Pascal's Wager: The Empty Wager

The Empty Wager

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Pascal's wager is betting on the existence of god. It suggests that belief in god has everything to gain and nothing to lose. Blaise Pascal argued that it is a better "bet" to believe that God exists, because the expected value to be gained from believing that God exists is greater than the expected value resulting from non-belief.

This argument has some major flaws. Some of them are:
1. It assumes that god (if it exists) rewards belief and punishes non-belief.
2. It assumes that the individual has chosen the right god.
3. It assumes that the individual is a member of the right religion or sect of that religion.
4. It requires that any person who is believing in a god to avoid punishment or gain reward would need to believe in all the religions which consider non-belief punishable.
5. It assumes that god/gods would not know that you are believing in order to avoid punishment or to gain reward.

So, if you claim that we should believe in Christianity just because of the possibility of being punished for not believing in it, then what are you going to say about other religions which also make such a claim? Based on Pascal's wager, Islam, Christianity and Hinduism cannot all be correct as they do not worship the same god/gods in the same way. So, to escape punishment, for Pascal's Wager to work, you would need to believe in all 3. Or some unknown non-Christian gods might exist, and punish Christian believers for their failure to believe in them. Or some powerful entity might decide to punish those who believe in a god while rewarding non-believers. To avoid punishment from believing in the wrong god, one would need to believe in all of them. This is bound to upset at least one of them, if any of them exist in the first place.

Also, if the belief is basely solely on the expectation of reward and the fear of punishment, instead of other things as well, such as the desire to do good, it is not belief with pure intent, which, if any of the gods exist, is bound to piss off at least one of them. I am not sure that "pretending to believe just in case" would score many "god brownie points." This is apart from a lifetime spent in worshipping which my turn out to be the wrong god, or a non-existent god. Thus a life spent on either a wilful delusion or a lie. So it is a fallacy that those who believe have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

"Men never do evil so completely or cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." Blaise Pascal

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(Pascal's Wager always reminds me of the part in "The Mummy" where Benny is confronted by the mummy as it is hunting for body parts from which to reconstitute its own body. Benny is trapped against the wall inside the burial chamber with the egyptian mummy advancing towards him. Benny begins to pull out a dozen or so religious amulets from around his neck, and tries to use them as religious talismans to warn off the advances of the mummy. What saves him from the mummy, according to the story, is not his belief in any of the religions, but the fact that he can speak ancient hebrew. The moral of the story seems to be that it isn't belief that is going to save you from a dangerous situation, but knowledge. Specifically in Benny's case, it is the knowledge of another language which makes him useful - even if it was only on a temporay basis. Nonetheless, that part in the movie always makes me laugh as Benny is in effect, pretending to believe in all the gods, in the hope that none of the others, should they exist, be offended.)

Some of Benny's antics from "The Mummy."

LINK: The Empty Wager by Sam Harris

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