The Double Refuge ✝︎ Saint Francis

Pascal’s Wager 2

Six Problems

✝︎

In the fragment entitled That it’s more advantageous to believe than not to believe (Pensées, Chapter 7: Qu’il est plus avantageux de croire que de ne pas croire), Pascal argues that we should bet on belief rather than on disbelief, because we have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

— God exists, or He doesn’t. But to which side shall we lean? Reason can’t decide anything here: there’s an infinite chaos which separates us. A game is being played, at the extreme of this infinite distance, where the result will be heads or tails.What will you wager? According to reason, you can’t wager on one or the other; according to reason, you can’t forbid either of the two. Don’t accuse of falsity those who have made a choice, since you don’t know anything about it. 

— No, but I don’t blame them for having made this choice, but for having made a choice, for again both he who chooses heads and he who chooses tails are equally at fault; they are both in the wrong. The true course is not to wager at all. 

— Yes; but you must wager; it’s not voluntary; you’re already embarked. Which will you take then? Let us see. Since you must choose, let us see which interests you least. You have two things to lose: the true and the good, and two things to stake: your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness. Also, your nature has two things to shun: error and misery. Your reason isn’t more hurt in choosing one or the other, since it’s required by necessity to choose. This is one point settled. But your happiness? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God exists. Let us estimate these two cases: if you win, you win everything; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists. (trans. RYC)

— Dieu est, ou il n’est pas. Mais de quel côté pencherons-nous? La raison n’y peut rien déterminer: il y a un chaos infini qui nous sépare. Il se joue un jeu, à l’extrémité de cette distance infinie, où il arrivera croix ou pile. Que gagerez-vous? Par raison, vous ne pouvez faire ni l’un ni l’autre; par raison, vous ne pouvez défendre nul des deux. Ne blâmez donc pas de fausseté ceux qui ont pris un choix ; car vous n'en savez rien. 

— Non; mais je les blâmerai d’avoir fait, non ce choix, mais un choix; car, encore que celui qui prend croix et l’autre soient en pareille faute, ils sont tous deux en faute : le juste est de ne point parier. 

— Oui; mais il faut parier. Cela n’est pas volontaire, vous êtes embarqué. Lequel prendrez-vous donc? Voyons. Puisqu’il faut choisir, voyons ce qui vous intéresse le moins. Vous avez deux choses à perdre: le vrai et le bien, et deux choses à engager: votre raison et votre volonté, votre connaissance et votre béatitude; et votre nature a deux choses à fuir: l’erreur et la misère. Votre raison n’est pas plus blessée, en choisissant l’un que l’autre, puisqu’il faut nécessairement choisir. Voilà un point vidé. Mais votre béatitude? Pesons le gain et la perte, en prenant croix que Dieu est. Estimons ces deux cas: si vous gagnez, vous gagnez tout ; si vous perdez, vous ne perdez rien. Gagez donc qu’il est, sans hésiter.

Pascal’s argument lends a simple, inevitable rationality to the otherwise vexed question of whether or not to believe in God. Yet the argument has at least six problems, at least for people who want to be open to both doubt and different forms of belief.

(For more context, see Wikipedia’s entry on Pascal’s Wager, which contains context and critiques, from Inconsistent Revelations to Inauthentic Belief. Also, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s extensive entry on Pascal’s Wager includes objections based on The Probability Assigned to God’s Existence, Rationality Requires Maximizing Expected Utility, and Moral Objections to Wagering for God.)

After looking at the six problems, I’ll focus (on the next page, God & Infinity) on what I see as most problematic in his argument: Pascal posits an almost infinite world between nothing and God, yet his wager omits the almost infinite possibilities of this world. He insists on zero OR infinity. This problem is vexing in at least two ways: 1. in terms of math, it leaves out every number and hence every thing between zero and infinity, and 2. in terms of theology, it leaves out all the ways of understanding or experiencing God that aren’t included in traditional Christianity.

🎲

Problem 1

The first problem with Pascal’s wager lies in its simplicity. Pascal simplifies what may be the most complex and perplexing choice known to humanity. The strength of simplicity here becomes its weakness, reducing a complex and important decision to the simplest game of chance. Non-Christian players (as well as many ecumenical Christians) are left asking questions such as, What rules — and assumptions about God and belief — govern this game of chance? and What other games of chance might we play instead? 

2.

A second problem lies in the historical context. Pascal puts the doubter on the defensive, creating a scenario in which a doubter accuses a believer. Who are all these mid-17th century unbelievers who need to be reminded, “Don’t accuse of falsity those who have made a choice, since you don’t know anything about it”? The historical reality is the opposite: the believers back then were the ones accusing the unbelievers of falsity. It seems odd that, even before Hume or Voltaire, a doubter is being accused of not letting a believer choose between belief and disbelief. Back then, it was the believer who wasn’t allowing the doubter to choose.

3.

