Blaise Pascal was a seventeenth-century polymath, a master of French prose who contributed to the advance of physics (especially hydraulics), laid the foundations for the modern theory of probability, discovered that air gets thinner as we ascend from Earth’s surface, and invented one of the world’s first mechanical computers. He achieved most of these feats before age thirty. He died in 1662 at age thirty-nine while writing a philosophical defense of Christianity posthumously published under the title Pensées.
After years of scientific and religious meditations, Pascal lamented the futility of all attempts to rationally demonstrate the truth of religion. He remained devout, affirming, “The heart hath reasons that Reason knows not of.”[i]
This statement is anatomically inaccurate. The heart is a senseless muscle, not an organ of cognizance. The heart hath no reasons whatsoever.
Pascal was, of course, speaking metaphorically.[ii]+ Pascal’s metaphorical utterings (“the heart hath reasons”) paraphrased in plain English would perhaps be: “Don’t fret too much about the logic and evidence when judging religion. Let your heart’s desires guide your judgment. If it feels good, believe it.”
As a religious ascetic, Pascal could never admit to doing something just because it felt good. He therefore sought a logical warrant for heeding his pious impulses. He labored to construct a reasonable argument to circumvent reason, a task that only a lover of paradox would undertake. The colonial patriot Ethan Allen voiced the following objection against all attempts to use logic to subvert logic:
Those who invalidate reason ought seriously to consider whether they argue against reason with or without reason; if with reason, then they establish the principle that they are laboring to dethrone: but if they argue without reason (which, in order to be consistent with themselves they must do), they are out of reach of rational conviction, nor do they deserve a rational argument.[iii]
Pascal’s effort to argue against reason with reason makes him vulnerable to Allen’s charge that he is establishing the principle he is trying to dethrone. In Pascal’s behalf, let me submit that Pascal, while guilty of reasoning, is barely so.
Pascal’s argument against reason is expressed in probabilistic terms in the form of a wager. The Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft offers the following paraphrase of Pascal’s wager:
If you place [your bet] with God, you lose nothing, even if it turns out that God does not exist. But if you place it against God, and you are wrong and God does exist, you lose everything.[iv]
Which God was Pascal talking about? His own, obviously. Pascal, like Kreeft, was a Catholic theologian.
Pascal and modern religionists who endorse his argument have conveniently overlooked that his wager, if sound, would justify belief in any god one happens to choose. Indeed, not just any god, but every single god ever conceived, from Allah to Zeus. Once you grant yourself permission to believe in one god contrary to reason, solely on the prospect of the benefit the belief bestows, what’s to stop you from believing in a second god, and a third, and as many as you please? Facts, logic, and all measures of truth are out the window. All you care about is the payback.
Pascal didn’t explicitly say we should believe what is contrary to reason, but he did implicitly argue as much by insisting that when the evidence is ambiguous, we need not suspend judgment, as reason demands. In other words, what reason dictates is not obligatory if it conflicts with one’s desires. This is dumb and dangerous.
Let me first explain why it’s dangerous. Pascal said that if you believe in God and that belief turns out to be wrong, you haven’t really lost much, but if you’re right, you have lots to gain. He could have gone further still by pointing out that even a thoroughly false belief might deliver a big payoff. That would be pure happenstance, however, and the odds are probably against a thoroughly false belief having good consequences that outweigh its bad consequences.
One inescapable cost of believing something false is that you have, at a minimum, lost a piece of the truth—not a trivial concern for those who value truth. There are practical costs as well. If your misplaced belief leads you to behave in a way you would not otherwise behave, you have misspent part of your life. Economists call this the opportunity cost.
Belief in God profoundly influences one’s behavior. A wrong belief about God ranks among life’s most expensive mistakes. Picture the terrified children being bound in preparation for sacrifice to the Inca sun god Inti. Would Pascal have consoled them with his armchair insight that belief in a nonexistent god is low risk?
