Suppose that no amount of evidence or reasoning can prove to us that God exists. Should we still live as if God does? Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) believed that it would be overwhelmingly rational for us to do so.
In Pascal’s view, each of us is forced to make a kind of wager – a kind of bet, with our lives. We either live religiously, go to Church, and pray to God, or we don’t. If we do, and it turns out that God does exist, then there’s an infinite reward: for we get to ascend into Heaven. If we don’t live religiously, and it turns out that God exists, then we miss out on the infinite reward. However, in the case that we live religiously, go to church and pray, and it turns out that God doesn’t exist, we then waste precious time and energy here on Earth. If God doesn’t exist and we haven’t lived religiously, though, no time and energy is wasted. Now, no matter how the big the amount of time and energy spent on religious matters, this is nothing in comparison to the reward we stand to gain if God does exist and we live religiously. An infinite reward will always dwarf a finite one, no matter its size. Couple this together with the supposition that we cannot know conclusively whether God exists, that is, with the supposition that we can assign non-zero odds to both God’s existence and his non-existence, and we can draw up a decision matrix for the different bets we might make with our lives as follows: Live religiously God exists. Some non-zero chance of being true × infinite reward (heaven, minus finite loss of time and energy) = positive infinite value. God doesn’t exist. Some non-zero chance of being true × finite loss (of time and energy) = negative finite value. Do not live religiously God exists. Some non-zero chance of being true × infinite loss (hell, and loss of heaven) = infinite negative value. God doesn’t exist. Some non-zero chance of being true × finite gain (of time and energy) = finite positive value From looking at these options, we can see that (seeking) belief in God is our ‘best bet’. If we ‘win’, we win big, if we ‘lose’, we lost very, very little in comparison. Therefore, we’d be quite irrational not to gamble that potential finite loss and not to give ourselves a chance of winning. Better get ourselves to church then, forthwith! | |||