Since the early days of Western philosophy, writers have attempted to devise numerous arguments for the existence of God. These range from the simple, like the Cosmological argument that there must have been a creator at the beginning of time, to more complex theories such as St. Anselm's Ontological Argument (which I will delve into in a later post). While the majority of these arguments center the debate on whether God exists or not, the focus was shifted in the late 17th Century to the question of whether we should practice religion and not whether it is true. The reason for this shift was an idea coined by French mathematician and theologian Blaise Pascal in his 1670 book Pensees ("thoughts"). In an theory popularly called "Pascal's Wager," the mathematician argues that belief or disbelief in God can be compared in mathematical terms."We are then incapable of knowing either what He [God] is or if He is ... Which will you choose then? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing."(1)
The premise of Pascal's wager is that we do not and can not know if God exists, but we still have to decide whether or not to follow Christianity. Pascal divides people into two categories- those who act as if God exists and Christianity is the one true faith and those who do not- and then considers the consequences of of their actions. If God does not exist, according to Pascal, then the nonbeliever gains nothing when he dies and the Christian loses nothing except for a few wasted Sundays. However, if God does exist and the Christian faith is correct, then the Christian gains eternal life in Paradise and the nonbeliever suffers in hell for eternity.
Pascal argues that the nonbeliever has nothing to gain and everything to lose from his lack of faith, while the Christian has little to lose and everything to gain. Furthermore, Pascal claims, there are many benefits to religious practice regardless the what may come after death- the Christian gains moral foundations and a sense of community, whereas the nonbeliever is socially outcast and has no way to prove that he or she is right.Pascal's Wager may have helped in the conversion of many Christians and did serve to influence the pragmatist philosophies of William James and John Dewey, but it has no place in a modern multicultural society. Despite his brilliance as a mathematician, there are a number of variables in this equation that Pascal simply did not consider. First of all, the wager assumes that God rewards people based their pretense of faith and not on the depth of their love for the divine, if God even rewards at all. Pascal also completely disregards the less quantifiable but more philosophically important issue of the desire for truth. While we may never be able to know for certain whether or not God exists, we have been able to discern many facts about the historical authenticity of the Bible and may some day have definitive knowledge about the life of the historical Jesus.
Finally, Pascal's Wager is only valid if a person must chose between one religion or complete disbelief, and does not work so easily if there are a number of competing religions to chose from. In fact, Pascal was not the first to devise such a calculation for faith- Muslim theologian al-Juwayni wrote a similar argument in 1085, nearly 600 years before Pascal! (2)
A more fitting equation would be one that takes into account all religions and judges them based on the costs and benefits of each. The four variables in comparing religions, at least as far as applying Pascal's Wager is concerned, are: which religion has the best possible reward, which requires the least amount of active investment in terms of time and belief, which religion has the most proof for its validity, and which religion has the worst possible consequences for disbelief. Bear in mind that none of these factors take into account which religion is the most ethical or which fits best with an individual's lifestyle. Those factors are more subjective and less quantifiable, whereas this is intended to be a more straightforward cost-benefit analysis of the world's major religions.
Buddhism is as easily one of the worst religions to practice as far as Pascal's Wager is concerned. In all sects, it requires a good deal of time spent in practice for what could be a very negligible reward. If a person is not a Buddhist, the worst that could happen is that they may be reincarnated temporarily into one of the many Hells or as a hungry ghost, while an otherwise ethical person is more likely to be reborn as a human or even a divine being. On the other hand, the long-term gains from practicing Buddhism, other than possible peace of mind while alive on earth, is a form of extinction known as nirvana- at best a zero-sum game since there is no self to experience the nothingness.
Hinduism is likewise far from the best option, since it has great rewards but very little in the way of punishments. Most Hindus believe that nonbelievers will simply reincarnate when they die, with the more virtuous being reborn as upper-caste Indians and the less ethical becoming lower life forms. Believers, on the other hand, escape the cycle of death and rebirth and unite with the Godhead, a form of liberation from individuality called Moksha. The worst that could happen if one is not a Hindu is that one lives forever- the goal for many other religions- while even a nonbeliever can attain the reward of Moksha since Hindus believe that all gods lead to the one divine being, Brahman. Even an atheist can attain Moksha, since the key to escaping from the cycle of rebirth is to think of God constantly as many atheist clearly do.
