Argument

Pascal's wager

Overview

argument that posits that humans bet with their lives that God either exists or does not

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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In Pascal's Thoughts there is a celebrated passage known in literature as Pascal's wager. In it he tries to force us into Christianity by reasoning as if our concern with truth resembled our concern with the stakes in a game of chance.
William James, The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy
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iv, lect. vi) states concerning the first principles of demonstration. But the opposite of the proposition "God is" can be mentally admitted: "The fool said in his heart, There is no God" (Ps. 52:1). Therefore, that God exists is not self-evident.
Aquinas Thomas, Summa Theologica, Part I
States what Pascal's wager is.
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Whatever sort of a being God may be, we _know_ to‐day that he is nevermore that mere external inventor of “contrivances” intended to make manifest his “glory” in which our great‐grandfathers took such satisfaction, though just how we know this we cannot possibly make clear by words either to others or to ourselves. I defy any of you here fully to account for your persuasion that if a God exist he must be a more…
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
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