Pascal's Wager is basically summed up as follows:
To believe in God and be right brings infinite gain.
To believe in God and be wrong brings little, if any, loss.
To not believe in God and be right brings little, if any, gain.
To not believe in God and be wrong brings infinite loss.
Therefore, in terms of probability, it is in a person's best interest to believe in God.
The idea is not entirely new, for Christ says " For whoever wishes to save his life will lose
it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he
gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his
soul?" (Matt. 16:25-26).
This validity of this advice rests on certain assumptions about the nature of God and the
definitions of belief, loss and gain. Criticisms of Pascal's Wager revolve mainly about these
assumptions, and I believe they are implied within the Wager because there is only one true
case.
Definitions
To believe out of expediency is the equivalent of insincere belief and therefore not actually
belief at all. If belief is simply a mental act, then this makes sense. However, if belief
involves action (i.e. attempted absolute obedience), then there is some sacrifice involved.
This would seem to cancel out shallow expediency. (insert a faith and works verse...James
somthing). Also, what is one’s definition of paradise? Is it simply gold and endorphins? In
that case, I can see why one would object to the ethics of wagering for personal gain. Yet, I
think the main draw of heaven would be the getting to know a Creator who created you for
the primary purpose of getting to know him. Anyway, in the end, one has to ask the
question, is there such thing as an unselfish action? If there is, isn’t that irrationality?
What are a person’s reasons for being good, in any belief system? Isn’t it always done for
some type of reward or avoidance of punishment, even if such rewards and punishments
are only one’s own emotions?
The sacrifice of actual faith is the 'small loss,' whereas the infinite loss would be damnation.
Infinite gain would naturally be eternal life, therefore belief in God also implies a belief in
the afterlife. Small gain (or loss) would be living your life as you please. Some people would
also feel that the pursuit of real truth is a loss that must be sustained in choosing to believe
something you can't prove. That makes alot of sense to me, and what's more it seems like
God would want a person to seek out truth ("the truth will set you free" verse). However,
what would be the meaning of truth in a world without God, specifically the God of
Pascal's Wager (see below)? If everything has come to pass through chance, the value of
truth is arbitrary. During your own life, truth may or may not help you. If God does not
exist, then when you die it won't help you either. Depending on just what kind of truth you
discover, and your ability to become famous, your truth may or may not help future
generations. Even if it does - do you really care? Perhaps you should care, but do you?
Anyway, as far as anybody knows, the fate of our universe is either a Big Crunch or Heat
Death, so if everybody's going to die anyway, why bother? I can't see a good reason to live a
useful, productive, or even enjoyable life, without some absolute power that defines
absolute truth and absolute good. (Which is why I need to keep reading about atheism,
maybe they'll say something about this...)
The Nature of God
The Judeo-Christian view attributes the qualities of omnipotence, holiness, and mercy to
God. These are the attributes for which the Wager is true. By varying these attributes we
can traverse a 'continuum' of religions, and address one of the criticisms of the Wager, that
belief in God is not defined according to religion.
Let us say that God is not omnipotent; this is almost the same thing as saying that God does
not exist, and corresponds to polytheistic views, New Age and other ideas that involve a
distributed god(s) - as opposed to a distinct God. If god does not have absolute control, how
can we trust that he has the power to absolutely assign gain and loss to belief? We cannot.
Therefore, the Wager fails.
Let us say that God is not holy, that He is all-accepting, and would never send anybody to
hell. Rejection of God no longer has an effect. There is no scenario involving infinite loss,
and all scenarios assume infinite gain. The Wager fails.
Let us say that God is not merciful, corresponding to religions that do not provide a
salvation plan. If God is either cruel or indifferent, either everybody would go to hell, their
would be no eternal provision of any meaning for mankind, or the system of assigning gain
and loss would be inconsistent and impossible to predict. No action could assuredly be
assigned infinite gain, and the Wager fails a third time. (This is the main difference
between Judeo-Christianity and Islam or some cults)
The Bible assures us of all of these attributes. (Insert verses) Therefore, it would seem that
the only true assertion of the Wager assumes the Judeo-Christian definition of God.
The Disturbing Lack of Absolute Proof
Still, this is only statistical/probabilistic advice, not really addressing the issue of God's
actual existence. For whatever reason, the actual existence of God seems to elude logic in
terms of absolute proof. However, this is not a unique attribute of the Judeo-Christian
view. For example:
I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an
atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually
unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge one
didn't have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or agnostic. I
finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as reason. Emotionally
I'm an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I
so strongly suspect it that I don't want to waste my time.
-Isaac Asimov, President of the American Humanist Association and
signatory of Humanist Manifesto II
Found in Understanding the Times, by David A. Noebel
Original source "An Interview with Isaac Asimov," Free Inquiry, Spring
1982, vol. 2, no. 2, p. 9.
I disbelieve in a personal God in any sense in which that phrase is ordinarily
used…For my own part, the sense of spiritual relief which comes from
rejecting the idea of God as a supernatural being is enormous.
-Julian Huxley, signatory of Humanist Manifesto II
Found in Understanding the Times, by David A. Noebel
Original source Religion Without Revelation (New York: Mentor, 1957), pp.
17-8, 32
I could say the same of Christianity, and most Christians, if you ask them, would probably
give a similar response. This is why religion is often referred to as faith, because it takes
faith in something unseen, and unproved, to fully believe the entire message. I prefer to say
trust, because faith is such an overused word in religious contexts that it has become
cliched, retaining little real meaning. But why should trust be necessary? My own feelings
on the subject involve God being personal, and having created us to be his eternal
companions. In this light, trust is a highly desirable quality for Him to seek in us. Would
you want to spend forever with someone who didn't trust you? Besides, if God is creator of
the entire universe (including mankind), it does make sense that our understanding (of
anything, let alone of God himself) would be infantile compared with his.
At any rate, it is good to make a decision at some point, and stick to it. Otherwise you could
spend an entire lifetime vacillating with the prevailing winds of "factual evidence." The
problem with relying on evidence alone is that there is always another counter argument.
Simply use the prefix "What if…" and you can produce endless logical objections. Even if
they are wrong, they still take time to disprove, and human earthly lifetimes are currently
relegated to a finite length. Asimov has hit upon something when he says "…I don't want to
waste my time." This is one advantage of Pascal's Wager, that when we cannot know, we
approximate to a sufficiently small error.
Additional Thoughts - Mathematical Interpretation
Choosing two extreme points is like taking an average, or like using the Fundamental
Theorem of Calculus. The only catch here is that we must make the assumption that our
'continuum' of religions is equivalent to a continuous function, and there is no reason (to
my knowledge) to make this assumption. Trying to model religions as a curve would be a
messy business. How do you assign numerical values to religions? You could take various
attributes of God and give each of them some value - but what value? And why? If someone
else gives a different value, who is right? How would you even choose which attributes are
basic 'dimensions' and which are sub-attributes? Still, there is an intuitive attraction to
thinking of non-numerical concepts in these ways. After all, math is supposed to be the
universal language of nature, right? If it isn't, why does any order hold?