Pascal's Wager

    After looking at some of the arguments for the existence of God, you might find yourself frustrated by the attempt to prove God's existence by reason. Perhaps you think that knowledge of God is a matter of faith, not reason. Or perhaps you think that it will just be too hard to prove God's existence by reason alone; maybe you need a mixture of faith and reason. We will be looking at the connection (or possible disconnection) of faith and reason in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, you might think, like Pascal, that whether or not we can prove God's existence by reason, there are pragmatic considerations that show that it is just a good idea to believe in God rather than not.

    The idea that you should believe something because of the prudential benefits that will result is nothing new. Socrates, in the Meno, explains that believing in the value of living the examined life will result in making you a better person than not believing in it. He states: "we shall be better, braver, and more active men if we believe it right to look for what we don't know than if we believe there is no point in looking because we don't know and can never discover." (See Plato's Meno 86b-c, and the S.E.P entry, Pragmatic Arguments for the Existence of God.) Pascal thought similarly about believing in God: taking into consideration all of the costs and benefits of believing in God compared with not believing in God, we will realize that it is better for us to believe in God than to not believe. In this way, it is prudent for us to believe in God.

    Pascal put the matter roughly as follows: Look. Either God exists or he doesn't. And you can either believe that God exists, or you can believe that he doesn't. If God does exist, and you believe in him, then you will likely live a life that will be eternally rewarded in heaven. And, sure, you may miss out on some of the naughty earthly pleasures like sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll, but your good, sin-free behavior will grant you access to infinite reward at the pearly gates of heaven. A small sacrifice, some say, for never-ending reward. However, if God exists and you don't believe in him, then you will likely lead a life that will be eternally punished in hell. And, sure, you might get to go to all of those awesome, debaucherous parties, and you can acquire all of the wealth and shiny, material comforts your God-less heart desires. But all of these indulgent earthly pleasures will be paid for eternally in the fiery pits of hell. Finite enjoyments--no matter how enjoyable--are hardly worth a punishment that lasts FOREVER.

    Now, true. It could be that God doesn't exist. And if that's the case, then you either believe in a thing that doesn't exist or you don't. If you believe in God, and he doesn't exist, you will surely miss out on a lot of fun. You will spend a  lot of time praying and being good and going to church. You will also often think that you are not alone in this world, that you are being looked after from on high, and that your life has Meaning and Purpose. And you will be wrong. But just think! You will never get to know that you are wrong. You will never get to know that you are disillusioned. For if there is no God, then when you die, you die. That's the end of you. There's no moment of realization when all the world's truths come flashing by. You don't get to 'look back' and see the life you've lived, since if there is no God, there is likely no soul, and so you don't get to realize anything after you die. So you will be wrong, but you will never get to know that you are wrong. You will miss out on some fun, and if you are really steadfast in your (false) beliefs, you might be persecuted some. So there is a cost to believing in God if God does not exist. But the cost is minimal. And certainly finite. Contrast this with the situation where God doesn't exist, and you don't believe in God. You get to enjoy all of the earthly pleasures, and you get to be right about your belief that God does not exist. But just like the believer, there will never be a moment of realization that you're right. After you die, you die. And that's the end of you. So you get to be right, but you don't get the satisfaction of being right. The gains you get by being a non-believer in a God-less world are confined to the pleasures afforded by indulging in 'sin', which are finite.

    Put in a simple chart, we can see our options as follows:

   

	God Exists	God Doesn't Exist
Believe in God	Infinite Gain; Finite Loss	Finite Loss
Don't Believe in God	Infinite Loss; Finite Gain	Finite Gain

    It seems, then, that the best option is to believe in God. For if God exists, you get infinite gain with only a finite loss; if God doesn't exist, it is only a finite loss. If you don't believe in God, however, and he does exist, then it is an infinite loss with only a finite gain; if God doesn't exist, it is only a finite gain.

    So it's a no-brainer: it's a better bet to believe in God than to not.