Pascal also starts with a debatable premise, an almost Old Testament pronouncement: God is, or He isn’t. It would be more accurate to observe, We think or believe that God exists or doesn’t exist. This distinction may seem small to some, yet it gets at the epistemology of belief, especially as this relates to doubt. Pascal’s premise leaves out a fact he acknowledges elsewhere: we don’t know that God exists or doesn’t exist. We may think or believe one way or the other, but we don’t know, at least not in a demonstrable or verifiable way. Any choice we make about God’s existence remains an opinion based on two unquantifiable and unqualifiable alternatives. The choice overlooks, or overshoots, the basic human experience of not knowing. How can we evaluate the relative truth of two options if we can’t understand either option with any degree of certainty? The only thing we know for sure is that we’re unable to make a clear choice between one or the other. And yet, Pascal insists that we must choose. 

4.

Pascal also provides a false dichotomy between 1. belief and 2. disbelief, yet within the latter lie the distinct possibilities of 2. disbelief and 3. doubt. The choice isn’t dichotomous, but rather trichotomous at the very least, and possibly polychotomous (if one can imagine such a word). This problem is related to the problem often faced by agnostics when pressed to take a side, get off the fence, and decide on belief or disbelief. This problem is also related to my final two problems with Pascal’s wager — constraint on agency and assumption of a specific belief system.

5.

Pascal also constrains our agency when he writes that we must choose, despite his imaginary interlocutor’s point that the “true course is not to wager at all.” Yet why must we choose? Does God look askance at humans for not making a choice? Are the rules of the game one-sided, pre-empting the option of a God who isn’t a jealous one? If God is outraged by our inability to see Him, why does He make it so hard to see Him?

In Chapter 18 of Pensées, entitled “God’s design to hide Himself from some and to reveal Himself to others” (Dessein de Dieu de se cacher aux uns, et de se découvrir aux autres), Pascal writes that “He has […] given visible marks of Himself to those who search for Him and not to those who don’t search for Him. There’s plenty of light for those who only wish to see, and plenty of darkness for those who have a contrary disposition” (“il a donné des marques de soi visibles à ceux qui le cherchent et non à ceux qui ne le cherchent pas. Il y a assez de lumière pour ceux qui ne désirent que de voir et assez d’obscurité pour ceux qui ont une disposition contraire”). This appears to have an inordinate amount of confirmation bias. Anyone tirelessly searching for angels may mistake a cloud-bank for a choir, and anyone tirelessly searching for snakes may mistake a rope for Satan.

Also, Pascal’s wager here doesn’t address the question of agnostics who are open to whatever’s true. Pascal’s dichotomy again gets in the way: agnostics who seek truth aren’t searching for a particular truth and they’re certainly not refusing to search for truth. They don’t fit into Pascal’s simplistic duality, which presupposes one group ardently and somewhat angelically wanting to believe in God and another group hell-bent on denying Cosmic Meaning and the eternal soul. Pascal’s wording is particularly problematic: the first group only wants to see, while the other group apparently has a contrary disposition. This second category doesn’t even apply to atheists: they don’t desire not to see; they simply don’t see what Pascal thinks they should. The second category applies even less to agnostics, who desire to see whatever is true, and who attempt to acknowledge whatever in their upbringing or cultural formation may make them biased, pre-judgmental, or unable to see clearly.

This brings me back to the problem of confirmation bias. Are those who seek God finding what they want to see rather than what is necessarily there? Are they programmed by history and geography to believe what their culture tells them to? On earth there are billions of people raised to believe specific things, and billions of people who see the specific things they are raised to believe. To make matters worse, there are at least three groups of believers that are larger than one billion people (Christians, Muslims, and Hindus), and each of these groups believes in specific things that the others do not.

6.

Finally, Pascal presupposes a belief-system in which God only rewards those who believe. The question of gain and loss is closely related to the problem of a false dichotomy: if God rewards belief, it’s hard to see what happens to someone who doubts, given that doubt isn’t the same thing as disbelief. Yet the problem is deeper than any concern about the degrees of reward or loss: Why does one necessarily lose anything at all by not believing? If God exists, He exists whether or not we believe in Him. And if He is a just God, rather than a jealous God, then he will understand our confusion, judging us on our motives and actions, rather than on our opinions or beliefs. Perhaps God exists and His criteria for rewarding us with a soul or an afterlife (as per the early Egyptian scenario) is that people not believe blindly and that they not believe in a system that’s contrary to what’s reasonable, demonstrable, or inclusive. 

This problem could be avoided by expanding the notion of God to include all forms of Deity. In such a case, the term belief would encompass much of the universe that’s excluded when we define God with historical, geographical, and/or doctrinal precision. If Pascal said that we could believe in a God that incarnated Himself in the days of Rome (like Christianity) or a God that flows in nature and doesn’t command obedience (like the Dao) or a God that’s everywhere and in all life forms (like Hinduism’s Advaita Vedanta), then much of what was implicitly excluded becomes explicitly included.

