Odds Are, They Don't Get It (CA)

Redeeming "Pascal's wager"...


A few months ago, in a small article on washingtonpost.com, Sam Harris did what he does best. In typical fashion, Harris gave the impression that he clearly understood something related to religion. As with most of Harris’ work on religion, this is exactly that: an impression, and nothing more. Harris has a view of Pascal’s wager that is unsophisticated and careless. In his defense, so to speak, that’s not an uncommon problem. Pascal’s infamous statement on the “odds” behind Christian faith is more misunderstood, considering its renown, than any other philosophical statement in history. Both believers and non-believers misinterpret Pascal’s real point. Supporters miss the major limitations of the wager, and critics miss the deliberately narrow scope of it. Harris, as usual, is separated from the ignorant anti-Christians only by eloquence, not wisdom.

My intention here is not just to refute Harris. That’s more of a means to an end. My real purpose is to show that Pascal’s wager is neither a slam-dunk argument for belief in Christ, nor a worthless and meaningless platitude. Taking a slightly different view of Pascal’s idea, actually, makes a very useful point for the purposes of apologetics. As this is the first of a three-post discussion, I’m just going to correct some misunderstandings about Pascal’s wager, using Harris’ article as an example of what not to do, and then create a tie-in to the ultimate idea, which will be fully revealed in the third post.


In condensed form, Pascal’s wager actually says the following, presented in a semi-syllogistic form. Note that “God” here refers to the God of Christianity:

1. Everyone must wager by either believing in God, or not believing in God. There are no neutral choices.
2. Pure reason cannot decide either for or against the existence of God.
3. It is equally likely that God exists, or no god exists.
4. Therefore, we should decide which side to pursue on the basis of “happiness”.

So...


5. If you choose belief in God, and are right, you gain infinite happiness. If you are wrong, you neither gain nor lose anything.
6. If you choose to reject God, and you are right, you neither gain nor lose anything. If you are wrong, you suffer infinite loss.
7. Therefore, belief in God represents the “safe bet”; ultimately, you have everything to gain and nothing to lose.

This is not how Pascal is generally represented. Condensing the wager down much more than above tends to warp both the scope and force of the statement. This is not – I repeat, not – an argument for the existence of God. Pascal tackles the question of God’s existence in other places. The wager is meant to highlight two ideas: the importance of the question of God’s existence, and the practicality of belief in God. Obviously, there are those who will disagree with some assumptions of the wager.

In his article, Harris mentions two other men who invoke Pascal; whether they were wrong in their usage is not in question here, since Harris decides to make his own clumsy attempt to interpret it. In brief, Harris blows his analysis of Pascal on several major points:

First, Harris over-generalizes Pascal by stating that the wager suggests that “religious believers”, in general, are the safe bettors. Pascal’s wager is very narrowly specified towards Christian believers. Whenever Harris invokes problems with other religions in this discussion, he’s putting words in Pascal’s mouth, and creating problems where none existed.

Second, while making unrelated criticisms of other religions, and bleating the tired mantra of the New Atheists - “all religion is pure evil, and does nothing but hurt the world” - Harris actually turns the wager inside out. Pascal’s wager is personal, not corporate. Pascal is referring to eternal, infinite personal gain, or eternal, infinite personal loss based on one’s choice regarding God. He is not, as Harris seems to think, making any particular claims about the value of religion to society.

Harris smugly says that wager has “an undeserved air of profundity.” Ironic, since I’d say the same thing about Harris’ entire body of work. Setting that aside, however, Harris is on the verge of recognizing that the wager is not the sledgehammer some think it is, yet was never intended to be. He goes wrong when he suggests that the wager could be applied to any religion, and therefore is invalid. You can see how juvenile and silly Harris gets when he suggests that the wager could even be used to argue for reading one newspaper over another. Pascal’s wager suggests a rational “stalemate” of Christianity vs atheism, and the consequences of belief vs. disbelief in Christianity. Lacking those two ideas, it’s no longer Pascal’s wager.