Elaborations, Thoughts, and Objections

    The Judeo-Christian God. The above line of reasoning assumes that God is the Judeo-Christian God. It perhaps assumes that God is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good, but most importantly, it assumes that God is a judger, a rewarder, and a punisher. It assumes that there is a heaven and hell, and that one of the necessary requirements for getting into heaven is being a believer. It assumes that both hell and heaven are infinite and that our deeds and pleasures on earth are finite. But it is no objection to say that it is unlikely that such a God exists. For if it's possible that the Judeo-Christian exists--no matter how improbable the possibility--then this is enough for it to be a good idea to believe in him. For, no matter how slim the possibility, the benefit is infinite if you believe in him, and the cost is infinite of you don't. And that will outweigh a finite cost or benefit every time. Even if the probability of God existing is really, really small--so long as the probability is non-zero--it will always be better to believe in God than not to.

    That's right, the Judeo-Christian God. Well, if so, then what would this God think about someone coming to believe in him by way of these pragmatic considerations? Would a Judeo-Christian God, one who is ready to dole out infinite punishment for disbelief of him, really respect a decision to believe in him because it's a good bet to do so?  If not, we must make sure that the cost-benefit analysis takes into consideration any losses one might incur from believing in God because of Pascal's Wager. Another way of putting the point: even if Pascal is right that belief in God is just a good idea, pragmatically, these considerations better not be why one believes in God. For given that it is the Judeo-Christian God we're talking about, it's unlikely he'll reward anyone who believes in him because the odds are in a believer's favor. So we might wonder what good Pascal's Wager really does us in the end.

    Are Beliefs Voluntary? Independent of the previous worry, however, is the additional worry about whether we can even decide on a belief. Think about it. Can you just choose to believe something? And can you do so, not in light of evidence, but just because it makes good, pragmatic sense to do so? Suppose I offer you a million dollars right now if you believe that the earth is flat. Or two million if you believe that it seems to you as if you are sky diving. Can you do it? Can you choose to believe the earth is flat or that it seems to you as if you are sky diving? You may say you do, just to get the millions, but I doubt that you can get yourself to legitimately believe either of these things. Yet if we can't choose to believe something--if beliefs aren't voluntary, in other words--then Pascal's Wager isn't going to do us much good. For no matter how good and how infinite the reward, we won't be able to plunk down on a belief the way you might plunk down chips on a roulette table.

    The Anti-God. We've pointed out that Pascal's Wager assumes that God is the traditional Judeo-Christian God. And there are two, exhaustive possibilities about his existence: either he exists or he does not. But this goes for any sort of deity we consider. So let us imagine Anti-God. Anti-God is a weirdly jealous divine being: he'll divvy out eternal reward to anyone who disbelieves in the Judeo-Christian God, and will eternally punish anyone who believes in the Judeo-Christian God. So if Anti-God exists, and you believe in the Judeo-Christian God, you accrue infinite loss; if Anti-God exists, and you don't believe in the Judeo-Christian God, you accrue infinite gain. If Anti-God doesn't exist, then the gains and losses are finite no matter what you believe or don't believe, and so outweighed by the possibility of infinite rewards and punishments. But then the chart we have for Anti-God looks like this:

	Anti-God Exists	Anti-God Doesn't Exist
Believe in God	Infinite Loss; Finite Loss	Finite Loss
Don't Believe in God	Infinite Gain; Finite Gain	Finite Gain

These results directly contradict the original Pascal's Wager. For now we have infinite gain if we don't believe in God, and Anti-God exists, and infinite loss if we believe in God, and Anti-God exists. So now we have exactly parallel reasons to believe oppositely of what Pascal's Wager predicts we should.


W. K. Clifford

    Perhaps you object to Pascal's Wager on different grounds. Perhaps you think: never mind whether we are able to choose to believe things willy-nilly, for sometimes, even if we could decide to believe something, it may not be permissible to do so. In other words, there may be an ethics to belief--a set of codes or principles that we are required to follow when forming beliefs. W. K. Clifford certainly thought so. He gives the following sort of example: suppose there is a shipowner who owns a pretty lousy ship. It's leaky and old and will likely fall apart the next time it goes out to sea. But let us suppose that the poor condition of the ship is causing the shipowner much misery. He is losing sleep and can hardly get any of his work done. So he decides to push all thoughts of his ratty old ship from his mind, and instead, he actually convinces himself that his ship's not so bad after all. In fact, he's so successful at talking himself into this (false) belief, that by the time his crew is about to sail out to sea, he is quite certain that his ship is the most seaworthy vessel on the sea. Of course, his beliefs--no matter how strong--do nothing to change the actual facts. So when the first storm hits, the ship falls apart, and all of the crew members die.
   
