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False reasons: An example of Pascal’s Wager
I have once again been presented with Pascal’s Wager as an argument for why I should believe in God. In this essay, I will review the argument, and what I feel is wrong with it. That is very well covered ground, but I hope to provide some new insight along the way. Finally I will use the example of Pascal’s Wager to help me make the distinction between stated reasons and actual reasons.
I’ve suggested earlier that both the faithful and the atheist are often unaware of their real reasons for why they hold the positions that they hold. I’d like to speculate more on this topic and will be using Pascal’s Wager as a starting point.
Pascal’s Wager
The most common form of Pascal’s Wager correctly points out an important asymmetry between the believer and the non-believer. The non-believer, if wrong, has a great deal to lose. The believer, if wrong, has merely wasted some time, energy, money on an incorrect belief. I have been presented with Pascal’s Wager by both Christians and Muslims, but for discussion here I will talk about the Christian version of it. It can easily be adapted to most religions.
Christian’s, on the whole, believe in a deity that will reward you for believing in it and punish you if you deny its existence. Because the reward is so great and the punishment so horrendous, the argument goes, that even if such a god is unlikely, you are better off accepting it. If the punishment is a million times worse than the cost of believing in something that doesn’t exist, then even if the chances of its existence are 1 out of a million you are better off believing. That, in a nutshell, is the argument known as Pascal’s Wager.
There are three problems with with Pascal’s Wager.
- The biggest problem is that it assumes that the choice is only between the Christian god and no god.
- The second problem is that it assumes that a person can choose what to believe.
- The third problem is that is assumes that believing out of fear (or desire for reward) will be acceptable to this god.
These three points (detailed below) are nicely characterized in this month’s Atheist Eve comic.
Picking the right god
I have been presented with Pascal’s Wager by both Christians and Muslims. Suppose I had been persuaded by the Muslim and followed that version of God with the duties and behaviors required of Muslims. Now suppose, that I had bet on the wrong version of God. In trying to please the Muslim version of God, I accepted that while God may have prophets (including Jesus), He did not split Himself in Three and send His human form to redeem us. Claiming the divinity of Jesus would be blasphemy against God.
Now suppose that the Christians are actually correct and the Muslims wrong. I wouldn’t get my reward and would be punished because, although I accepted that there was God and tried to follow His laws, I picked the wrong set of laws.
This can also be presented the other way around: Suppose I accepted the Christian view and accepted Jesus as God. This, of course, would be a huge blasphemy against the Muslim version of God, who doesn’t do such things. If the Muslims are right, then I am denied my reward and will be punished in the after-life.
So now we have three options for belief (Christian, Muslim, Atheist). Betting the wrong way can lead to very bad things. But of course there are more than just three. There are thousands of different religious views that have been stated over the millennia. Most of them are incompatible with the others in terms of what you need to do to please God.
My kind of god
Although I am an Atheist, I certainly know what kinds of gods I personally find more attractive. I believe that two of the greatest things that humans have is our reason and our compassion. I could imagine a god that would reward people who have acted on those. Now suppose that this god weren’t as compassionate as I would like it to be. It might actually punish those who abandon reason to have faith in a god. Maybe this god hates being worshipped, and will punish those who worship it. This god may not be particular plausible (though to my view it is no less plausible than any of the others)
Let’s consider Pascal’s Wager if this god exists. Those who worship and believe in this god will be punished and atheists will be rewarded.
So to sum up this argument for why Pascal’s Wager presents no argument to accept God is that there are lots of alternative notions go God. There is no safe bet.
Picking your beliefs
Can you choose to believe something just because it would be good for you if you did believe it? In the final chapters of 1984 Winston Smith is being tortured until he believes that 2 + 2 = 5. He can’t merely lie to avoid the torture; they need him to actually believe it. In the end, he is tortured into a state of mind where he will genuinely believe what his torturers tell him to believe. But it wasn’t easy to get there.
We do know that people are inclined to believe things that suit their purpose. But when people do that, we tend to call them irrational for doing so. It is violating one portion of what Ken Binmore calls “Aesop’s Principle” for rationality in Rational Decisions:
Pandora’s preferences, her beliefs, and her assessments of what is feasible should all be independent of each other.
Lívia Markóczy (my wife), Larry Zahn and I have actually done a bit of research on some systematic violations of Aesop’s principle in human reasoning, but we fully acknowledge that these are irrational. The far more common violation is simply the habit of giving more credence to evidence that supports your views than to evidence which oppose it. Our beliefs are often, irrationally, self-serving.
