As a non-believer, I have heard this apologetic argument
many a time. Surprisingly, each time I hear it the presenter acts as if they
are presenting brand new information. Not even close... In fact they are presenting
an argument that is tired and thoroughly debunked. But if there are any new
heathens among us today, you may be asking what the hell is Pascal's Wager?
Pascal's Wager is an apologetic argument proposed by the
French philosopher/mathematician/physicist Blaise Pascal. His argument was
specifically meant to be in favor of belief in the Christian god. It has been
phrased several ways through the years, but here's the argument...
1) If you believe in God and God does exist, you will be rewarded with eternal life in Heaven. So you have everything to gain.2) If you do not believe in God and God does exist, you will be condemned to eternity in Hell. So you have everything to lose.3) If you believe in God and God does not exist, you lose nothing.4) If you do not believe in God and God does not exist, you have lived your own life. So you received only a slight gain.
It's a 50/50 choice with everything in play. Therefore the Smart bet is on belief in God, over disbelief.
As I said, there are many problems with this argument. The
first is the assumption that it's a 50/50 choice where the only outcomes are
that the Christian god is real, or there are no gods. But those aren't anywhere
close to the only possibilities. Through the centuries, there have been
thousands of gods worshiped. Yet Pascal simply ignores them from the equation.
But the statistical chance of being correct is central to his wager. He wants
it to be a 50% chance so that it sounds like the odds favor Christianity. This
is simply dishonest and incorrect. The exact number of deities throughout history is not
perfectly known. But including them would give Pascal something like a 1/3,000
chance of being correct , rather than the much more favorable 1/2.
Remember, what he is essentially asking us is, 'What if
you're wrong?'. Well, perhaps we should also ask the believer this same
question. Say you live your life believing in Christianity. But you find out
that after your death that you are greeted by Odin. You disbelieved, so you are now
cast into Helheim. What if Zeus is the true god? Perhaps Pascal then needs to
consider life in Tartarus. The same goes for the thousands of other possible
gods. So the claim that one has nothing to lose if they believe in Christianity
and are wrong is flat false. If another faith is true,
they face a fate just as serious as the one they threaten me with.
But lets ignore that first glaring problem with Pascal's
Wager and examine it as if it really was a 50/50 choice, and Christianity was
the only option on the table. Even then, there are many issues that make
Pascal's Wager a poor one.
Let's start with the fact that you can't simply choose
belief. It seems that Pascal is suggesting that if you don't believe, you
should feign belief. But isn't the Christian god supposed to be all-knowing? If
that's the case, he would know that you don't believe. If that is the case,
would you still be rewarded? Or is Pascal actually proposing a God that is
satisfied with people just faking it? If that is the case, why bother with
Christianity at all until the very end and claim that, 'Oh yeah, I totally believe.
High-five, Jesus!'
Then there are issues of what you gain or lose depending on
if you are right or wrong. It is claimed that the believer loses nothing if
they are wrong. But is this really the case? I feel that there are many things
belief can steal from you.
•You lose financially if you give money to your church.
•You lose time you could have enjoyed elsewhere rather than going to
church.
•You can miss out the wonderment that comes with scientific
understanding if you belong to a Biblically literal sect.
•You can lose potential friendships if your sect doesn't
take kindly to outsiders.
•If your religion tells you that homosexuality is a sin, you
may turn your back on your own child if they come out as gay. The loss will be
any relationship you ever could have had with them, and possibly your child's
respect and the respect of others.
•If your brand of Christianity forbids sex before marriage
there may be many issues if you follow that command. What if this restriction
causes you to lose a relationship? What
that person was the person you could have loved above all others, but
your faith never allowed the relationship to blossom? You could lose a lifetime
of happiness. What if you observe the prohibition and get married only to find
that you aren't 'compatible' in bed? You could lose out on ever having a
fulfilling sexual experience, or lead you to divorce.
•What if your belief tells you abortion is always wrong, and
you are faced with your wife having terrible complications that will surly kill
her and/or the child about to be born? You could forever lose the love of your
life by way of a choice you had to make. I can't even begin to imagine the
guilt of your wife's death being the result of your own decision to not terminate the pregnancy.
•What if you're so devout that you pray for those you love to
get better, rather than taking them to seek medical care? Your loss could be
watching your son or daughter slowly die before your very eyes while you did
nothing.
•What if you're a Jehovah's Witness and need a blood
transfusion to survive. Your refusal would mean the loss of your very own life.
•Lastly, belief can have a small, but cumulative effect on
how someone lives their life. This effect can mean that you lose out on living
the life you could have lived if you weren't predisposed with worrying about
the 'next life'. If we really only do have this one life, as I believe, isn't a
life half-lived really a tragedy in and of itself? I feel that a compromised
life is quite a dramatic loss indeed.
But
what about the claim that if I'm correct, and there is no God, that I
only net a slight gain? I'd say that the gain is much more than slight.
Because I'm not satisfied with simply settling for religious
explanations, I have instead decided to learn as much as I can about the
world. I've learned about the sciences, history, cultures, etc. My
seeking of knowledge has taught me much about the world, as well as
myself. These learnings and experiences are something that are invaluable
to me.
And
not only does atheism allow me to live my own life, but it makes me
extraordinarily appreciative of life as well. This is the only life I
will ever get, and I'm amazingly lucky to evan get this one. So I should live
it to it's fullest, and appreciate this short yet beautiful gift even
more. I am also brought wonderment when I realize the natural forces at
play when I look at nature. And am filled with amazement when I look
toward the stars. Those delicate forces at play, gave us everything, yet
it didn't have to turn out as it did. So I'd say that in the light of
that knowledge, life feels even bigger and more special to me. I feel
like that is a massive gain in my favor, should I be proven right.
So,
you can see that Pascal's Wager fails on many fronts. Sadly, this
argument continues to rear it's ugly head, get reworded and passed of as
something brand new all over again. I can only hope that reason will
eventually prevail and this sad argument can be discarded for good.
-Brain Hulk
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