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Pascal's wager: Seriously?

15 January 2010

ZJ: It's been very surprising and disappointing to see that there are still people who use Pascal's wager as an argument for religious belief. If you haven't encountered this before, well, prepare to be amazed.

Pascal's wager is typically formulated as follows: If there is no God, then it makes no difference whether you believe in God or not, because your ultimate fate will be the same either way. And what if there is a God? In this case, if you do believe in God, then you have everything to gain as a result of that. But if you don't believe in God, you're going to miss out, and you will lose everything. Therefore, you should believe in God in order to ensure the best possible outcome for yourself.

Most people have stopped using Pascal's wager, for reasons that should be obvious. But some people still use this argument, because these reasons are not so obvious to them. So I think it would be helpful to take apart Pascal's wager and examine its various defects.

A noteworthy feature of Pascal's wager is that it is not an argument for the existence of God. It is an argument for belief in the existence of God. It is not intended to convince people that God exists, only that they should believe God exists because it is in their best interest.

And that's not a very good reason to believe something. "I believe it because bad things might happen if I don't believe it"? Can that even be called belief? You aren't holding something to be true out of an actual belief that it's true, you're holding it to be true out of a perceived advantage to yourself.

And if the idea of a God who grants or withholds rewards is intended as a reason to believe in this God, you would already have to consider the existence of this God to be a realistic possibility in order to find this a compelling argument. But if you have no reason to believe this may be the case, then the notion that there could be consequences for not believing in this God is simply not a credible threat. You would have to already believe in God for Pascal's wager to serve as a convincing reason to believe in God. If you don't, then there is nothing convincing about its hypothetical consequences.

Another inadequacy of Pascal's wager is that it only entertains two possibilities: either there is a God, specifically the Christian God who offers rewards for those who believe, or there are no gods at all. But why should this single, narrow concept of a god be the only one considered? Pascal's wager fails to account for other gods and other religions.

In fact, the structure of Pascal's wager is equally applicable to many different gods. For instance, Islam and Allah have a similar system of rewards and consequences. So wouldn't it be in your best interest to become a Muslim, just to be safe? And wouldn't it be even safer to believe in every god, to ensure that there's no chance of exposing yourself to the consequences of nonbelief? But what about those gods that demand you only believe in them, to the exclusion of all others? Do you believe in one of them, and jeopardize your chances with the rest of the gods? And if so, how do you choose which one to believe in?

And if there was a way for you to determine why some gods should be considered more believable than other gods, then these reasons for belief would stand on their own, and there would be no need for Pascal's wager.

The wager also assumes that if you believe in God and live your life accordingly, and it turns out you were wrong, then you've still lost nothing. But is that really the case? If this is the only life we have, then dedicating your life to a falsehood is a rather serious problem. You've made a mistake, and you've based your life around this mistake.

Our beliefs inform our actions, and there are plenty of things you might have done differently in your life if it weren't for your belief in God. But you'll never get the chance to live that life, because you've already spent your life in the service of a myth. In that event, would you really say you've lost nothing?

A related issue is the claim that if you believe in God and you're wrong, then at least you've spent your life as a good and moral person. This seems to treat being Christian as synonymous with being a good person. But that's not necessarily so. It's entirely possible to follow Christianity, or any religion, and utterly fail to conduct yourself in a good or moral fashion. You can believe in God and still be a completely horrible person. Indeed, religious belief can even serve as an inspiration for all kinds of indecent, atrocious behavior, the kind of behavior that people would not engage in were it not for their belief in God. Religious belief does not guarantee a virtuous, ethical life.

Furthermore, people are certainly capable of living morally and respectably without following any religion. Living a good, upstanding life does not require religious adherence. And suppose you are a good person, who, like many of us, does not believe in God. According to Pascal's wager, what's going to happen if you're wrong? Isn't it enough that you've lived a decent and moral life? I've asked the people who use Pascal's wager, and their answer is invariably "no". Apparently that doesn't count for anything if you don't believe in God.

So it really doesn't matter if you're a good person, now does it? That is what Pascal's wager is arguing for. Those who use it prefer to believe in a God that ignores everything you've done, and only cares about what you believe; a God that values choosing to believe based on a cost-benefit analysis above choosing to live ethically. That is the God they want us to believe in. How thoroughly distasteful.

As an argument, Pascal's wager fails at several critical points. Yet even if it were valid, the God it argues for is one of the most bizarre and unpleasant gods imaginable. Anyone who still insists on using this argument should definitely reconsider. After all, you have nothing to lose, but everything to gain.

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