Judaism offers questionable rewards for faith and even more questionable historical authenticity. Some claim that there will be a bodily resurrection of all believing Jews while others claim that the Jewish Bible only supports the idea that the Kingdom of Israel will be resurrected and that the dead, Jew and Gentile alike, dwell in an underworld limbo known as Sheol. (3) A nonbelieving Jew might not be resurrected when the Kingdom of God is restored, but gentiles have little incentive to follow Judaism if personal reward is their primary motivation.
Since Mohamed was undoubtedly a real person, Islam has a much more concrete basis for its claims of historical authenticity, but the validity of its religious dogma is still up for debate. Like Christians, Muslims believe in a paradisaical heaven called Jannah for the faithful and a fiery hell for nonbelievers called Jahannam. However, the Muslims do not define "believers" as strictly as their Christian cousins, who insist that the only way to God is though Jesus. Though the practice of Islam is the best religion, the Koran states that Christians and Jews (as well as, on occasion, Mandeans, Zoroastrians, and Hindus) are "People of the Book" and therefore count as believers. (4) There is, therefore, no need to follow Islam specifically when other religions of the Book offer much more strict guidelines to attain paradise.
Christianity offers perhaps the most specific prerequisites for eternal life- belief in Jesus, among other things- as well as, in general, the most intense system of rewards and punishments of all the world's major religions. However, there are sectarian differences within Christianity that often claim that one Church is supreme and that followers of the other denominations are not guaranteed to be saved. The Catholic Church often insists that it alone is the way to God, while many Protestants consider Catholics idolaters and not true Christians. Lutherans, Methodists, Anglicans, and many other denominations generally take an ecumenical approach and believe that all Christian faiths are valid (though some are more valid than others), while other denominations argue that the time of baptism or the luck one has in life are determining factors in whether or not one is truly faithful.
The Jehovah's Witnesses believe that only 144,000 people will be allowed into God's earthly heaven, despite there being over a million Witnesses alive today. The slim chance of being one of these 144,000 becomes even less tempting when one takes into account all the sacrifices that a Witness must make, such as never having a birthday party or being able to accept blood transfusions. (4) The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, another sect with numerous additional guidelines, allows believers to gain their own heaven and become gods themselves, but is also perhaps the easiest religion to dispute the validity of.
Reverend Sun Myung Moon must not have taken Pascal's Wager into account when he created (or was divinely gifted with) the doctrines of the Unification Church, which holds that all people, believers and nonbelievers, will go to Heaven eventually regardless of what they did in life. Even if one is cast into Hell, according to Moon, a person can always convert to the true faith and be saved. (5)
Sikhism, the fifth-largest religion in the world, has a very similar metaphysical framework to the reincarnation and unification with the divine seen in Hinduism, but in fact actively preaches against believing in God for the sake of possible rewards. “As long as the mind is filled with the desire for heaven, he does not reach God," claims Guru Granth Sahib, the holy scripture of the Sikhs. The majority of ancient Romans, on the other hand, worshiped only the gods who could help them overcome whatever trial they were facing, practicing religion solely for the rewards and punishments involved.
We have hopefully grown as a species since the time of the Roman empire, in terms of morality if not of our understanding of religion. Pascal's Wager appeals to the gambler in us, but it does not succeed as a theological argument, which should be targeted more to our ethical and intellectual side and less to our selfish inclinations. When trying to decide which religion one should follow, the best course is to judge which one seems to be the most ethical and contradicts itself the least. Many religions offer great promises, but the do not serve to make a person more wise or help them make any beneficial changes to the world. Likewise, a number of religious philosophies offer little in the way of threats to nonbelievers but can serve to greatly improve a person's lifestyle and sense of morality.
Failing that, I would recommend the seeker take up Hinduism. With over 330 million gods, the odds are that at least one of those deities is right for you.
Links:
1. Pascal's Wager, on the Blog of God
2. An Atheist's Rejection of Pascal's Wager
3. The Afterlife in the Torah, on Religionfacts.org
4. 101 Strange Beliefs of Jehovah's Witnesses
5. Rev. Moon's Unification Church, on Wikipedia
