Many people have heard that Pascal “proved that God exists”. He did not, and he said plainly that it could not be done. What he proposed is more curious: since reason cannot settle the question, change the question. Instead of “does God exist?”, ask “what is the better bet?”. And answer this second question with the mathematics he had just invented with Fermat, the mathematics of fair division. A sheet full of scribbles Autograph sheets of the Pensées, pasted into a large album after Pascal’s death, at an exhibition at the National Library of France in 2016. Pascal wrote on scraps of paper, in several directions, and crossed out a great deal.ActuaLitté · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0 In the last years of his life, Pascal gathered notes for a book in defence of Christianity. He never wrote it. After his death, in 1662, his friends found hundreds of fragments, some cut out with scissors and strung together on threads, and published a selection in 1670 under the title Pensées (Thoughts).