It appears, then, that psychologically there is no large barrier in this assumption within Pascal’s Wager that you can pick your beliefs to suit your purposes. But Pascal’s Wager is often presented as a rational argument for belief in God. And so even if this part of Pascal’s Wager is psychologically plausible, it is not fully rational.
Good enough for God?
If one believes in God because of Pascal’s Wager, will that be good enough for God? Does God want more than people believing in Him out of fear or seeking a reward? The God of the New Testament seems to want love beyond mere obedience. So it seems unlikely that He would accept belief that were based solely on Pascal’s Wager.
I won’t try to answer this question. There are different notions of God for which the answer to this question will vary. What I can say is that a god for whom this is good enough is not a very attractive god in my view. Fear and greed just don’t seem like the kinds of things that a good God would want faith based upon.
Instead I leave this as a question to any reader who seriously proposes Pascal’s Wager as an argument for belief in God. If Pascal’s Wager motivates your faith, what does that say about your god and your faith?
Kinds of reasons
As I’ve mentioned, several smart people have presented me with Pascal’s Wager over the years. In most of the cases, I have been able to persuade them that Pascal’s Wager is deeply flawed. They abandoned Pascal’s Wager as a reason or justification for their belief in God. Unsurprisingly, their faith was not in the slightest bit shaken by the elimination of Pascal’s Wager.
What this tells me is that although Pascal’s Wager is frequently mentioned is a major argument for belief, it is not really part of anyone’s real reasons for their belief. Instead, Pascal’s Wager is an argument that gets trotted out because it appears rational and seems like the kind of thing that might appeal to an atheist. It is used in debate, but never in persuasion.
A turnabout example
Just to be fair, I will give an example of an argument often cited by Atheists that also plays no role in anyone’s atheism. It is a faulty argument (though the flaw is more subtle) and likewise, when Atheists learn that the argument is flawed, it has no impact on their beliefs.
This is the classic “Can God make an object so heavy that even He cannot move it?” This seemingly raises a paradox of omnipotence. One way or the other, God is not fully omnipotent. The flaw in this argument is more subtle and difficult to explain. I won’t go into it fully, but basically we need to understand that logic (in a logical argument) must always be maintained. Once God can do something that is logically impossible (as opposed to something physical impossible) then we have lost the ability to talk about this, or anything else, logically.
Few would consider it a real limit of omnipotence to point out that God can’t make six be a prime number, yet that is what the paradox comes down to. Can God create a logical impossibility. The answer must be “no” without this taking anything away from the notion of omnipotence.
As with Pascal’s Wager, when those who present this argument are confronted with its flaw, they simply (we hope) no longer include the argument in their repertoire. But the lose of this argument never shakes anyone’s belief.
What do people really believe?
I want to understand people’s real reasons that underly their beliefs. I expect that for both the believer and for the atheist these true reasons are rarely rational or would stand up to close scrutiny. But getting at them is essential for developing an understanding of ourselves and each other.
This question is more interesting to ask about the believer than it is about the atheist. Irrespective of our true reasons, we atheists do have evidence and reason on our side. We don’t have to invent bizarre and twisted rationalizations to defend our position. That doesn’t mean that we don’t come up with some bad arguments among our good ones. As I have speculated in an earlier post, some atheists may be motivated by a rejection of religious authority.
But it is far more interesting to try to understand why people believe something that is both ridiculous on the face of it and becomes more ridiculous upon closer examination. Pascal’s Wager can provide some brief, rational sounding cover until it is looked at. But that is all it is.
Some false leads
People believe because it gives them comfort.
Belief just doesn’t work that way. You don’t find poor people believing that they are rich to give them comfort. We don’t find hungry people believing that they are well fed to give them comfort.
Because people are brainwashed or indoctrinated.
If brainwashing were so easy you should find cultures in which people believe that the sky is red. Indoctrination may explain why people believe which religion and specific details of their beliefs, but it doesn’t explain why certain sorts of beliefs are susceptible and others aren’t. Stalin and Pol Pot ran enormously powerful attempts at indoctrination of certain beliefs, yet few actually fell for it once the extreme coercion was removed.
Religion is foisted upon the masses in an effort to keep them under control.
See the previous point about indoctrination.
Sexual repression drives people toward religion.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. As I have suggested in a previous post, people who are more sensitive to virtues of “purity” may also be drawn to religion. So while blaming things on sexual repression is silly, there may be some personality correlates to look at.
I briefly listed some things that I find as insufficient explanations. I do have my own outlines of an answer, but I will have to save that for some time in the future.
