19. Pascal's Wager

Today, for the first time, I encountered a concept pioneered by the famous French philosopher/mathematician Blaise Pascal (you may have heard of Pascal's Triangle in your algebra class) known as Pascal's Wager. Until now, I had assumed that everybody thinks about these things, but now I'm not so sure. I just want everybody I know to consider it, even if for no other reason than the fact that I find it to be an interesting and fun exercise. It has always been a major basis for many of my beliefs, but now that I have found support from Pascal (and the famous author/cartoonist Scott Adams, whose blog I've been reading daily for the last few years... he writes a lot of intriguing material), I have decided to give you the opportunity to think about it.

Keep in mind that Scott Adams is an atheist, Pascal was a Christian, and I am a Muslim... so this exercise is not about religion. You should also start thinking purely about the economics behind what I'm about to say. Don't worry about the facts or the opinions that lead you to believe the way you do... it's much more fun to think about it if you just think about the potential costs and benefits of each option as a neutral party. After you know about Pascal's reasoning, you can plug in any religious view (and you can plug in how sure you are of whether it's right) and you'll get the same answer either way. I'll let you know when you can start thinking about which interpretation suits you best... until then, just try to think about the numbers.

I also want to preface this by saying that I DON'T THINK YOU'RE GOING TO HELL. I'm just stating the majority opinions of any given religion from a neutral perspective. If there's a heaven/hell, then I don't know who's going where.

Pascal makes a simple claim: there are two possibilities for what you can believe about the existence of a God. You can be either right or wrong. You can either live as if God exists or as if God does not exist. Here is what happens either way:

1. You live as if God exists.
1. If you're right, you go to Heaven and the gain is infinite.
2. If you're wrong, there is no gain and little loss.
   
2. You live as if God does not exist.
1. If you're right, there is no gain and no loss.
2. If you're wrong, you might go to Hell and your loss is infinite.

If you just think in terms of the statistics of the matter (think like an economist or a scientist), you can see that even if you're 99% sure that God does not exist, you're facing the potential of an infinite penalty if you're wrong. And that's before you consider the 1% chance for the ultimate prize.

I like the example that Adams gives: many people would be willing to go skiing, despite the 10% chance of getting hurt while you're there, but I don't know anybody who would be willing to take any action that would lead to a 10% chance of a nuclear war. You should adjust your actions not just based on your odds of success, but also on magnitude of the consequences. Even if I am 99.999% sure that there's no God, I don't think that it's a risk worth taking when you consider how little effort it takes to live piously according to whatever religion you choose.

If you say that you're 100% sure that there is a God, then you don't understand the human brain very well. We're not capable of being 100% sure of anything. If you think I'm just speaking for myself (I know that I've been wrong about things that I was 100% sure about), then you need to read more about the human brain. This is just a simple proven fact.

At the risk of sounding redundant, I want to show you what Adams says about the relative certainty of the matter:

An eternity in Hell is the largest penalty there could ever be. So while you might not worry about a .00000000001% chance of ending up in Hell, you can’t deny the math. .00000000001% of eternity is a lot longer than your entire mortal life. Infinitely longer.

Of course, there are many qualms that people present about this concept. I think the strongest argument is made by the people who question our ability to pick the right religion. Odds are that even if you choose to believe in God, you're more likely to pick the wrong religion than the right one.

My response (along with Adams's response) has always been to say that I just want to minimize my chances of eternal damnation. Since it's impossible to be 100% sure about anything, I can't possibly be 100% sure that Islam will keep me away from Hell... but I just choose the explanation that suits me best. You can choose whichever explanation you want to choose, but try to give each of them a fighting chance.

Now you can start to think about whatever it is that your history book or your professor or your preacher has told you.

Most of the core beliefs in Islam are the same as those in most other religions (there is a higher power that will reward you for being a good person and will punish you for being a bad person). Most of these religions require you to believe in things that can't be explained by science. Everybody (including myself) can give a variety of reasons why they believe that their own religion is closer to the truth than everybody else's religion.

There is one thing that sets Islam apart in my mind. Adams seemed to notice the same thing:

[Islam] has the most satisfying answer to the multiple prophet issue. If we assume God speaks through prophets, as all God-oriented religions do, then how can you be sure the last prophet finished the job? Islam gives us Mohammed, the "seal of the prophets," and promises that God intends him to be the last one. That’s a tidy package.
All the other religions seem to leave open the possibility that God has a few more prophets up his sleeve. If you bet on one of those other religions, you can't know for sure if you're living by God's first draft or his finished manuscript.

After going on about how he just wants to pick from the least absurd of the absurdities, here's how he concludes:

Pascal's wager was designed to make people consider the importance of grappling with the question of a Christian God. That's not my argument. I simply borrowed the math part of his argument and followed it to its logical conclusion: The most rational worldview is moderate Islam. And since I am not a Muslim, I must conclude that I am not rational.


Let me take this opportunity to say that if I weren't born into a Muslim family, I probably wouldn't be Muslim right now. But at the same time, I feel lucky that the religion I was born into yields the lowest odds (from the eyes of a neutral atheist observer) of eternal damnation... this way, I don't have to tell my parents that I'm converting.

I'm not saying I'm right... I just think that this viewpoint has the lowest odds of being wrong (not counting atheism, since the whole point of this exercise is to think about the option that keeps you safest from damnation... although I don't know who's going to Heaven, I doubt that anybody thinks that atheists have the highest chance). If you think that your viewpoint is more likely to be right, please tell me why... because if it's true, then I want to follow it too.