False beliefs have true costs. Suppose a man believes that a fleet of guardian angels will protect him if he undertakes some risky endeavor, like getting drunk and playing catch with a rattlesnake, as was done by the late Joe Buddy Caine of Anniston, Alabama, may he rest in peace.[v] Or envision a poor blind man who chooses to believe he can successfully operate a bulldozer. Applying Pascal’s logic, the man should embrace this belief so long as the belief, if true, would have sufficiently good consequences. Perhaps a consequence would be that he can earn a respectable income, a good consequence for any poor blind man. Granted, his friends may abandon him after he demolishes their homes, the police may arrest him, and he may get beaten and raped in prison. But whatever the specific outcome, his decision to believe is strictly determined by the anticipated consequences, rather than by the facts of the case.
Pascal argued that we should opt for belief in God as a practical strategy, noting that belief is our ticket to heavenly bliss. The potential for an eternal reward, he said, outweighs any finite risk we incur during our mortal lives.
Earnest Christians scorn the notion that we should believe in God as a means to get to heaven or as “fire insurance” against hell. Pascal’s wager, in their view, applies a cost–benefit calculation more appropriate to business school than Sunday school. These Christians hold that one’s belief must be sincere, not contrived for personal advantage. Moreover, to suggest that God could not see through such a shamelessly opportunistic charade amounts to blasphemy.
As mentioned above, Pascal’s wager is dumb. By that, I mean it operates on poor logic. According to Pascal, we need to determine the consequences of a belief before judging whether that belief is correct. Pascal obviously didn’t think this through. Determining the consequences of a belief means determining particular facts. Yet, by Pascal’s own logic, we can’t judge any alleged fact as true or false until we trace out its consequences. Pascal’s wager thus traps us in a self-referential mire of indecision.
This brings us to the most basic flaw in Pascal’s wager, its presumption that we can choose our beliefs. Pascal recommended training ourselves through ritual and practice to deliberately channel and manipulate our beliefs. He is not alone in arguing thusly.
William James, father of American psychology, took a similarly outlandish approach. He asserted that, even lacking evidence, we can legitimately believe “any hypothesis that is live enough to tempt our will.”[vi] James suggested that if we have been heretofore unwilling or unable to gather enough facts to decide an important issue, such that we are left wavering, we can switch our beliefs on or off as we would a bedside lamp. Instead of urging us to gather more information or think harder about our decision, and in the meantime withhold judgment, James encouraged us to flip a mental circuit breaker to energize our belief in the Christian scheme of salvation. He would have us believe as a matter of choice or will rather than as mandated by evidence. (James published his lecture on this topic in a book titled The Will to Believe.)
I don’t know how your mind works, but I can’t consciously choose my beliefs. As I read a book about insects, for instance, I can’t believe that I am a flea jumping across the page. I can imagine it, I can daydream about it, but I cannot believe whatever I might choose to believe. Even on topics that are not so clear-cut, topics on which my opinion is unsettled (what James called live issues), I cannot consciously select what I believe. Philosophers call this inability to choose our beliefs doxastic involuntarism.
Suppose Pascal and James were correct in their claim that it’s psychologically possible, when faced with a live option, to consciously manipulate our beliefs (doxastic voluntarism) to achieve bliss. Embracing the Christian scheme of salvation would be an inefficient way to exercise such a faculty of belief. We could, after all, instantly enjoy bliss by choosing to believe we are already in heaven and skip all the intermediate steps. If our belief that we are in heaven is correct, our bliss will be eternal. If our belief is incorrect, our bliss will last until we die. If, after death, we end up in heaven, our bliss will continue forever. If we end up in hell, we can simply choose to believe we are in heaven. So even if Pascal and James were correct in thinking that we can switch on our belief in God to enjoy bliss, there would be more effective ways to channel our beliefs.
I suspect that Pascal’s wager is widely accepted across America for three reasons. First, it makes a crass appeal to the profit motive. That always works in America. Second, it urges us to take decisive action. Americans pride ourselves in taking decisive action. Third, it discourages thinking. Nobody is better at not thinking than Americans.
