Pascal’s Wager recommends belief in God on purely pragmatic grounds: if you believe in God then you stand to gain much and lose little, while disbelief leaves you with much to lose and little to gain. While proponents of the Wager have sought to defend it from the accusation that it ignores questions of evidence, Pascal himself might have agreed.

In this talk, Tim Williamson will argue that Pascal’s preferred argument is a wager for religious inquiry: a life devoted to investigating matters of ultimate significance may lead to great gain, and it costs relatively little. This casts new light on how Pascal thinks about the relationship between faith and evidence, the nature of religious inquiry, and the possibility of a well-lived agnostic life.

On Monday, February 9, join Morningside as Tim Williamson (Columbia) asks if Pascal’s most faithful adherents are actually agnostic atheistic YouTubers.