On God Part VIII- Pascal’s Wager

Today I want to talk about Pascal’s wager. If you’re unfamiliar, the basic idea is this: God either exists, or he doesn’t. As humans, we have to place a bet on whichever option we think is most likely to yield the best result- Atheism or Christianity. Choose wisely.

Pascal reasons, if Christians are wrong about God then nothing happens when they die. The lights turn off and they’re none the wiser. No harm, no foul. If atheists are wrong, however, they spend eternity in hell. The best possible case for atheists- nothing happens when they die- is the worst possible case for Christians. Given this, it makes sense to hedge your bet and be a Christian.

Pascal was surrounded by dum-dums

Immediately alarm bells should be going off in your head. This is not a sound argument. Pascal’s wager apparently confounded and amazed people for several hundred years. In fact, it’s still used today as the ultimate Ace-in-the-hole to prove atheists are idiots who just don’t understand how probability works. I still hear people bring it up from time to time as if it’s an iron-clad reason for being a Christian.

Only a simpleton would bet on the side that offers no reward, instead of the side that provides everlasting life. If that’s not enough, the side that provides everlasting life tilts the scales even further by promising punishment if you get it wrong. HA! What kind of loser would be an atheist?

Okay. So we’ve established only loser idiots would choose to be atheists. Let’s look at why Pascal’s wager isn’t actually a great argument.

Logical Fallacies within Pascal’s Wager

1/2 Probability Split, or 50% Chance

Okay. So Pascal’s wager isn’t exactly an air-tight case. First, it assumes a 1/2 probability split- either God does exist, or he doesn’t. It’s a coin flip. On one side of the coin God exists, on the other side, God doesn’t exist. It looks like this.

That’s the Christian coin. The atheist coin isn’t as benign. For Atheists making this same wager, the results are flipped. The best-case scenario is that God doesn’t exist. The worst-case scenario is you spend eternity in hell.

If you just look at these two coin options and squint just the right way then Pascal’s starts to make sense.

But this is assuming there is an equal probability that God does and does not exist. Using this logic you could say winning the lottery is a 1/2 probability split- either you will win the lottery, or you won’t.

We don’t know how likely it is that God exists. Maybe there’s a 99% chance or maybe it’s .0001% chance. We just don’t know. But, for sake of argument let’s assume there’s a 50% chance he exists.

Wager Nothing, Gain Everything

Pascal’s wager also assumes that you don’t lose anything if it turns out your belief in God was wrong. But, you do lose. You lose your life. If you spend your entire life with God as the central focus, and it turns out God doesn’t even exist, then you’ve effectively wasted* your one shot at existence.

It would be like if you spent your entire life trying to convince people the world was flat. Right before you die someone sick of listening to your incoherent ramblings finally takes you up in one of Elon Musk’s rockets and shows you the round earth. Even though you may not have ‘lost’ anything by believing in a flat earth, it would still feel like you wasted a lot of time.

*Side Note: I should point out that if believing in God is making you a more caring and inclusive person then it’s not a waste, even if God is totally made up. Thanks to @OurTable4Two for pointing this out.

The Assumption of Christianity

These assumptions- that being wrong means losing nothing, and that God existing or not existing is equally likely- aren’t what I take issue with. I just wanted to point them out as minor issues I have. What I really take issue with is his assumption that Christianity is the one true religion. According to Pascal, If God exists, then those who wager on God get the infinite reward of heaven. Simple as that.

But what about all the other religions?

To illustrate this point we’ll have to mentally shift from a coin to one of those dice you use for Scattergories.

Remember that game? Anyway.

So now you imagine throwing this multi-sided dice into the air to see if God exists. But the dice doesn’t have to just land on God existing. It has to land on the Christian God existing. If it lands on no God existing, you lose. If it lands on the Hindu God existing, you lose. In fact, no matter which way the dice lands, unless it lands on the Christian God of the Bible, then you lose.

So instead of the coin looking like this…

…or even this…

…it looks like this.