Edwin Way Teale got it right when he remarked, “It is morally as bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money so long as you have got it.”[vii] As for those philosophers who encourage us to believe as we will, Bertrand Russell offers a similar admonition: “Morally, a philosopher who uses his professional competence for anything except a disinterested search for truth is guilty of a kind of treachery.”[viii] Any religious advocate who appeals to Pascal’s wager is wearing a thin veneer of logic to coax his unsuspecting target in the direction of irrational superstition, much as the rapist acts superficially polite to coax his victim toward the back alley.
When I encounter a fishy line of reasoning (and Pascal’s wager is as fishy as they come), I try, just for fun, to use the same fishy logic to defend radically different or even diametrically opposed conclusions. I also enjoy reformulating the argument to remove all the logical fallacies, as in the following example:
Suppose that, after careful reasoning, you decide no god exists. If your belief is correct and there is no god, you avoid squandering your life attending church and praying and so forth. If you are mistaken and there is a god, the consequences of your nonbelief depend on the nature of God. If God is indifferent to human activities, then, as a product of your nonbelief, you avoid squandering your life on inconsequential worshipful practices. If God is unjust or sadistic, you avoid squandering your life trying to please a god who is going to fry you anyway. If God is fair, reasonable, and loving, you needn’t worry that you will be punished for earnestly examining the evidence and arriving at a reasonable, albeit mistaken, conclusion.
The paragraph above describes the consequences of atheism, not in false Pascalian terms, but in realistic ones. Still, I do not recommend adopting beliefs (or disbeliefs) based on their consequences. One ought to base one’s judgment on a careful evaluation of the facts rather than on a “what’s in it for me” calculation.
For that reason, I also reject Homer Simpson’s version of Pascal’s wager, which went something like this: “Suppose we’ve chosen the wrong god. When we go to church, we’re just making him madder and madder.” Homer’s point was that, with countless gods promising some version of infinite reward or infinite punishment, any random choice is almost certain to land you in infinite punishment.
I also reject Monty Hall’s wager. If you’ve never heard of Monty Hall’s wager, that’s because I made it up. It’s my own application of the Monty Hall problem to religious belief. The Monty Hall problem is a math puzzle named after the television game show host. In the puzzle, a player is shown three doors and told that behind one of the doors is a car and behind each of the other two doors is a goat. To win the car, the player must select the correct door.
Suppose you’re a contestant playing this game and you pick door number 1. The host, who always knows what is behind each door, opens door number 2, revealing a goat, and asks whether you wish to switch your selection to door 3. Are your odds of winning the car increased by keeping your current selection? Or would you have a higher probability of winning the car if you switched your selection? Or are the odds the same either way?
When confronted with this dilemma, I, like most people, presumed that it made no difference. I didn’t know which of the two closed doors hid the car, so I figured I had a fifty-fifty chance of winning.
That’s wrong. But I was so convinced that my logic was correct that I wrote a computer program to demonstrate so. I was surprised to learn that someone who sticks with his original selection wins the car a third of the time, whereas someone who switches his selection wins two-thirds of the time. The explanation as to why this is true would lead us too far off topic. You may wish to research the Monty Hall dilemma on your own.
Let’s apply the lesson of this math puzzle to religion. Suppose a deep, resonate voice from the clouds informs you that one and only one of the three Abrahamic religions is true and that you must make a selection. You select Christianity. The voice from above booms, “There is no god but me, and Muhammad was not my prophet.” This tells you Islam is off the table. Should you remain a faithful Christian or convert to Judaism? Can you say Shalom?
Monty Hall’s wager is obviously a screwball way to pick your religion, yet Monty Hall’s wager is less screwball than Pascal’s wager. At least Monty Hall’s wager has a statistical argument on its side.
