Disproving Pascal's Gambit

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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Pascal’s Gambit is a sort of ridiculous way of proving that it is in a person’s best interest to believe in God (By the way, this applies mostly to the Christian God, although any faith believing in an afterlife could be substituted). I will not try to disprove it on grounds that “believing in God is not something that can be decided by materialism” because that gets into a tricky discussioin of all sorts of abstract ideas about choice and thought and even predestination.

Basically, Pascal divides up things into 4 possibilities.

  1. Believe in God and there is a God = Eternal salvation! Wahoo!!
  2. Believe in God and there is no God = no biggie
  3. Don’t Believe in God and God does exist = You stepped in it: Eternal damnation.
  4. Don’t Believe in God and God doesn’t exist = hmm…well you might feel sorta righteous but you die anyway, with no afterlife.

Basically his point is that looking at these four possibilities, Eternal gain could possibly be gained by believing in God and Eternal suffering could possibly be gained by disbelieving. In his mind, the chance of these Eternal consequences far outweighs the possible small worldly gain if you don’t believe in God and you are right, and the possible small worldly loss if you believe in God and you waste your time on him and he doesn’t exist.

Am I being clear? All that is an explanation of Pascal’s gambit. Now for the flaw…

He assumes that, for example, Eternal Damnation is worse than wasting your life on a God that doesn’t exist. But actually, think about it a moment: If God doesn’t exist, then THIS LIFE is all there is. And one could certainly say that by believing in a God that doesn’t exist, you have “wasted” this life.

An eternity of suffering is suffering for all time. In a godless universe, the life span of any one mortal is all of their time, it is all that exists of time (just like eternity). Therefore, whether time is infinite or finite, the concept of total suffering can (or total uselessness) can be applied only as a certain fixed magnitude; however much can exist in All time. The concept of eternity when we use words like Eternal Damnation is limited by the human mind. The suffering that can occur in an Eternity is only the maximum that a human can feel. So the concept of Eternal damnation is, in a way, moot and void in the first place. Another way that Eternal Damnation could be construed as a useless concept is a little more shaky, but still worth presenting.

If a human is subjected to a constant level of pain(suffering) for any significant period of time, pain becomes meaningless without contrast of increasing pain. Observe how happiness is relative; rich people who have nearly everything are upset when they lack certain fashionable attire; the poorest of people are delighted at a loaf of bread. Effectively, there is not a huge range of feeling, among humans; in all the happiness and suffering in a lifetime add up to 0. For rich people who are happy most of the time rolling in the richest and most lavish of everything, suffering is in the form of a constant stream of petty angers and dissatisfactions. For the poorest people, who live in abject depression and poverty most of the time, happyness is in the form of delight at any stroke of fortune; a warm day and a slice of bread are appreciated far more when one is frozen and starving. *Note: this theory applies only if one (as Pascal does) quantifies happiness and looks at sum of happiness throughout life.

If each person has a set amount of happyness and suffering which effectively negate each other, then a person who is eternally damned can only suffer as much as the happiness which they achieved during life. Effectively, after a certain time in Hell, a person would simply stop noticing the burning. And if the argument is that in Hell the person could be tortured by alternating visions of Happiness, and beauty, with burning and pain as to extend suffering; I respond that then once again the person is subject equally to happiness as they see beauty and life, as they are to the pain of burning.

It is the same with the concept of Heaven; for only so long can the ultimate of pleasure be sustained before that too is meaningless. Eternity, is a very long time.

Therefore, none of Pascal’s four options can hope to carry more weight than another. I believe that no person can say objectively whether it is better to disbelieve in God and be right or to believe in God and be right.

Any objections? Remember that I use Pascal’s own paradigm of quantified happiness. If you disagree simply with the foundation of my paradigm, then you also disagree with Pascal’s foundation, leaving the Gambit still disproved.

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 I disagree with this assessment, and so would Pascal.  Perhaps, if 'believing in God' entailed a monastic lifestyle in which you gave up everything you might in enjoy in life, then you would have a point.  But it certainly does not- Pascal's assessment of the Christian lifestyle was that it simply entailed having a reason for doing what all good people knew was right anyway.  Believing in God if there is no God amounts only to having a mistaken belief- somethng no doubt all of us have a few of, and I'd hardly say that means we're wasting our lives.

