Topics Religion

Question The reason that Pascal's Wager doesn't seem convincing to me is that to me it seems that you can't assign a probability to something that doesn't have any empirical evidence. So all gods seems equally improbable. And so I would be equally likely to suffer eternal torture if I chose Islam, Mormonism or nothing. Although on further thought, I don't feel so sure any more, largely because of the same reasoning that lead me to the question I'm about to ask. But, after I read the thought experiment "Roko's Basilisk," it seems to me that you could also make a Pascal's Wager-style proposition without metaphysical claims, one that would involve probabilities. Something along the lines of this: Biologists know a lot about the human body. Those that know a lot about the human body are more likely to have the capabilities to torture me for eternity. Those that are more likely to have the capabilities to torture me for eternity are more likely to torture me for eternity. If I go spend time near biologists it is becomes more likely that I will be tortured for eternity. I ought to minimize my chances of eternal torture. Therefore I ought to avoid biologists. So then you might say "If you fervently try to avoid biologists, they will be more likely to pick you, because that is how sociopaths function, and a biologist who would torture you would surely be a sociopath". So then I should spend more time around biologists? Even if you say, I should act normally to have the smallest chance of getting picked, it still seems weird to do anything because of something that has such a small probabilty and for which there is so little evidence that supports it. I just seems like, that once you have any evidence at all, there is always a larger probability of eternal torture for some choice. Of course all this seems absurd, but there is still some internal conflict within me, and I am feeling very uneasy, because the premises seem acceptable. Eternal torture seems like it's worth minimizing the chances of, no matter what, and I don't want to throw my life away, hiding on the North Pole, or following whatever course of action that would seem to have the lowest probability of eternal torture. Any help you'd be willing to provide would be greatly appreciated.

Accepted:
September 4, 2014

Comments

Three quick observations:

1) Even if you can't determine which of the religious options is more likely (or less unlikely) than the others Pascal's Wager would still demonstrate that ANY of the religious options is superior to atheism/agnosticism. If you are on a mountaintop and a deadly storm is coming that will certainly kill you and there are ten paths - only one of which leads to safety, but you don't know which one- it is still more practically rational to take any of the paths instead of staying on the mountain awaiting certain death.

2) Pascal's Wager only works for relatively exclusivist religions. You can safely eliminate something like Hinduism because it doesn't threaten eternal torment, just a less favorable reincarnation. You can also eliminate any sort of universalistic religion, since everyone goes to heaven regardless of belief.

3) I don't know of any major historical religion for which there is absolutely no evidence. Surely, ancient scriptures of any sort serve as at least a weak, defeasible kind of testimonial evidence. Yet, some religions do seem more plausible than others. For example, ancient Homeric religion which involves gods (like Zeus) who lust after young peasant women seems significantly less plausible than the major monotheistic religions. Perhaps, you need to work harder to distinguish the relative probabilities of the different religions.

I know that doesn't answer every aspect of the questions you asked, but I hope that helps.

PS. Given the large number of issues raised by Professor Smith, I thought I'd add a few resources on the topic of pragmatic arguments that discuss many of the common objections to these arguments. Professor Jeff Jordan has two fine books on the topic, an edited collection covering many related issues (Gambling on God, by Rowman and Littlefield) and a monograph (Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God, by Oxford University Press). Professor Nicholas Rescher also has a nice monograph (Pascal's Wager: A Study in Practical Reasoning in Philosophical Theology, by University of Notre Dame Press).

On the issue of how to reason about the comparative probability of different religious claims, Professor Richard Swinburne (from Oxford) has an argument in favor of monotheism based on the principle of simplicity in The Existence of God (Oxford University Press). Of course, abstract reasoning about the probability of religious claims has existed at least since Plato's Republic Book II where Socrates claims that Homeric stories depicting the gods indulging in vicious human like behaviors are unlikely to be true (presumably because he believes anything that would be a god would be morally good).

