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Writer's picturejmgiardi

Notes on Pascal's Wager

Disclaimer: If some of the following seems offensive, keep in mind that some of the authors cited are assuming arguendo "We are … incapable of knowing either what (God) is or whether he is." (Pascal [1966] 1995, 122)

Did you know that, "whether we like it or not, our earthly life is the only life we're ever going to experience"? ([redacted] 2006, 34) Bertrand Russell was never, to my knowledge, this certain. He wrote, "I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego shall survive." Later, he admitted,

If … we are to believe that a person survives death, we must believe that the memories and habits which constitute the person will continue to be exhibited in a new set of occurrences. No one can prove that this will not happen. (Russell 1957, 54 & 89)

[redacted] was not the first to deny without caveat that there is life after death. James Baldwin once wrote that life "is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return." (Baldwin [1963] 1977, 124) When it comes to life after death, the position of Christians, according to the skeptic Corliss Lamont, is the complete opposite of that of [redacted] and Baldwin; they are certain of a future life: "The resurrection of Jesus to eternal life was not only the sure and unmistakable sign of his divinity, but a pledge that men in general would also rise from the grave … There can be no question that Christianity came into being first and foremost as a death-conquering religion." (Lamont [1935] 1990, 3) As should be clear, some are not agnostic about this issue. You, on the other hand, may be like Russell who didn't know whether or not there is a life after death. For those who are unsure, Christians have formulated variations of "Pascal's Wager". This staple of Christian apologetics is significant because, as the originator put it, "You must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked." You must either believe in God or not. If you don't believe and God exists "you suffer tortures without end." (Flew 1966, 184) As the interviewer told [redacted], "if you're wrong (about there being no God, no Heaven, and no Hell), then you've lost your soul for eternity." ([redacted] 2006, 33) Unfortunately, [redacted] did not have Richard Dawkins in print pointing out the unstated assumption in "Pascal's Wager"; that God cares deeply about what you believe: "[W]hy, in any case, do we so readily accept the idea that the one thing you must do if you want to please God is believe in him?" (Dawkins [2006] 2008, 131) Perhaps [redacted] wanted, for the sake of argument, to concede all the premises. After doing so he gave a rebuttal where he shrewdly observed that "Christians never stop to consider that they are in just as much danger of going to the Muslim hell as I, an atheist, am in danger of going to the Christian hell." ([redacted] 2006, 34) Supplementing [redacted], Dawkins asked, "Mightn't Pascal have been better off wagering on no god at all than on the wrong one?" (Dawkins [2006] 2008, 131) The atheists are vindicated in believing that both believers and unbelievers risk being consigned to Hell but neither of the atheistic authors discussed here have addressed the counterpoint: Although everyone is in danger of Hell only a believer has a chance at going to Heaven. Philosopher Peter Kreeft explained Pascal's Wager without even mentioning Hell (negative reinforcement), focusing instead on Heaven (positive reinforcement). He wrote, "[I]f there is a God, the 'wager' to believe in Him … will pay an infinite 'payoff': eternal life in joy with God. The opposite 'wager,' to choose to think and live without God, at least risks losing this infinite gain." (Moreland & Nielsen [1990] 1993, 289) As should be obvious by now, Kreeft is assuming that the only way to get into Heaven is to believe. If we ignore the threat of Hell and just want to maximize our chances of going to Heaven what could we do if we have no faith to begin with and are deciding whether or not we will choose to have faith? If we believe in the accuracy of the Bible then we would already accept Christian doctrine and this would obviate the need to wager. If we don't believe the Bible or in revelation in general then how will we know anything at all about what (if anything) awaits us beyond the grave? Even if we assumed that there is a God we would have absolutely no clue as to how to please Him. Complete skepticism applied to God would invalidate Kreeft's revision of Pascal's Wager. Bertrand Russell articulated this position well. He asked, "How are we to know what really is God's will? If the forces of evil have a certain share of power, they may deceive us into accepting as Scripture what is really their work." (Hitchens 2007, 188) If we don't know anything about God then we simply don't know that being an unbeliever bars one from ever going to Heaven. What if the criterion for getting into Heaven involved something that atheists were more prone to do than non-atheists? If this were the case then you'd be doing a great disservice to yourself by believing that faith was the thing that God (if He exists) will reward.

Pascal wrote that "heads or tails will turn up" meaning that when you die you will either face God or face oblivion. Modern thinking has supplied us with extra-terrestrials as a third option. For simplicity's sake, we'll ignore this and just focus on the two traditional scenarios. Contrary to Kreeft, it is not obvious that believing is the way to increase our chances to the utmost of attaining the ultimate prize. This is only true if the presumptive deity considers believing in Him to be a prerequisite for going to Heaven.