The crowning pratfall of Harris’ analysis, though, is this statement: “But the greatest problem with the wager—and it is a problem that infects religious thinking generally—is its suggestion that a rational person can knowingly will himself to believe a proposition for which he has no evidence.” This combination of bad interpretation of Pascal and the most glaringly, blatantly, irritatingly false criticism of religion is enough to turn my stomach. Pascal was not suggesting a person ignore reason – he invokes the idea of rationality in the wager itself. The wager is not a justification for self-deception, it’s an effort to show that the question of God is worth considering. For those leaning either way, it provides a logical incentive to look closely at Christianity.

Harris drags in the “lack of evidence” excuse, when the wager specifically presumes that evidence and reason alone cannot decide the issue. Pascal recognizes an important idea, which is that belief is indeed, ultimately, a consequence of choice. Harris, like most New Atheists, wants to think that a person has no choice what to believe – a determinism of opinion, so to speak. My experience indicates that any person claiming to reject God for purely intellectual reasons is a liar.

No, that was not a typo. Every atheist who says that they reject the idea of God entirely, or even primarily, for rational, intellectual reasons is being dishonest. Aldous Huxley was honest enough to admit that his atheism was motivated first by a desire for sexual and political freedom, and he found rational arguments to support that view. Not all atheists are as honest as Huxley, but at least a good portion admit that their atheism is primarily an emotional or personal rejection, not a coldly logical response.

Harris resounds another hypocritical chorus here: “Beliefs are not like clothing: comfort, utility, and attractiveness cannot be one’s conscious criteria for acquiring them.” Since most of Harris’ arguments against Christian beliefs are based on his personal opinion that they are uncomfortable, useless, and unattractive, I’m surprised he could write that sentence without laughing at himself. Pascal is not making any such argument, per se. Pascal is really saying that, from an eternal perspective, the believer has everything to gain and nothing to lose. So, a rational person wavering between belief and disbelief has good reasons to choose belief.

Believers and unbelievers alike misrepresent Pascal. The wager is not a proof of God’s existence in any way, shape, or form. Pascal is stating that the question of God’s existence is one without neutral choices, and that choice has important consequences. The loss-gain difference between belief and disbelief makes belief an option with considerable practical value. As C.S. Lewis famously said about Christianity, “The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”

There are flaws in the wager, of course. Pascal automatically dismisses all other religions, considering the choice to be purely between atheism and Christianity. He considers these two choices equally likely, which almost everyone disagrees with in one direction or the other. Pascal considers only eternal consequences, though I see this as the point of the argument. In truth, true believers find everything in this life that non-believers say they want: community, peace, morality, intellectual fulfillment, hope, self-worth, and purpose. Again quoting Lewis,

“All that we call human history--money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery--[is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy."

Critics of the wager often forget that he’s talking about Christianity in particular. Any criticisms that a god might reward sincerity over belief, or that rewards might not be eternal, or that a god might prefer unbelief, are not in keeping with the Christian character of the wager. Pascal also never mentions hell, making the common objection that Pascal’s wager is an appeal to fear incorrect.

With the idea that Christians have “nothing to lose in this life, and everything to gain in the next”, Pascal’s wager is best used as a means to refute the notion that Christians are selling themselves short in this life. In fact, it creates an interesting idea, one that leads us towards the ultimate point of this discussion:

A Christian has much to gain – in this life, in this world – by believing in Christianity. This considers those things prohibited by Christianity to be detrimental, not positive, to a fulfilled life. It could be said that the committed Christian life is one worth living, regardless of whether there is a God or not. Every deep desire of humanity can be found in some legitimate way in Christianity; so, if oblivion awaits us in the end, we’ve lost nothing. This makes Christian belief worthwhile independent of its truth value.

Atheism, on the other hand, is not worthwhile to belief if it’s false, due to the profound loss risked. Even more so, really living as if there is no God results in much less happiness than living otherwise, as history has shown. It could be said that the atheistic life is not worth living, even if it was true (and the fact that atheists never live out the consequences of that belief supports this). There is no ultimate good to be gained from it.

Christianity has value, even if false. Atheism has no value, even if true. Consider these two ideas as we move forward towards the next related point, naturalism and free will, in Thursday’s post.