Reminiscent of Pascal’s wager is the proposition put forth by the theologian John Hick that we are justified in accepting religion, or at least we are not barred from belief, because the proof of religion will (or may) eventually arrive. Hick trusted that belief will be verified on judgment day. This is known as eschatological verification.[ix]
When I hear this religious argument, I imagine a parallel argument being used in a courtroom. Picture a man appearing in court on rape charges. The prosecuting attorney urges the court to convict the man based on DNA evidence. The judge asks, “Where is the DNA evidence?”
The prosecuting attorney replies, “We don’t have it yet.”
“When are you going to have it? This afternoon?”
“No, your honor, I can’t tell you when we will have the evidence. It might arrive any minute or any millennium. But when it arrives, I am sure it will prove the defendant’s guilt, so we should go ahead and convict him now.”
In the context of a courtroom, or in any context other than religion, the notion of eschatological verification would never get a serious hearing. It, like Pascal’s wager, reeks of desperation. What a sad state for a religion, to have invested two millennia contemplating the topic, only to snipe, “You’ll find out when you’re dead.”
One more point about Pascal’s wager. We discussed our inability to switch our beliefs on and off as we would a bedside lamp. We are ineluctably drawn to conclusions for which we see strong evidence: doxastic involuntarism. A Christian apologist who agrees on this point might go on to say that compelling evidence for God’s existence would compel us to believe, thereby violating our God-given free will. Therefore, God provides no compelling evidence and leaves the decision up to us.
For the record, I didn’t just make up this argument to make Christian apologists sound foolish. The atheist Eddie Tabash asked William Lane Craig, “Why can’t God give us miracles today so we’d know he exists?”[x] In the course of his reply, Craig suggested that the lack of compelling evidence for God is itself evidence for a god who cherishes our free will.
There is something ingeniously moronic in an argument that starts with the premise that we can’t believe as we will and ends with the conclusion that we are to believe as we will. Such an argument is truly a work of art—really shitty art. A Poocasso.
If convincing evidence of God violates my free will, how can convincing evidence of other things, like fire, women, and French toast, leave my free will intact? Plenty of Christians insist that the Holy Spirit enters their hearts and provides compelling evidence. Has the free will of these Christians been rescinded?[xi]+
Craig’s premise that God withholds compelling evidence of his existence makes no sense philosophically. Moreover, it defies both the Old Testament and the New Testament, for the Bible tells me so. Jehovah spoke directly to Adam and Eve and walked around in the Garden of Eden. He appeared to Cain and Abel, Enoch, Noah and his family, Abraham, Isaac, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael, Rebekah, Jacob, Moses, Joseph, Aaron, Joshua, Balaam, Gideon, Samuel, David, Solomon, Elijah, Daniel, and dozens of other individuals named in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, he appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus. Strolling around as Jesus, he worked all kinds of miracles in front of tens of thousands of people. Post-resurrection, he dined with the apostles and exposed his identity to upwards of five hundred people. Note also that God (as Jehovah and as Jesus) revealed himself to the rebellious angel Satan, yet Satan still apparently had the free choice to not worship God. It is unbiblical to hold that God cannot reveal his existence without quashing our free will.
Tellingly, Craig’s argument that a lack of evidence counts as evidence is applied only to the modern era, where we confront a conspicuous lack of evidence. This argument, like Pascal’s wager, embraces the premise that we lack sufficient evidence for God. Unfortunately, that premise is the only thing these arguments get right.
[i] Blaise Pascal, Pensée 233: “Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.”
[ii] Humans are biologically destined to think metaphorically. We’re pattern-recognizing animals with neural networks evolved to discern the similarities between distinct sets of literal facts. The neurobiologist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran has explored how mirror neurons allow us to recognize cross-sensory metaphors. For example, a rounded cloudlike shape and a pointy starlike shape are readily associated with names such as bouba and kiki, respectively. George P. Lakoff explains that small children, witnessing a cup being filled with juice, learn to associate verticality (“up”) with higher quantities. As a consequence, as adults, they intuitively say such things as “the stock market is up today.” Metaphorical thinking occurs unconsciously. It can also be performed consciously. The conscious invention of a metaphor is a creative act, a form of cognitive art.
