As I read yet another refutation of Pascal’s Wager, I’m reminded of a conversation I had with my father yesterday. For those of you not familiar with Pascal’s Wager, it goes something like this:
- If you believe in God and God exists, you will be rewarded with an eternity in Heaven.
- If you believe in God and God does not exist, you gain nothing and lose nothing.
- If you don’t believe in God and God exists, you will be punished with an eternity in Hell.
- If you don’t believe in God and God exists, you will gain nothing but lose nothing.
- The only logical choice is to believe in God, because it is the only choice in which you may be rewarded and always avoid punishment.
Of course there are already a plethora of logical arguments that blow Pascal’s Wager out of the water, but if you already accept some religious path based on faith, logic isn’t going to convince you. Below is a recollection of the conversation I had with my father, which helps explain why Pascal’s Wager just doesn’t work in practice.
A Conversation with my Father
Yesterday my dad and I had a heart to heart about religion and it proved to me why Pascal’s Wager doesn’t work in practice, let alone under the scrutiny of logic.
After telling my dad a story about my previous night’s activities (which included going to a strip club, a bar, and nearly getting arrested for climbing up a building because I was drunk and it was fun), dad started crying.
You would think a good Christian father would be crying because of how far my life seems to have strayed from the path of Christ, but that’s not why dad was crying.
He explained that the tears were cried out of jealousy; my father envies my life because I’m able to live my life for myself, I get to taste the pleasures forbid him as a young man, and yet I remain a good person. Dad grew up not knowing the most simple pleasures because they were “sinful” in the eyes of the church and an ultra-indoctrinated family who never questioned the church’s reasoning (if there was any).
Pascal’s Wager fails because there is plenty to lose by accepting any religious doctrine that Pascal just disregards. I cry for my father that it took 50 years of living to finally get it.
April 23rd, 2007 at 3:03 pm
At practice for my conformation I was busted holding hands with a boy in the church pew. Not a good thing for a nun to catch you doing while you are supposed to be remembering the fruits of the Holy Spirit and what not. She pulled me aside, read me the riot act, called me a “bold brazen article” (that I will never forget!), and told me that “God is always watching.”
I wish that I had the guts then to tell her that I hope He was. I hope He was watching me be 13 and joyful and full of the newness of first loves and first crushes because, for me at least, God is about joy, not condemnation.