Believing in this expanded way, one doesn’t choose between, but accepts among. The very act of open acceptance of belief opens one’s mind and soul to all other forms of belief. The force of this openness is so great that at all the edges of these other beliefs one sees the constant shifting, from doubt to belief and from belief to doubt. One appreciates or accepts all the possibilities that lie toward or adjacent to doubt and belief. This is the style of the double refuge, where the stark choice isn’t required. The difference between belief and doubt remains, but we are left in the moment, in whatever form of questioning or certainty makes sense or feel right to us. We are free to choose our own way, seeing God in a specific moment of history or seeing God everywhere and always. On a cross or in the flowing currents of a river and vast currents of the sky.

Pascal’s notion that we gain by believing is a good one, as long as this new belief doesn’t close us off to other ways of thinking and believing. Yet too often this stark choice pushes us into the old conservative dichotomy, that is, into the exclusive mindset that compels a specific form of belief and denies all other forms. The threat is more subtle than that of a fire-and-brimstone preacher, yet it operates nevertheless. 

This is a real problem since there already exist many different systems of belief which don’t presuppose such a view of God or belief. Most obvious among these are Daoism, Neo-platonism, and the four main religions from India (Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism). In the Indian systems actions are more important than beliefs. The law of karma-samsara pre-empts and subsumes whatever virtue-laden beliefs one might hold. Here are the concluding four paragraphs from a Hindu take on Pascal’s wager (from Western Hindu), in which the author argues that Pascal’s wager isn’t a good reason to convert to Christianity:

Imagine that someone said that they believed your father to be a violent man, and suggested that you should wear body armour when you visited him. I would imagine that for most of you this woul be a ridiculous suggestion. Imagine this person said “well you could be right, but there will be no harm in wearing the armour if you are. In the off chance you are wrong it could save you.” Most of us would tell him that we know and love our parents and would not insult our fathers by wearing armour. If anyone did begin to doubt, and [wore] armour just in case they would be changing the way they saw their father. They would be seeing him as somebody who might not be kind and loving towards his children.

Knowing God as good and merciful, and that God’s spirit is in us all, how can we listen to anyone saying that we should change religion to defend against his violence. To do such would be denying God’s goodness, and that is wrong.

Likewise it would be wrong to change our view of God to one who may not love us all. It would also change our view of others, so we would no longer see everyone as beloved children of God with a divine spark of goodness in us all. We would be seeing some as good and saved, and others as wicked, condemned outsiders, not worthy of God’s love. This [too] would be wrong.

To change our view of God on a wager, even if it were valid, would be wrong to God, to others and ultimately to our own spirit. Pascal’s wager may have had some credence in Europe at a time when Christianity and Atheism were seen as the only options, but it provides no reason to switch from Hinduism to an exclusive sect.

Humans have come up with a certain number of religions so far, yet there may be many more to come, including one in which the hope of an almighty benevolent Force ruling the universe is more valid than a belief in such a Force. The maxim of such a religion, Hope, Doubt, and Charity, may please God more than a maxim which insists on a Faith that’s defined in historically dubious ways and that’s used to exclude others. While some people believe in God because religions stay fixed (or true) to their messages, others believe in God despite the dogmas that divide people. Still others find that dogma chases them away from religion altogether. 

Human belief systems are one thing, yet God and the universe are another. Any system we follow is likely to see both gospel and universe in human-centred terms. We may come up with the most fair and compassionate system on Earth, yet it will remain human, humane, humanist, humanitarian, and whatever else circles back to the indisputable fact: both its wonder and its limitations are devised by bipods who breath oxygen, reproduce sexually, scramble for limited resources, and are deeply imprinted with the biases of family, clan, nation, language, culture, historical moment, etc. 

The importance of astronomy is crucial here: astronomy, combined with an understanding of biological diversity, presses home the following two points: 1. we’re a tiny part of the cosmos, and 2. other life forms are almost certain to exist. If one agrees to these two points, then it isn’t a stretch to imagine that some of these life forms would have different capabilities, greater understandings of the universe, and more wide-ranging or inclusive belief systems. While one can only speculate on what these systems might contain, I imagine that the most tolerant and inclusive of them would have something of Daoism’s far-ranging and open speculation, Jainism’s emphases on non-violence, and something of Sikhism, Neoplatonism, and the Chinese religions in their syncretism. Alien religions might also resemble Hinduism in its multifarious nature and in its exceptionally large concepts of space, time, multiple worlds, and layers of reality. 

Pascal’s Wager isn’t convincing because it presupposes a jealous Abrahamic God and because it boils our options down to belief or disbelief, thus ignoring the trichotomy of belief, doubt, and disbelief as well as the polychotomy of all the gospels in this and (potentially) other worlds. As I will explore in the next page, the wager also goes against basic rational thinking, both in terms of a mathematical understanding of infinity, and an open or inclusive definition of God.

✝︎

Next: ✝︎ Pascal 3: God & Infinity

Back to Top

Contents - Detailed Contents - Core Beliefs - Overview