Picasso said that art is a lie that tells the truth. Consider the art of photography, in which the photographer shortens the focal length of the lens to bring one face in a crowd into focus, thereby softening the focus on all surrounding faces. This draws the viewer’s attention to that one face. Likewise, a man peering into a crowd will focus exclusively on his lover. As Art Garfunkel sang, “I Only Have Eyes for You.” Our eyes, like the photographer’s lens, distort reality in pursuit of (or in response to) a deeper emotional truth. A fine painter likewise distorts reality, redirecting the sunbeam to highlight the subject of interest.
Metaphorical thinking is reflected in our speech: our boss “barks” orders and our hearts feel “heavy.” Metaphor thus aids communication. However, Picasso notwithstanding, art can also be a lie that tells a lie. A metaphor, as a partial truth, can be a handy tool for xenophobic politicians who warn of the “infestation” of immigrants. Many fallacious defenses of religion are discovered on closer scrutiny to be misleading metaphors. Consider Ray Comfort‘s apologetic spiel in which he crows, “Just as a painting requires a painter, so all of Creation requires a Creator.” This isn’t sound logic; it’s bad metaphor.
There are many contexts in which we should probably strive to be more literal in our thinking. Liberal spiritualists, having devoted their lives to battling biblical literalists, balk at such advice. But in fact, so-called biblical literalists aren’t guilty of thinking too literally. They’re guilty of mistaking metaphor for literal truth. Religious leftists, who fancy themselves as open-minded and tolerant, encourage this kind of confusion by speaking metaphorically specifically because it feels less constraining than speaking in precise terms. Even some atheists are too metaphorical, mislabeling properly basic beliefs as “faith.” (We’ll discuss this topic later in the book.)
Evolutionary theorist Bret Weinstein speaks of statements as “metaphorically true,” a dangerous oxymoron. Weinstein speaks of the “adaptive value” of believing metaphors despite their literal falsity. We evolved to think metaphorically because it is a quick and (usually) effective heuristic. But Weinstein’s terminology, by implying that metaphors can in fact be true, accommodates unscrupulous religious apologists. The psychologist Jordan Peterson carries this muddy language to an even craftier extreme by saying that metaphors are “more true than truth,” a level of pseudo-profundity seemingly calculated to deceive.
[iii] Quoted in: Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World, 255.
[iv] Peter Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli, Pocket Handbook of Christian Apologetics (Madison, WI: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 272–8.
[v] Peter Applebome, Dixie Rising: How the South is Shaping American Values, Politics, and Culture, chapter 1 (New York: Times Books, 1996).
[vi] William James, “The Will to Believe,” The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York, 1897), 29.
[vii] Edwin Way Teale, Circle of the Seasons (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company), 1954.
[viii] Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1945), 835.
[ix] David C. Cramer, “John Hick (1922—2012),” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://iep.utm.edu/hick/.
[x] drcraigvideos, “Why Can’t God Give Us Miracles Today So We’d Know He Exists?” April 15, 2010, YouTube video, 2:14, https://youtu.be/bjU9CeRC85A.
[xi] Although we all operate as though we believe in free will, there is no convincing philosophical or scientific support for this belief. The belief in free will has mixed consequences. Writing for Scientific American, John Horgan argued that belief in free will makes people more optimistic and more apt to assume responsibility for their actions. The philosopher Gregg D. Caruso argued in a TEDx Talk that belief in free will causes us to tolerate injustice and cruelty, favor excessively punitive laws, and engage in victim-blaming.
John Horgan, “In Defense of Wishful Thinking,” Scientific American, July 5, 2011, Internet Archive, https://web.archive.org/web/20160828062135/http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/in-defense-of-wishful-thinking/.
Gregg D. Caruso, “The Dark Side of Free Will,” TEDx video, 10:11, https://youtu.be/rfOMqehl-ZA.