The Existence of God

Paper Summary:

This paper looks at how W. K. Clifford's "The Ethics of Belief", William James's "The Will to Believe", Blaise Pascal's "The Wager" ,and William P. Alston's "A Philosopher's Way Back to the Faith" all give different arguments about the existence of God. It discusses how, while each argument is interesting and constructive, William James's argument for the individual right to believe or not to believe seems to be the most workable of all of the lines of thought noted here.

From the Paper:

"The super-dominance argument is simply a form of a two by two table, with the condition that God exists or does not exist matched with either your belief in God or your failure to believe in God. If you believe in God, and he exists you receive an infinite reward. If you believe in God, and he does not exist, then you receive a finite amount of happiness because of the comfort of religion while you are alive (which Pascal sets at about 250 units). If you do not believe in God, and he exists, you will receive infinite punishment. However, you do not believe in God, and God does not exist, you will receive a finite amount of happiness, limited to 200 units because of choosing angst over the comfort of religion. As such, whether God exists or not, theists are better off than atheists, making a belief in God the most rational belief."

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