In chapter 1, James Franklin provides valuable historical context for understanding Pascal’s Wager through an appreciation of its intended audience. Franklin shows that the argument emerged from deeply ingrained ideas about religion as a practical way of reasoning about high-stakes situations. A very important point in understanding these early versions, and Pascal’s formulation as well, is that the intended audience for the Wager was “real decision-makers” rather than philosophers. Real decision-makers, such as Pascal’s “man of the world” of 1660, face a range of religious options they take to be serious, with fixed probabilities grounded in their evidence and with utilities that are fixed quantities in actual minds. The many ingenious objections to the Wager dreamed up by philosophers, with their limitless range of possible gods, abstract