{"id":3469,"date":"2017-11-06T22:42:57","date_gmt":"2017-11-06T19:42:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/?p=3469"},"modified":"2020-09-08T23:36:53","modified_gmt":"2020-09-08T20:36:53","slug":"a-skeptics-wager-pascal-and-the-reasonableness-of-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/3469\/a-skeptics-wager-pascal-and-the-reasonableness-of-faith\/","title":{"rendered":"A Skeptic’s Wager: Pascal And The Reasonableness Of Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dinesh D Souza, The Greatness of Christianity: Table of Contents<\/a><\/p>\n

Cf. Dinesh D’souza, What’s So Great About Christianity<\/a>, at Amazon<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

“God is, or is not. There is an infinite chaos separating us. At the far end of this infinite distance a game is being played and the coin will come down heads or tails. How will you wager?” <\/em>\u2014Blaise Pascal, Pensees<\/em><\/p>\n

H<\/strong>AVING SHOWN THE POSSIBILITY <\/strong>of miracles, we can now proceed to examine whether faith is reasonable. At first glance this may seem like a paradoxical quest. How can reason be invoked to justify unreason? I intend to show here that faith is in no way opposed to reason. Rather, faith is the only way to discover truths that are beyond the domain of reason and experience. Drawing on philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal, I intend to argue that the atheist’s wager against God’s existence is manifestly unreasonable. Given what we know and don’t know about what is to come after death, there is no alternative but to weigh the odds. When we do this, we discover that from the perspective of reason itself, faith is the smart bet. It makes sense to have faith.<\/p>\n

To many these conclusions will seem surprising, because for them faith remains a troubling and even offensive concept. Stephen Jay Gould examines the famous scene in the Gospel of John in which the apostle Thomas refuses to believe that Christ has risen from the dead. Thomas says, “Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.” So Jesus appears to Thomas and allows him to see and touch, and Thomas says, “My Lord and my God.” Jesus responds, “Thomas, because you have seen, you have believed. Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” Gould comments, “I cannot think of a statement more foreign to the norms of science … than Jesus’s celebrated chastisement of Thomas. A skeptical attitude toward appeals based only on authority, combined with a demand for direct evidence (especially to support unusual claims), represents the first commandment of proper scientific procedure.”<\/p>\n

To Daniel Dennett, faith evokes images of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, beliefsappropriate for children but certainly not for adults. Carl Sagan writes that while science “asks us to take nothing on faith,” religion “frequently asks us to believe without question.” From Richard Dawkins’s point of view, faith is “a state of mind that leads people to believe something\u2014it doesn’t matter what\u2014in the total absence of supporting evidence…. Faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness.”<\/p>\n

At first glance the atheist hostility to faith seems puzzling. We frequently make decisions based on faith. We routinely trust in authorities and take actions based on their claims that we don’t or can’t verify. I wasn’t present at the Battle of Waterloo, but I am quite convinced that it happened. I have never been to Papua New Guinea, but I am quite sure that it is there. I trust the word of others who have been there, and I trust maps. Similarly, I express a lot of faith in air traffic control and the skill of the pilot every time I board an airplane.
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\nSo thoroughly do we rely on faith that modern life would become impossible were we to insist on evidence and verification before proceeding. How do I know my cereal is safe to eat? How can I be sure my car is not going to blow up? Why should I take it for granted that the person whose voice I hear at the other end of the telephone is really there? How do I know my vote for a presidential candidate will be counted as a vote for that candidate?<\/p>\n

One answer is that I know because “the system” works. I eat my cereal, and I feel fine. I drive my car, and it gets me to work. And so on.<\/p>\n

I can trust technology, banking, maps, and democracy because they deliver the goods. But this is no argument against religious faith because, for the believer, faith also delivers the goods. William James makes this point in his classic book The Varieties of Religious Experience. <\/em>Faith in God, for the millions who have it, is routinely vindicated in everyday life. People come to trust God for His fidelity and love in the same way they come to trust- their spouses\u2014through lasting and reliable experience. In fact, religious people trust God more than they trust airlines, maps, and computers, and this too is based on empirical evidence. Computers crash, maps become outdated, and airlines screw up. God does not.<\/p>\n