According to Pascal, "'God is' or 'God is not' … Reason can decide nothing here." (Flew 1966, 184, emphasis added) Returning now to the subject of Hell, given Pascal's assumption (concession?), it is simply not true that you risk nothing by believing; you risk being sent to Hell for believing in the wrong god, the god you're not supposed to believe in. (We're assuming here that, by "God", Pascal meant Yahweh.) According to the more rigorous philosophers, you risk being sent to Hell for believing in any god. As Antony Flew explained,

Pascal starts by observing that there are many different life styles supported by many systems of belief about the transcendent. All these are soliciting our personal commitment. Stage two is to insist, if only for the sake of argument, that reason can decide nothing here. No evidence can make any of these alternatives even more probable than any of the others. So, Pascal concludes, we have a betting situation. Now, what are the stakes, and how shall we place our bets? Giving no reasons to warrant this limitation, Pascal proceeds as if there were only two betting options in this gambling situation. Option A is Roman Catholicism. Bet on this; and, if you turn out to be right you will enjoy an eternity of bliss. Bet on this; and, if you turn out to have been wrong, what have you lost? Option B is an atheist naturalism … Granted Pascal's own allowed assumption that there can be no adequate evidencing reason for or against any self-consistent system, then for every such system you could also construct another in which all and only those who would under the first system be rewarded by the joys of heaven will instead suffer the torments of hell; and all those who would in that first system suffer the torments of hell will instead enjoy eternal bliss … [W]e should all, in considering any particular supernaturalistic and transcendental system, bear in mind that this particular system has innumerable rivals. Remembering those early Christians denounced as atheists by their orthodox pagan contemporaries, we must recognize that everyone here is an atheist in respect to at least all but one of such rival religious systems. (Flew & Warren 1977)

Pascal said we have nothing to lose and infinity to gain. [redacted]' refutation of this was based on the premise that consciousness does not survive death. Bertrand Russell, fortunately, did not take this for granted. Instead, he thought the "unthinkable" - what lies beyond the grave (if anything) is a world just as ugly, merciless, and unfair as the one we experience on Earth:

If you looked at the matter from a scientific point of view, you would say, "After all, I know only this world. I do not know about the rest of the universe, but so far as one can argue at all on probabilities one would say that probably this world is a fair sample, and if there is injustice here the odds are that there is injustice elsewhere also. (Russell 1957, 13)

According to the former Christian Dan Barker, a god that damns you for believing "is no less likely than Pascal's." (Barker 2008, 115) Such a god seems to us ludicrously unjust. If Russell's analysis is sound, such a god is not only possible but likely. Christians, taught to believe that justice will be done in the long run, are, understandably, dismissive of the notion that our world is just a microcosm of the vast cosmos and that eternal cosmic injustice is possible, probable even. If religionists of all stripes were to be damned this would come as a surprise. Who's to say that this scenario is not possible? It could be objected that God couldn't do what has been described because He is good. This, however, leads to Socrates' famous question: Is something good because God approves of it, or does God approve of it because it is good? Such an issue deserves a chapter of its own. All I'll point out is that John Calvin, the Christian philosopher, taught that "justice does not exist as a standard independent of God but rather is defined or created by God's actions." (Nozick 1981, 552)

It should be reinforced that Christians, in addition to preaching about Hell, use positive inducements to persuade people to believe in God. Kreeft claimed that believing was the only way to enter the sweepstakes for the prize. The prize he was referring to was not something you could receive today (unless you died). William Lane Craig argued that believing was the only way to "live happily and consistently" in the present (Strobel 2000, 256); the only way to acquire the penultimate prize. [redacted]' interviewer addressed immediate gains for believing in God but the gains are not as sublime as those mentioned by Craig. He said, "If (the believer) is wrong about there being a God, then he'll at least have looked forward to going to Heaven…" [redacted] said that if we "sacrifice this one life in doormat subservience to a nonexistent god, then we have lost everything!" but this is hyperbole. ([redacted] 2006, 34) If an individual believes, he gains some things and loses other things. Karl Marx, an atheist who believed that "the country of reason" is "a place where God no longer exists," understood this. He taught that religion gave people "illusory happiness." Life was "a vale of tears" and people resorted to the "fantasy" of religion for "consolation." (Easton & Guddat 1967, 65 & 250) Believers won't agree with this characterization but they will agree that belief brings about benefits in the here and now and that the sacrifice it entails is only partial (in the majority of cases).


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