes-pascal.html. Accessed 27 Mar. 2019.