Equivocation. An eternity of suffering is suffering for all time unless you define ‘all time’ as the life span of any one mortal, which is at most 100 years or so. Certainly even the godless can concieve of a length of time longer than their own lifespans (say, from the time Julius Ceaser died to the present), so the concept is still valid.

Your second explanation, that an enternity of suffering can’t truly be experienced as suffering throughout, has more merit. But I don’t see this concept as really central to Pascal’s wager. Hell could merely be “suffering for an extremely long, undisclosed length of time” and his wager would still work, for what it is-

Believe in God and there Is a God= Reward
Believe in God and there is no God= Nothing.
Don’t believe in God and there is no God= Nothing.
Don’t believe in God and there is a God= Punishment.

The degree of reward or punishment is irrelevent, all else being equal. Only if you could show that the atheist would enjoy life some amount X more than the believer, then the degree of punishment/reward would be relevant, but the Wager is salvaged in that case if it’s reasonable to believe that the reward is greater than X, which on Christian doctrine, is very reasonable indeed.

I don’t think Pascal’s wager is successful in convincing someone to believe in God for my own, other, reasons though. :slight_smile:

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For me personally I have 3 main objections to Pascal’s Gambit

  1. This is the same approach of superstitions, there might be a monster in the closet so just in case keep it closed just in case. You might have bad luck if you step out of bed with your left leg so just in case step out with your right. Shows a remarkable lack of faith.
  2. You are allowing fear of what might be to dicatate your choices. I would rather face hell than have my actions dictated by the fear of what might be. It’s like being fired from work if you are afraid of being fired once you are fired there isn’t anything for you to fear anymore it’s happened, now no one can fire you. In heaven there would still be this fear you could just excercise your free will in some way piss someone off and to hell you go, assuming you still have free will in heaven. Essentially the only way to overcome hell would be to go through it, when that happens you trully are free no one can hold anything over you.
  3. Basically a similiar point as LesMainsSales. There are these asthetics in India who pierce themselves with all sorts of stuff as a way of spiritual liberation. You see I think the reasoning behind this is that if the problem of life is pain then the best thing to do is to head straight through it. If you do and you go through all the pain you can and you endure you no longer have a problem. So as a way to be liberated from pain head straight for it and you will be free of it. In the same way if you go to hell and you are afraid of punishment head straight for it you won’t die you are already dead to be in hell for all time just means that after a long while it will no longer have an effect on you. All that happens is hell stops being a punishment and becomes nothing to concern yourself about. Even if it were for a long time it and in the end you really do die, at least you don’t have to suffer an eternity of existance if you find the concept of heaven a terrible bore.
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I agree that what you pointed out originally is the weakest part of my argument; the idea that believing in God when there is no God is a bad thing. I guess the problem is that I approached the problem from a far too existential, philosophical viewpoint. To clarify what I meant, I want to say that my idea of the ideal human is one who does not stop thinking, who constantly searches for the best way of life; one free from preformed prejudices in their search for happiness; the truly authentic man. This doesn’t preclude religion if the religion is consciously believed in; however, it seems to me that if the reason for belief is NOT earthly happiness (and if we go by Pascal then the reason is actually for eternal salvation) then belief in God would be something that goes AGAINST the persons search for happiness; is, in other words, a burden, and not a help, to happiness.

Your point remains, though, that even if X amount more happiness is achieved by an atheist, a huge amount more happiness would be achieved by a human in heaven. My argument rests more squarely then I had thought on the contention that the human mind cannot experience Eternity. In fact, that the human mind cannot experience complete pleasure for any length of time. This comes down to Taoist terms; yin-yang. There can only be suffering along with happiness; the two define and support each other. So however much suffering can be felt in Hell can only be proportional to the happiness felt in life. This is my theory, and it clearly mitigates Pascal’s gambit, perhaps even flips it around. I know, however, that I’m not quite clever enough to prove it any more than I have already done, and not likely convince anyone.

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[contented edited by ILP]