Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

Mark Spahn, who keeps me up to date on things, sent a link to this. I wish people who haven't read Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) and don't understand the context of his famous wager argument would shut up about it. Pascal had a particular audience in mind for his argument. It was addressed (ad hominem) to his backsliding Christian friends. There were only two live options for these friends: (1) continue in their freethinking, libertine ways; and (2) come back to the Christian faith into which they were born. Pascal ingeniously constructed an argument precisely for these friends. It uses only premises that his friends accepted and it makes use of probabilities and concepts that he knew they—his former gambling buddies—would understand. The argument is not addressed to the world at large. How could it be? For most people, there are more than two live options.