This defense of faith is inadequate, however, because religious faith is not merely about what satisfies human wants and needs, but also about what is true. Faith makes claims of a special kind. The soul is immortal and lives after death. There is a God in heaven who seeks to be eternally united with us. Heaven awaits those who trust in God, while those who reject Him are headed for the other place. And so on. These claims are impossible to verify, and hence they are radically different from claims about Papua New Guinea or Waterloo. I could validate my faith by going to Papua New Guinea or by combing through the historical records pertaining to the Battle of Waterloo. But I have no way to know whether my soul will outlive my body, or whether there is actually a supreme judge in heaven. These things are outside the bounds of experience, and therefore they are outside the power of human beings to check out. As Kant showed, they are beyond the reach of reason itself.<\/p>\n

But Kant did not conclude from this that religious faith was unreasonable. On the contrary, he argued that beyond the precincts of reason, it is in no way unreasonable to make decisions based on faith. The important point here is that in the phenomenal or empirical world, we are in a position to formulate opinions based on experience and testing and verification and reason. In that world it is superstitious to make claims on faith that cannot be supported by evidence and reason. Outside the phenomenal world, however, these criteria do not apply, just as the laws of physics apply only to our universe and not to any other universe.Thus when Christopher Hitchens routinely dismisses religious claims on the grounds that “what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence,” he is making what philosophers like to call a category mistake. He is using empirical criteria to judge things that lie outside the empirical realm. He wants evidence from a domain where the normal rules of evidence do not apply. Beyond the reach of reason and experience, the absence of evidence cannot be used as evidence of absence.
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\nRemarkably, there are many people today who wish to conduct their lives on the presumption that there is no God, no afterlife, and no reality beyond the world of experience. These are not only the self-proclaimed atheists but also the agnostics, whose professed ignorance translates into a practical atheism. Often with a self-satisfied smile, they say, “I cannot believe because I simply don’t know” This attitude is peculiar for two reasons. First, it is entirely incurious about the most important questions of life: Why are we here? Is this life all there is? What happens when we die? These great mysteries press themselves on all humans who ponder their situation, and yet there are people who refuse even to consider those mysteries. They continue to demand evidence of a kind that is simply not available here. Their attitude is also bizarre because it shows no hint of an awareness of the limits of reason. Empirical evidence is unavailable because the senses cannot penetrate a realm beyond experience.<\/p>\n

When reason has reached its limit, there are two possibilities. We can stop, or we can continue onward. Some thinkers, such as philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, argued that beyond what we can assert by reason we should assert nothing. “We don’t get to the bottom of things,” Wittgenstein wrote, “but reach a point where we can go no further, where we cannot ask further questions.” To the query, “What lies beyond death?” Wittgenstein refused to answer one way or the other. He certainly didn’t, with the misplaced confidence of Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris, answer, “There is nothing.” He couldn’t say that because he didn’t know<\/p>\n

This response\u2014”I don’t know”\u2014is an expression of a kind of agnosticism. It involves a suspension of judgment in the face of igno rance that is clearly superior to atheism. Yet curiously this form of agnosticism is shared by the religious believer. The religious believer also does not know. The Bible says in Hebrews 11:1 that faith is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen:’ If the believer knew, there would be no question of faith. Consider this: I don’t have faith that my daughter is in the seventh grade. I know my daughter is in the seventh grade. I -haven’t been to heaven, and so I cannot say that I know there is such a place. But I believe that there is. Faith is a statement of trust in what we do not know for sure. Faith says that even though I don’t know something with certainty, I believe it to be true.<\/p>\n

From this we draw a conclusion that will surprise many atheists and even a few Christians: doubt is the proper habit of mind for the religious believer. There is a story in the Gospel of Mark 9:17-24 about a man who came to Christ to cure his son of possession by an evil spirit. Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible.” And the man replied, “Lord, I believe. Help thou mine unbelief.” This is every true believer’s prayer. The Christian has faith even though he is not sure, while the unbeliever refuses to believe because he is not sure. But they agree in being unsure. The skeptical habit of mind is as natural to Christianity as it is to unbelief.<\/p>\n

