Pascal's Wager
From RationalWiki
Pascal's Wager is an argument for belief in god or acting as if there was a god that relies on several logical fallacies. It was formulated by Blaise Pascal.
- If you believe in God and God does exist, you will be rewarded with eternal life in heaven; thus an infinite gain.
- If you do not believe in God and God does exist, you will be condemned to remain in hell forever; thus an infinite loss.
- If you believe in God and God does not exist, you will not be rewarded; thus a finite loss.
- If you do not believe in God and God does not exist, you will not be rewarded, but you have lived your own life; thus a finite gain.[1]
Mathematically a finite gain or loss is negligible compared to an infinite gain or loss. Therefore, he concluded that it was a much better choice to believe in God rather than to practice atheism.
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[edit] Criticism
There are many problems with this statement. One, which does not constitute a logical fallacy in its own right, is the fact that there are an infinite number of hypothetical gods. If there was no possibility of more than one god's existence, the statement would make logical sense, however, there is no evidence that the Christian god is more real than any of the Hindu gods or even the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Even in the limited world-view of Christian monotheism, various individual Christian sects disagree with one another about what is necessary for salvation.
This argument against Pascal's wager is as such:
- If you believe in a single God, you will have to choose one out of infinite possible varieties.
- If any percent of the possible gods will punish you eternally, then there is an infinite number of gods who, if they exist, would punish you for eternity.
- If there is only one god, then your chance of worshipping it, and not a nonexistent entity instead, is one out of infinity.
- Therefore your chance of picking the correct "One True God" is very close to zero.
- So if a god does exist, the chance of you going to any variety of heaven is infinitestimal, regardless of whether you are religious or not.
[edit] Assumptions
In addition, Pascal's wager also makes a number of assumptions.
[edit] Legitimacy of worship
For one, it assumes that God will be impressed by people who worship It just to avoid Hell. (The satirical fantasy writer Terry Pratchett had a version of Pascal's Wager in one of his books. Upon his death, the philosopher in question found himself surrounded by a group of angry gods with clubs. The last thing he heard was "We're going to show you how we deal with Mister Clever Dick around here...")
[edit] Infinite utility
The wager assumes that going to hell will be infinitely miserable, while going to heaven would be infinitely pleasurable. Similarly, the wager also assumes that believing in a particular god is costless to the believer. This is untrue, as any person who subscribes to a particular religion must attend its ceremonies and follow its rules, no matter how archaic or silly.
[edit] Belief rewarded
The wager assumes that God will damn you to Hell if you do not believe in him. Some philosophers have suggested that this is irrational because much of the world's population have never had contact with Christianity (or any other religion to use this claim) at all and that a just and loving god (as most religious people portray him to be) wouldn't fault a person for being born in a place of the world with no Christian contact and would instead judge them on their merits.
[edit] Ability to "believe"
The wager assumes that a human being has the ability to believe something by an act of will: to not just say one believes it but to actually, sincerely believe it to be true. It is probable that most people lack the ability to do this deliberately.
Consider how you would respond if someone told you to believe that the earth rested upon the back of a giant turtle. Even if you were inclined to, it is doubtful whether you could really believe it.
[edit] Judeo-Christian bias
Another common critique is that the wager only deals with the "Judeo-Christian" image of a loving and forgiving god. One could imagine that the truth is in fact a perverse god who would damn his supporters and reward unbelievers simply for the sake of irony[2], or the Maltheistic idea that "gods" are spiritual entities who eat their worshippers' souls after their deaths.[3]
Also, the wager only allows for one true god. Should there be more than one (such as in the Greek and Roman mythologies), a follower of Pascal may offend a powerful god by only worshipping a weaker one, leading to his damnation despite his worship.
[edit] Reversing the wager
One way to counter the wager is to replace Pascal's Judeo-Christian God with a hypothetical god that eternally punishes those whose lives are governed by irrational beliefs. This action effectively flips the four paradigms of the wager on their heads. To avoid confusion, the hypothetical deity will be referred to here as Ral:
- If you believe in God and Ral does exist, you will be condemned to remain in hell forever; thus an infinite loss.
- If you do not believe in God and Ral does exist, you will be rewarded with eternal life in heaven; thus an infinite gain.
- If you believe in God and Ral does not exist, you will not be rewarded; thus a finite loss.
- If you do not believe in God and Ral does not exist, you will not be rewarded, but you have lived your own life; thus a finite gain.
This theoretical belief system, which is just as empirically provable as the belief system underlying Pascal's wager, presents a win/win scenario for atheists and a lose/lose scenario for those who believe in God. Since the two contrasting ideas of a specific god are logically equivalent in likelihood, atheism is shown to have the greatest potential for gain, completely negating and effectively reversing Pascal's argument.
[edit] Further reversal
This reversal works best for those who want to confuse more then disprove, but it's fairly valid.
- If god exists and god is benevolent and you are a good person who disbelieves, you will be fine
- If god exists and god is benevolent and you are a hypocrite who claims to believe but does not you may not be fine
- If god exists and god is malevolent and you are a good person who disbelieves, you may not be fine
- If god exists and god is malevolent and you are a hypocrite who claims to believe but does not you will likely be greatly punished
- If god does not exist and you are a good person who disbelieves then you have a net gain (You help yourself instead of waiting for god to help you)
- If god does not exist and you are a hypocrite who claims to believe but does not you have a net loss (Untruthfulness to self)
True believer is left out, because you're arguing from the viewpoint that belief is something that takes place deep down inside, and is not a facade, and that you simply lack it.
