This statement is really a recapitulation of Pascal’s wager, so I will level his argument and expect to never hear this argument from any sort of educated individual, as I have heard the aforementioned questions many times.

Pascal’s wager goes something like this: There are two choices you can make with two metaphysical possibilities, thus making a 2 x 2 matrix of payoffs. You can either choose to believe in God or not to believe in God. Either He exists or does not exist. According to Pascal, the four possibilities are: you believe in God and God exists, you do not believe in God and God exists, you believe in God and God does not exist, and you do not believe in God and God does not exist.

Suppose that you believe in God and God exists. You hit the jackpot and you gain infinite happiness after death (i.e. heaven). On the other hand if you believe in God and God does not exist, you lose only a finite amount of pleasure in a finite lifetime. Suppose that you do not believe in God and he does not exist. You only gain a finite amount of pleasure in a finite lifetime. Of course if you do not believe in God and God exists, supposedly you burn in hell, spend your afterlife in purgatory, limbo, spiritual death, in any case something bad, which Pascal conveniently does not detail.

Pascal argues that if one recognizes that there is even the slightest probability that God exists, then one should believe that God exists because the payoff is infinite and multiplying a fraction with infinity is still infinity. He adds that the true payoff of the wager is that once you believe, “You will be faithful, humble, grateful, generous, a sincere friend, truthful.”

There are a few problems with Pascal’s argument where it is extremely unconvincing. First of all, the payoffs aren’t quite correct. Even though I have a finite amount of pleasure in this finite life, we don’t know what the payoffs are going to be after death. It’s rather odd that even though Pascal says we are “incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is,” he has very specific attributes associated with God, mainly that God consistently rewards those people who believe in His existence. Of course there is the metaphysical possibility that God hates people who believe in His existence and thus punishes those who believe that He exists while rewarding people who doubt.

Perhaps instead of consistently rewarding those people who believe that God exists, God flips a coin and damns those who gets tails and rewards those who get heads, even in the pool of those who believe in His existence. The point is there is nothing that really warrants any sort of simplistic 2 x 2 matrix form, in terms of payoffs. There seems to be an infinite number of possibilities so long as there is some sort of God after death, and although we know more or less the kind of payoff we will get in this life while God does not exist, nobody knows what the payoffs are going to be in the afterlife, or if there will be any payoffs to begin with.

Another flaw to the argument is that there is no specification of which God one should believe in. In fact, this wager would be just as effective on any big pay off belief, like the fountain of youth. If there was even a non-zero chance that the fountain of youth could exist, then according to the same reasoning as the wager, one should drop everything and look for it. The wager does not take into account all the other gods throughout history. Why should I believe in the Christian God as opposed to Allah, Apollo, or Aphrodite? If I claim that any of these gods have an infinite payoff, then by the same logic, I should believe in all of these gods.

It also seems kind of odd that a god would let you into heaven only because you were just being on the safe side. Presumably one should not get into heaven if he is only acting good simply because he wants the payoff. In fact, it would seem incredibly selfish for someone to donate to charity simply because he thinks it will be a future investment for his retirement. I would think that any sort of god who could be duped into this sort of, cross-the-fingers-behind-one’s-back method, isn’t really a type of god I would care to worship.

In the end, even Pascal didn’t think that one could really believe without evidence, and so he suggested in order to believe in God one should “Follow the way by which [other believers] began; by acting as if they believed, taking the holy water, having masses said, etc. Even this will naturally make you believe, and deaden your acuteness.” His solution is basically brainwash yourself and surround yourself in a setting where you would be hard pressed to believe otherwise; indoctrinate yourself like a child.

Pascal later adds that by doing this, you will be “faithful, humble, grateful, generous, a sincere friend, truthful” which I guess is his way of saying, if you do not believe, you won’t have these things or at least not be guaranteed these things. This is the same claim that many religious people make about how their religion has a monopoly on morality, which is something I could hardly argue for, considering one is trying to gamble one’s beliefs, as if their belief system is some expendable casino chip on this cosmic craps table. I guess you have to pray to God if you’re gambling your life away.

So what do I have to lose? I have a consistent belief system; a predictable mechanistic universe; honesty to myself; and gratitude, generosity, sincerity, and truthfulness without attributing them to an overarching expectation of later rewards. These are precious and priceless things to me that I refuse to gamble away.

Ken Ueda is a senior math, physics, and philosophy triple major. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].