Theology 101: Pascal's Wager

Blaise Pascal (pictured) was a 17th century French philosopher who is best remembered for what came to be called "Pascal's Wager." In the condensed version that is usually presented to nonbelievers (often by people who never heard of Pascal), it goes like this: Even if you don't believe in God, you would do well to worship him, because if he does exist, you will go to heaven, but if he doesn't exist, you will have still lived the most satisfying lifestyle of all, that of a Christian. 

I'm writing about Pascal's Wager because someone offered it in response to my last post, and I wanted to take time for an extended answer. The following are my objections to it, but I'm not consulting any sources, so I make no claim to completeness.

1) Pascal assumed (for no apparent reason except that he was a Christian) that there is an afterlife in which we will remember who we were in this life and be judged for what we did.

2) Pascal assumed (for no apparent reason except that he was a Christian) that his wager would result in one becoming a Christian (a Catholic Christian at that) as opposed to joining some other religion. 

3) Pascal assumed (for no apparent reason except that he was a Christian) that there is only one god.

4) Pascal assumed (for no apparent reason except that he was a Christian) that God demands our worship. What if God really wants something entirely different? What if God's real interest is that we all have twelve children, or else that we have no children? Or what if for some reason known only to divine omniscience, God prefers the company of atheists?

5) Pascal assumed (for no reason that I can think of) that God would reward people for simply going through the motions of worship.

6) Pascal assumed (for no reason that I can think of) that the same religion-oriented lifestyle that he, as a believer, found rewarding would also be rewarding to someone who wasn't a believer. 

7) Pascal's advice is meaningless to atheists because they see no reason to hedge their bets.


Maybe you're wondering why I've thought so much about Pascal's Wager. Well, way back in the antediluvian days of my youth, I took a few courses in theology in order to regain my faith, but the reverse occurred. Although my professor was a conservative Methodist minister and my classmates were ministerial students, I lost what little faith I had left when I started thinking even more critically about what the Bible meant and about the arguments in support of, first Christianity and then theism. I also observed that my classmates never seemed to come up with profound questions, and this too led me to doubt the intellectual respectability of religion. I thought that, yep, these people are dumb enough to be sheep alright, and they're the ones who are going to go out and run churches. Of course, in all fairness, most of them were Mississippi country boys whose families were poorly educated and who had just gone through twelve years of the worst public school system in the nation, and that's assuming that they didn't go to one of the white-only Christian "academies" that appeared in response to integration and were even worse than the public schools. It's also true that my professor didn't encourage probing questions, and as far as I could tell from the answers he gave me, he had never asked them.

However, my educational background had been similar to that of the other students, and not only that, I flunked three grades in public school, making me look even dumber. Why then, was I the only one who doubted, and did I really start doubting all at once at age twelve, or was I already headed in that direction a year earlier when I built a pulpit in my back yard and started preaching to my friends? All I can tell you is that I couldn't believe, and I did try. Now, I respect myself for being a skeptic by nature, and I forgive myself for having so devalued truth that I spent years trying to deny what I considered to be the reality about theism and religion. 

"Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced." Keats

I was in the kitchen last night when I was suddenly so overcome by the fear of death that I couldn't have felt much worse had I been on the threshold of being violently murdered. I forgot that I ever felt any differently, and I wondered why I hadn't long since killed myself simply to escape my terror of dying. I recalled that before Hemingway blew his head off with a shotgun, he had tried to throw himself into an airplane propeller, and I imagined that I was experiencing a taste of that same desperation. 

A few minutes later, I put on a Czechoslovakian film called The Cremator, which turned out to be the darkest, scariest movie I had ever seen, and the fact that it was also brilliantly funny only made the horror worse. Indeed, I had to steel myself to remain in my chair. Then, I remembered that I had eaten some marijuana an hour before the fear started, and I realized that my emotion had been drug-inspired and wasn't really the totality of my life. Marijuana exacts a price for its insights, and if I use it when I'm already upset, as I did last night, the result can be such that I wouldn't hesitate to call it insanity. I survive such times simply by riding them out. I was afterwards exhausted but couldn't sleep so I took an Ambien. It is now the next afternoon, and I've been weak, dizzy, and anxious, all day. I just took a large dose of marijuana because I want to see where it will take me when I am already in such a state. 

You probably read that last sentence in horror and with the question Why?! in your mind. My answer is that I am on a quest in the realm of ultimate reality, and marijuana untethers my consciousness so that I can free associate a hundred times more effectively than usual, and the result of this free association is oftentimes new insights. As you might imagine, given that I'm an atheist, I hesitate to use the word quest because many are sure to assume that such adventured are spiritually inspired and, if successful, will lead to God. My conclusion has been just the opposite. 

Why is this, do you think?

People usually undertake spiritual quests with a pretty good idea of what they're going to experience, and this determines what they do experience. I came at my quest from the opposite direction, that is I started with faith and lost it. That's the thing about spiritual quests, once you give up your preconceptions regarding the nature of ultimate reality, you don't know where you're going to exit the rabbit hole. I know where I exited, and it is here that I will make my stand unless something unexpected happens. What I mean by this is that I try to be open to what many of you call spiritual realities, but the only reason I see to think they exist is that so many people believe in them. 

Why doesn't the firm belief of millions of people over thousands of years lead you too to believe? 

I suspect that people believe for two reasons, neither of which has anything to do with external reality. The first is that they are raised to believe as they do, and the second is that they are probably, to some extent, evolutionarily programmed to believe in a spiritual realm.

But, if your conclusion is that the spiritual realm is imaginary, why are you still on a quest? 

The fact that spirits don't exist doesn't make reality less profound or the search for the best ways to live and think less meaningful. In fact, I think the opposite could be true, and here is why. For those who believe in a wise, powerful, and benevolent spiritual realm, the goal is to live in consistency with the desires of that realm just as a child lives in consistency with the desires of its parents. This usually results in a high degree of conformity among those who put their trust in a particular book or teacher. By contrast, I am alone in the darkness with no one to guide me. I say that I am alone because it truly is my road to travel, and the fact that others have traveled it hasn't proven to be of much benefit to me. I can only have confidence in that which I experience because it is only experience that seems real, although I can never be sure that it is real. I just know that it's the only light that I have to go by. As I live it, atheism is stark and bleak, but it is hardly shallow. However dismal the lessons, the quest itself is its own reward.