Homer Simpson answers Pascal’s Wager
|
.
“And what does that have to do with Pascal?” You may ask. Read on…
The famous French mathematician, physicist and philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) expressed the opinion, which was to be known as “Pascal’s Wager”, that the question of whether god exists cannot be answered logically, so we can only see it as a bet, but in this bet, belief in god is a much better choice than non-belief. Pascal’s statement can be very easily explained by the following table, which shows the available options, the available choices, and all four possible outcomes:
| God exists | God does not exist | |
| You believe in god | You go to heaven | Nothing to lose |
| You do not believe in god |
You go to hell | Nothing to lose |
.
As it is evident from the table, if you bet on the existence of god, the best thing that may happen to you is to go to heaven, and the worst is that you lose nothing. On the other hand, if you bet on the non-existence of god, the best scenario is that you lose nothing, while the worst is that you burn in hell.
From the above it is evident that:
Good gamblers always bet on god!
And another indisputable fact also becomes clear:
It takes some guts to be an atheist!
But I started this article with Homer Simpson, and I still need to show how he factors into the picture, so let us see the issue in a more mathematical way; let us give values to the various outcomes of the bet: we will consider the value of the “go to heaven” outcome as 100, the value of the “go to hell” outcome as -100, and the value of “nothing to lose” as neutral, that is, zero. Thus, we will be able to compute the value of each betting choice by computing the average value of its possible outcomes. So, the table looks like this now:
| God exists |
God does not exist | Value of choice | |
| You believe in god | 100 | 0 | (100 + 0) / 2 = 50 |
| You do not believe in god |
-100 | 0 | (-100 + 0) / 2 = -50 |
So far so good; what Homer Simpson does with his quote, however, is to remind us of a little detail which must have escaped Mr. Blaise Pascal’s attention: and what happens with other gods?
In order to see what happens with not only the Judeochristian God Yahweh, but also with Zeus, we need to expand our table as follows: (Let us ignore, for the sake of argument, the fact that Zeus, in contrast to vindictive sadist Yahweh, would not send you to hell if you did not happen to believe in him, and let us also disregard the fact that the various Judeochristian sects want you burning in hell even if you happen to belong to the wrong sect.)
| Yahweh exists |
Zeus exists |
No god exists |
Value of choice | |
| You believe in Yahweh | 100 | -100 | 0 | (100 + -100 + 0) / 3 = 0 |
| You believe in Zeus |
-100 | 100 | 0 | (-100 + 100 + 0) / 3 = 0 |
| You do not believe in god | -100 | -100 | 0 | (-100 + -100 + -100) / 3 = -66.67 |
.
Notice how the atheist’s position worsened by 16.67 points, while the position of either one of the believers worsened by far more, that is, 50 points!
Let us add Thor to the table:
| Yahweh exists |
Zeus exists |
Thor exists |
No god exists |
Value of choice |
|
| You believe in Yahweh | 100 | -100 | -100 | 0 | (100 + -100 + -100 + 0) / 4 = -25 |
| You believe in Zeus | -100 | 100 |
-100 | 0 | (-100 + 100 + -100 + 0) / 4 = -25 |
| You believe in Thor | -100 | -100 | 100 |
0 | (-100 + -100 + 100 + 0) / 4 = -25 |
| You do not believe in god | -100 | -100 | -100 | 0 | (-100 + -100 + -100 + 0) / 4 = -75 |
.
Again, we see a worsening in the value of the atheistic choice, accompanied by a greater worsening of each of the god-fearing choices. As you can see, by adding deities to the table the value of all choices drops, and as the number of deities tends to infinity, the value of all choices, bar none, tends to -100. (That’s Calculus for you, an invention of the Devil, no doubt about it!)
Diagoras’ conclusion: if any god exists, humanity as a whole is done for!
Pascal’s wager in Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal’s_Wager
More on Pascal in Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal
This article is also available in Greek language.
Copyright © 2008 Diagoras of Melos | Terms of Use
RSS feeds:
All articles in this blog
All comments in this blog
Only comments on this article