Religious faith is not in opposition to reason. The purpose of faith is to discover truths that are of the highest importance to us yet are unavailable to us through purely naturalmeans. Wittgenstein famously said in his Tractatus <\/em>that “even if all possible scientific questions are answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.”7 The point is that the game of science is conducted on a field, and the most important questions of life\u2014 Why am I here? What should I love? What should I live for?\u2014lie outside that field. Faith is an attempt to reach beyond the empirical realm and illuminate those questions. Both Kant and Wittgenstein say this is impossible, but they mean it is impossible as a project of reason alone. Perhaps there is another way.
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\nConfronted by the supreme questions of human existence, philosopher Brian Magee writes, “We are like soldiers besieging a castle who have sought endlessly and in vain to find a way of penetrating its walls and whose only hope, whether they realize it or not, lies in a different mode of entry, a tunnel that will bring them up inside the fortress without penetrating the walls at all.” This account is an excellent description of how faith seeks a route that has been closed to reason. The goal is the same, to find the truth, but faith journeys on when reason has given up the chase. If the agnostic wishes to put down his satchel and quit, he cannot begrudge the believer who is willing to try a new path to reach the summit.<\/p>\n

The believer uses faith to gain access to a new domain, that of revelation. There is no other option here because reason has quite frankly run out of steam. The believer hopes that revelation will expose truths otherwise hidden to reason. The believer embraces faith not “blindly” but rather with his “eyes wide open.” The Christian relies on faith not to suppress his native powers but to guide them so that they may see more clearly. He expects revelation to reactivate and guide his reason. Augustine’s dictum is applicable here: “Believe and you will understand.” That is why religious believers are so perplexed when atheists accuse them of jettisoning their intellectual abilities. Social critic Michael Novak says that “using reason is a little like using the naked eye, whereas ‘putting on faith’ is like putting on perfectly calibrated glasses … to capture otherwise invisible dimensions of reality.”<\/p>\n

While we have knowledge of an idea or proposition, we have faith in a person. Daniel Dennett should be relieved to learn that this person is not Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. Religious faith is ultimately a statement of trust in the one monotheistic God, and in His authority and reliability. If there is a divine being who has created the universe with special concern for us as human beings, then it is entirely reasonable to suppose that, absent our ability to find Him, He would find His way to us. The religious believer holds that when man is unable to reach up to God, God can reach down to him. Faith is a kind of gift. It is God’s way of disclosing Himself to us through divine revelation. If God did not do this, we have no other way of finding out about Him and He would remain severed from His creation.<\/p>\n

Pascal begins with the Kantian postulate that “reason’s final step is to recognize that there are an infinite number of things which surpass it.” In several of his writings, Pascal contends that it is fortunate for man that the highest truths are accessible through faith rather than reason. In other words, faith is available to everyone. If the only way to find out about God was through reason, then smarter people would have the inside track and the less intelligent would be shut out. Getting into heaven would be like getting into Harvard. Apparently God wants to have people other than PhDs in heaven; He seems to have made room for some fishermen and other humble folk. Reason is aristocratic, but faith is democratic.Yet why should we choose to have faith in the presence of doubt? This central human conundrum is the subject of Pascal’s famous wager. (Pascal did not invent the wager; it was offered by Muslim theologian Abu Hamed al-Ghazali in his medieval work The Alchemy of Happiness.” <\/em>Pascal was familiar with al-Ghazali and probably derived the argument from him.) Pascal gave the wager its current classic expression, and in doing so he places an unavoidable choice before all “brights,” agnostics, and atheists.
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\nPascal argues that in life we have to gamble. Let’s say you are offered a new job that may take your career to new heights. It looks extremely promising, but of course there are risks. There is no way in advance to know how things will turn out. You have to decide whether to go for it. Or you are in love with a woman. You have been dating for a while, yet you cannot be certain what marriage to her for the next several decades is going to be like. You proceed on the basis of what you know, but what you know is, by the nature of the matter, inadequate. Yet you have to make a decision. You cannot keep saying, “I will remain agnostic until I know for sure.” If you wait too long, she will marry someone else, or both of you will be dead.<\/p>\n

In the same way, Pascal argues that in making our decision about God, we will never understand everything in advance. No amount of rational investigation can produce definitive answers, as what comes after death remains unknown. Therefore we have to examine the options and make our wager. But what are the alternatives, and how should we weigh the odds? Pascal argues that we have two basic choices, and either way we must consider the risk of being wrong.<\/p>\n

