Pascals wager appeals to natural reason and not supernatural Faith; it is not an argument for the existence of God. It is just the beginning and one that Jesus himself appeals to. God will not be content with this but will use it.
The wager does cost something, but very little in my opinion. In 30 or 40 years most people reading this will be dead. In 30 or 40 billion years, we may have this to say “today is first day of the rest of my eternity”. Someone one said, “it is not a fool who gives up when he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose”. Everything is relevant to the proposition that there is a God which is the starting point.
“The wager can be recast to appeal to a higher motive than fear of hell. One could wager as follow: If God exists, he deserves all my allegiance in Faith. And I don’t know whether he exists or not. Therefore, to avoid a terrible in- justice of refusing God his rights, I will believe. Thus, we simply substitute the higher motive of love of justice and fear of injustice for the love of heaven and the fear of hell, and everything in the wager remains unchanged”.
(Peter Kreeft)