    Clifford thinks it's clear that we should hold this shipowner responsible for the death of the men. What's more, however, is that the shipowner presumably did something wrong even if no one had died. For part of the immorality of his action, Clifford argues, resides in the fact that he acquired a belief on insufficient evidence. The idea is that we can be held accountable for what we know or don't know, or what we believe or don't believe. This shouldn't be too unfamiliar; we oftentimes hold people responsible for not knowing things that we think they should, or believing something in light of overwhelming contradictory evidence, or even in light of insufficient evidence. Consider someone who, in traffic court, tries to defend her reckless driving by claiming that she didn't know that she was supposed to stop at a stop sign. Or consider your friend who, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, thinks that a certain person is really, really nice. She holds onto her belief despite the fact that her friend is mean to everyone he meets, yells at strangers, kicks puppies, and steals wallets from old ladies. Your friend, like the reckless driver, must be held accountable for how she came about her beliefs. If she believes something false in light of all evidence to the contrary, or if she believes whatever she likes just because it makes her feel better to do so, but not based on the evidence before her, then intuitively she has done something wrong. This something wrong is what Clifford was getting at with his shipowner example: at least one of our ethics of belief, argues Clifford, is that we can't come to believe just any old thing we like--we can only come to believe something when there is sufficient evidence to do so.

    Applying this to Pascal's Wager, we might think that when it comes to a belief in God, you can't just plunk down for God because the odds are in your favor to do so rather than to not do so. Because in so doing you're violating the ethics of belief: you're believing something because you want to, not because you have sufficient evidence. If we can't prove God's existence, or if we don't have sufficient evidence to conclude that God exists, then we can't--i.e., it's not permissible--to acquire a belief in God.

Evidence and Unfalsifiable Theories

    However, we might now be wondering: but what counts as sufficient evidence for God? What sorts of things can we expect to qualify as sufficient evidence when the entity under scrutiny is presumably not tangible or concrete in the way that rocks and trees and monster trucks are? If you are going to have a firm belief in God's existence or a firm belief in God's non-existence then what do you count as evidence for your belief? If Clifford is right, then whatever your belief concerning God, you should be able to say what it is that convinced you to believe what you do. And this cannot be something like: "It just makes me feel better to believe what I do" or "I just get an overwhelming sense that I'm right", etc.

    Relatedly, there is more than just the evidence for a belief that one needs to consider. One also has to keep in mind the conditions under which one would give up a belief, or the falsification conditions. Consider the following parable (summarized by Anthony Flew; originally from John Wisdom):

    Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, "Some        
    gardener must tend this plot." The other disagrees, "There is no gardener." So they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. "But perhaps he is
    an invisible gardener." So they set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. (For they remember how H. G. Well's The Invisible
    Man could be both smelt and touched though he could not be seen.) But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the
    wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry. Yet still the Believer is not convinced. "But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible,
    insensible, to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves." At last
    the Sceptic despairs, "But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an
    imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?"

There are at least two things wrong with the believer in the above story: (i) he keeps amending his theory to fit any purported disconfirming evidence, and relatedly, (ii) he has failed to adopt a theory that has any falsification conditions. That is, his theory does not allow for any conditions under which the theory would be false. But if a theory can never shown to be false under any circumstances, then there seems to be no difference between this theory being true and this theory being false. If a theory is unfalsifiable, in other words, then no evidence in the world would provide sufficient evidence for giving up the theory.

    So it seems we are not only required to have sufficient evidence before acquiring a belief, as Clifford argues, but also, we are prohibited from adopting a belief or theory that is unfalsifiable. Going back to Pascal's Wager, then, we not only need positive evidence for God's existence before we can justifiably believe in him, but we also need to ensure that our theory (about God) is falsifiable.
   
   Both the theist and atheist should consider the following question, respectively: under what conditions would you, theist, be willing to give up your belief in God? Oppositely, under what conditions would you, atheist, be willing to give up your belief in there being no God? Either theory needs to be able to delineate the conditions under which the theory would be false. Otherwise, the difference between them becomes negligible.
   
William James

    Coming soon...

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References and Additional Resources

• Louis P. Pojman, Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, Fourth Edition. pp. 359-376.
• Pragmatic Arguments for Belief in God, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• Pascal's Wager, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• Anthony Flew's Theology and Falsification.
  
• Plato's Meno.
  

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