If we have faith in God and it turns out that God does not exist, we face a downside risk: metaphysical error. But if we reject God during our lives, and it turns out God does exist, there is much more serious risk: eternal separation from God. Based on these two possible outcomes, Pascal declares that it is much less risky to have faith in God. In the face of an uncertain outcome, no rational person would refuse to give up something that is finite if there is the possibility of gaining an infinite prize. In fact, under these conditions it is unreasonable not to believe. Pascal writes, “Let us weigh up the gain and loss involved in calling heads that God exists. If you win, you win everything. If you lose, you lose nothing. Do not hesitate, then: wager that He does exist.”<\/p>\n

The ingenuity of Pascal’s argument is that it emphasizes the practical necessity of making a choice. This necessity is imposed by death. There comes a day when there are no tomorrows, and then we all have to cast our votes for or against the proposition on the ballot. The unavoidability of the decision exposes the sheer stupidity of “apatheism,” the pretense that something doesn’t matter when it is quite literally a matter of life and death. The apatheist and the agnostic refuse to choose when there is no option to abstain. So the refusal to choose becomes a choice\u2014a choice against God.<\/p>\n

Pascal also exposes the pose of the atheist who fancies himself as a brave and lonely man facing the abyss. We admire a man who is steadfast in the face of unavoidable adversity. If we knew we were alone in the universe and that death was the end, then there is no alternative but to stand tough in our mortal skins and curse the darkness. But what would we think of a man who stands ready to face a horrible fate that he has a chance to avert? If you are trapped in the den with a hungry lion, and there is a door that may offer a way out, what sane person would refuse to jump through the door? Viewed this way, the atheist position becomes a kind of intransigence, a reckless man’s decision to play Russian roulette with his soul.Atheists sometimes express their bafflement over why God would not make His presence more obvious. Carl Sagan helpfully suggests that in order to dispel all doubts about His existence, “God could have engraved the Ten Commandments on the moon.” Pascal supplies a plausible reason for what he calls the hiddenness of God. Perhaps, he writes, God wants to hide Himself from those who have no desire to encounter Him while revealing Himself to those whose hearts are open to Him. If God were declare Himself beyond our ability to reject Him, then He would be forcing Himself on us. Pascal remarks that perhaps God wants to be known not by everyone but only by the creatures who seek Him.
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\nAtheists are aware of the power of Pascal’s wager. Christopher Hitchens can do no better than to launch an ad hominem attack on Pascal as a “hypocrite” and a “fraud.” Richard Dawkins proclaims Pascal’s argument “distinctly odd.” And why? Because “believing is not something you can decide to do as a matter of policy. At least, it is not something I can decide to do as an act of will.” Dawkins is right about this, of course, but the real issue is whether he wants to believe and whether he is open to the call of faith. As we will see in a later chapter, there are powerful psychological motives for resisting this call.<\/p>\n

Pascal writes that there are two kinds of reasonable people in the world: “those who serve God with all their heart because they know Him, and those who seek Him with all their heart because they do not know Him.”” Pascal recognizes that faith is a gift. We cannot demand it but only ask God to give it to us. In the meantime the best thing to do is to live a good and moral life, and to live as if God did indeed exist. And pray the prayer of the skeptic, which I get from philosopher Peter Kreeft: “God, I don’t know whether you even exist. I’m a skeptic. I doubt. I think you may be only a myth. But I’m not certain (at least when I’m completely honest with myself). So if you do exist, and if you really did promise to reward all seekers, you must be hearing me now So I hereby declare myself a seeker, a seeker of the truth, whatever and wherever it is. I want to know the truth and live the truth. If you are the truth, please help me.”<\/p>\n

The Bible promises that all who seek God in this way with earnest and open hearts will find Him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dinesh D Souza, The Greatness of Christianity: Table of Contents Cf. Dinesh D’souza, What’s So Great About Christianity, at Amazon “God is, or is not. There is an infinite chaos separating us. At the far end of this infinite distance a game is being played and the coin will come down heads or tails. How […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_disable_autopaging":false},"categories":[6702,6707],"tags":[7437,910,7438,7284,7439,1685,6925,7440,3321,7441,7442,7443,7444,7445,7446],"class_list":["post-3469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thechrist","category-studies-thechristcontents","tag-apostle-thomas","tag-atheist","tag-chastisement","tag-dinesh-d-souza","tag-god-jesus","tag-gospel-of-john","tag-infinite-distance","tag-norms","tag-pascal","tag-pascal-pensees","tag-reasonableness","tag-skeptic","tag-skeptical-attitude","tag-stephen-jay-gould","tag-wager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3469\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}