Depending on how you look at the probability, one of those dice sections might be reserved for No Gods Exist -OR- HALF the dice sections might be reserved for No Gods Exist since Pascal’s original wager hypothesized a 1/2 split.

In that case, the dice would actually look like this…

 

There may very well be a 50% probability that God exists, but there’s no guarantee that it will be the Christian God. Assigning which religions have the highest probability for being true can quickly turn paradoxical.

Does each religion have an equal chance of being true or is there a hierarchy? Do all religions have at least a greater than zero chance at being true? What if I made up a new religion right now? Since the total probability for all potential options cannot exceed 100% does that mean I’ve effectively lowered the probability that Christianity is true simply by adding one more option to that side of the coin?

Wait, come back.

Fun with Probability

You can break the odds down even further by contemplating which version of Christianity is the right one. Maybe you roll the dice and it lands on C for Christian. When you look close, you notice even the Christian religion is broken down into several sub-categories.

Hopefully, whatever version of Christian you are is close enough to the way God intended that he lets you slip by. What if the Christian God is the one true God but the Westboro Baptists were actually the only ones playing the Christianity game in the way God intended? You’d just have to hope that God wasn’t upset at your more tolerant reading of the scriptures.

The Probability of Success

If the odds were one in a million that God exists, and if all other potential options were that God Does Not Exist, Pascal’s wager would still make the most logical sense [other than spending your life chasing after the flat earth]. But because we now have to account for the possibility that some other religion is actually the one true religion- thus adding risk to the equation on the Christian coin- Pascal’s wager becomes less like a free coin-flip and more like a terrifying game of Russian Roulette.

Since it’s theoretically possible that Hinduism is the one true religion, you’re no longer wagering with a no-harm-no-foul free-roll. Now you’re forced to incur risk, no matter which option you pick.

In the original Pascal’s wager, the risk to reward ratio was heavily skewed in favor of Christianity over atheism. But once you add in other religions you’re introducing risk on all sides. Now instead of getting a free-roll, you’re holding your breath hoping that you picked the correct God. It’s not enough to bet God DOES exist, you have to correctly pick WHICH God exists.

So, which religion is the most likely to produce the desired result?

Even if we decide all the random obscure religions probably aren’t true, there are still five or six main religions in the running. Each of those religions has subsets of doctrinal differences ranging from minuscule to incongruent.

Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism all have millions of followers who are quite sure their particular brand of their particular religion is the right one. If you asked any religious individual how worried they are that they picked the wrong religion they’d probably say, “Not worried at all,” even though the probability suggests that any random individual you could pluck out almost certainly picked the wrong subset, if not the entire wrong religion.

I’m always tickled with how little worry people give to the idea that God might be real, but their religion might be false.  You might hear a Christian share a story of lying awake at night agonizing over whether to believe in God. They finally decide that all this beauty could not possibly have just happened at random. They wake up the next morning as proud Christians somewhere in the US of A.

Of course, on the other side of the world, someone else had the exact same internal debate and came to the conclusion that without Brahma none of this would be possible.

What about the countless Native Americans who lived and died believing in a completely different spirit world?

What you don’t hear are stories of people lying awake trying to decide if Islam or Christianity is the better choice. You also don’t hear people in Kentucky worrying about whether to believe in Allah or whether to be atheists. Likewise, I’m sure people living in India aren’t losing a tremendous amount of sleep wondering if being a Mormon or being a Lutheran would provide the greatest likelihood of eternal life.

Why we believe what we believe

If we’re being totally honest with ourselves we’ll eventually come to the conclusion that our geographic location likely has far more to do with our religion than any serious look at the evidence. Whether we believe Jesus or Mohamed is a likelier path to heaven has everything to do with our upbringing, not a logical argument for or against either one.

I don’t know whether or not to take people seriously when they can’t fathom how anyone could sleep at night as an atheist but they don’t see the parallel with their own lack of belief in Krishna.