I guess I am a bit more skeptical about getting anything of value from arguments like Pascal's wager. What makes the wager go, at least as the argument is under discussion here, is the threat of eternal torment if you don't pick correctly. One problem with the wager may be seen if we imagine two dieties who are in complete and implacable conflict over what they want from us. One of these dieties mandates honoring mothers and fathers; one mandates dishonoring mothers and fathers...and so on. Each one is associated with the threat of eternal torment if we fail to live in accordance with their mandates (or, if we fail to believe in them). It may seem that choosing either one "is superior to atheism/agnosticism" if these are our only choices, since if we don't choose either, we're damned either way, but if we choose one, we have what appears to be a 50/50 chance. But to see why this is wrong, bring in a third diety, who mandates that you believe in no dieties, and who would comdemn you to eternal torment if you so much as believed in that diety or any other. Can we now say that Pascal's wager would prove that belief in damning-to-hell dieties is really always better than not believing in such dieties? I'm not sure why, if we have no reason for preferring one of these putative dieties over the others. I note that Pascal framed his wager in such a way as it was supposed to work even if there was otherwise no evidence for believing in (Pascal's) God.

There are other problems here that are also well known. Pascal's wager seems to presuppose that we have at least some voluntary control over what we believe. This position is called "doxastic voluntarism" and many philosophers have argued that the voluntary control Pascal seems to require (I can choose what to believe based on my best strategy for avoiding being condemned to hell) is actually not humanly possible. If so, the advice he is giving is advice for acting in ways we cannot actually accomplish, which makes the advice pointless. Another problem that some philosophers have noted is that damning to hell seems like a bit of overkill from the moral point of view--a case in which the punishment is vastly greater than any (time-bound) nastiness or evil that mere human beings can commit. if so, then Pascal's wager is itself an impiety against the omnibenevolent God of the religion Pascal seemed to think his wager would serve. Another way of putting this would be to wonder if a diety like the one we find in Pascal's wager would actually merit worship (as opposed to, say, moral contempt). We might also wonder about those whose religious beliefs were as frankly self-serving as Pascal seems to invite from us: Is it really religiously appropriate for a person to believe in something just because that belief best fits with a calculation of what's in it for the believer him- or herself? These are just a few of the many objections that have been made against Pascal's wager, and so I am not inclined to give that argument even as much credit as Professor Silverman does.

I would also add another point. I think you are right to insist that it makes no sense to assign probabilities to things where there are not the right kinds of evidence. It is one thing to assess evidence that makes something seem more likely to us, as we appraise the evidence. But the sense of "more likely" here is not a sense that will fit well into probability theory or proper statistical calculations of real probabilities. These are established through experience and observation, and not by appeals to what looks likely to us. On that score, to be honest, since I am much more familiar (in my own experience as an observer, mind you--I am not providing autobiography here!) with human (or human-like) beings who lust after young peasant women than I am with ones for whom the very experience of lust is unimaginable. May God forgive my lack of imagination, but I find it very difficult to imagine a being for whom the very experience of lust is unimaginable. What would that be like, exactly? But if God made human beings after his own image, then... well, as you can see, I am not sure why Professor Silverman finds lusty gods less plausible than ones for whom such lust is unimaginable.

So while I agree with Professor Silverman that "you need to work harder to distinguish the relative probabilities of different religions" IF such distinctions are actually possible, I don't think I agree with what he says about the relative probabilities of manor monotheistic religions against old-fashioned paganism. As for me, I don't find any of these at all probable (in the loosey-goosey sense of "seems likely to me"), but I am not at all clear on how one could assess their relative probabilities in a way that wasn't completely question-begging and without any real basis in statistical method.

I am much more familiar ... with human (or human-like) beings who lust after young peasant women than I am with ones for whom the very experience of lust is unimaginable ...

To say nothing of the doctrine, central to one of the major monotheistic religions, that God became a flesh-and-blood human being while somehow remaining an omnipresent and perfect spirit who continued to rule the universe. It's hard to see how the Zeus story is "significantly less plausible" than that!