“What?! You don’t believe in Jesus? Don’t you know that you’re going to burn in hell forever if you don’t accept the free gift of salvation?! What an idiot.”

-OR-

“What?! You don’t believe in Allah? Don’t you know that you’re going to burn in hell forever if you don’t reject Jesus and believe Allah is the one true God and Muhamed is his prophet?! What an idiot.”

You can’t simply choose the door of belief, you have to choose the correct door.

It would be nice if God set it up to where we could just walk through the God Does Exist Door and call it a day.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. Even if we decide to believe that there probably is a divine being somewhere out there, we still have to find the right door. It’s quite stressful.

Just kidding, though. This is America. Everyone KNOWS Christianity is true and it’s super unlikely that some other random religion is actually the true one.

In fact, this whole dice thing is misleading. The actual dice should look like this…

One slot can be reserved for the slim chance there is no God and another slot can be for the slim chance some other religion is right. The rest of the slots are for the Christian God of America. We’ll take that bet anytime.

Just because you were born in Iowa, have never traveled outside of the continental United States, have never actually read the Qur’an, and have no idea how the Bible was even put together, don’t let people tell you your religious confidence is misplaced.

Christianity is the BEST religion. Let’s go to the Cracker Barrel.

To be fair, I think everyone’s dice looks like this, not just Americans. We all think we have the corner market on truth.

Out of curiosity, are you not even the slightest bit worried that Islam might actually be the one true religion? What about Judaism? Maybe Jesus was just pulling everyone’s leg and his disciples covered it up and made up a story about his resurrection. What if the miracles attributed to Siddhārtha Gautama really did happen?

How can we so confidently dismiss other religions but hang our hats on the knowledge that we’re choosing the God Exists side of the coin?

Knowing all this, it still makes betting sense to believe in SOME God. Even a one in five shot at picking the most likely God is better than not even trying. Right?

So why are people atheists?

If you zoom the telescope of belief back you start to notice common threads that run through all the major religions. When you factor in our propensity to believe with those in our tribe it starts to look like picking the correct religion is really just a matter of dumb luck.

But if no religion is universally regarded as the most likely why would we assume any religion is true? You’d think that if one of the religions actually were true we’d eventually get rid of all the other ones.

True atheists don’t lose sleep over their unbelief. It would be like asking you if you lose sleep over not believing in Santa Claus. All of us are atheists when it comes to 99% of the gods and goddesses that have ever ‘existed’. Real atheists just take their lack of belief one God further.

For atheists, the pursuit of intellectual honesty outweighs the desire to throw a last-second hail mary pass and pick a door at random.

My own Wager

Pascal’s wager, although filled with logical fallacies, is the reason I’m personally not brave enough to identify as an atheist. If I could pick a literal door, I’d pick the Christian God. But, that’s only because the reward outweighs the potential reward for picking no God.

I fully recognize the main reason I’m picking the Christian God over Brahma is that I was born in Montana, USA and the majority of my family members also pick the Christian God.

Intellectually I think it’s more likely that the correct door is No God Exists. The only reason I’m picking the Christian God Door over No God Exists Door is it seems unlikely that picking no God would yield any type of reward. But, can I really choose what to believe? Am I really picking the Christian God door just because I want that to be true? Could you choose to believe in Santa Claus just because the potential reward outweighs not believing in him?

If there were somehow a reward for getting atheism right, I’d put my bet there. I have a fantasy that God exists and he’ll just let everyone into heaven because he’s not a dick. In this scenario, I hope he’s especially proud of atheists for holding onto their conviction despite the apparent lack of reward.

Anyway. That’s Pascal’s wager.

Next: On God: Christmas Edition- Santa vs. Jesus

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Here’s a much more academic description of Pascal’s Wager, if you’re interested in that kind of thing as opposed to my ramblings.

Catch up on the On God series here: On God Part I

Read something about finance here: Financial Independence and the Art of Travel Hacking

Read something funny here: Why Small Talk is The Worst