Taking Pascal's Wager E-Book

Michael Rota

• Herausgeber: IVP Academic
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 459

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

- WORLD Magazine's Best Books of 2016 Short List - Christianity Today's 2017 Book of the Year Award of Merit - Apologetics/Evangelism Since we can't know with absolute certainty that God exists, each of us in a sense makes a bet. If we believe in God and are right, the benefits include eternal life. If we are wrong, the downside is limited. On the other hand, we might not believe in God. If we are right, then we will have lived in line with reality. If we are wrong, however, the consequences could be eternally disastrous. This was the challenge posed by the French philosopher Blaise Pascal over three hundred years ago. But Michael Rota contends that Pascal's argument is still compelling today. Since there is much to gain (for ourselves as well as for others) and relatively little to lose, the wise decision is to seek a relationship with God and live a Christian life. Rota considers Pascal's wager and the roles of uncertainty, evidence and faith in making a commitment to God. By engaging with themes such as decision theory, the fine-tuning of the universe, divine hiddenness, the problem of evil, the historicity of the resurrection and the nature of miracles, he probes the many dynamics at work in embracing the Christian faith. In addition, Rota takes a turn not found in many books of philosophy. He looks at the actual effects of such a commitment in three recent, vivid, gripping examples—Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jean Vanier and Immaculée Ilibagiza. Like Pascal, Rota leaves us with a question: What wager will we make?

Leseprobe

TAKING PASCAL’S WAGER

FAITH, EVIDENCEand theABUNDANT LIFE

MICHAEL ROTA

To my parents

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part 1 Uncertainty and Commitment

1 A Curious Offer

2 Pascal’s Wager: The Basic Argument

3 Objections to the Wager: Moral Reservations and the Cost of Commitment

4 More Objections to the Wager: Other Religions and Christianity

Part 2 Evidence

5 Where Did Physical Things Come From?

6 Why Is the Universe Just Right for Life?

7 A Primer on Probability

8 God and the Multiverse

9 The Beauty and Existential Resonance of Christianity

10 Counterevidence: Divine Hiddenness and Evil

11 Historical Evidence for Christianity: The Resurrection

12 Miracle or Myth?

Part 3 Saying Yes to God

13 Dietrich Bonhoeffer

14 Jean Vanier

15 Immaculée Ilibagiza

Conclusion: Taking the Wager

Notes

Author Index

Subject Index

Scripture Index

Praise for Taking Pascal’s Wager

About the Author

More Titles from InterVarsity Press

Copyright

Acknowledgments

I’m very grateful to the many people who have helped shape this book. Andy Crouch supplied crucial guidance early in the writing process, and Greg Boyd, Liz Kelly, Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Michael Murray and Eleonore Stump assisted me in various ways with the proposal. A sabbatical fellowship from the University of St. Thomas during Fall 2013 provided uninterrupted time to begin work on the project in earnest.

I’m particularly appreciative of the insightful criticism of the manuscript (in whole or in part) offered by Luke Barnes, Lawrence Feingold, Matthews Grant, Andrew Le Peau, Neil Manson, Thomas Nechyba, Tim Pawl, Kenny Pearce, Ted Poston, Josh Rasmussen, Ann Rota, Erin Rota, Mary Ryan, Mark Spencer, James Taylor, David Tritelli, two external reviewers for InterVarsity Press, and especially by my editor at IVP, David McNutt.

I present a more technical but abbreviated version of the argument of part one in “A Better Version of Pascal’s Wager,” forthcoming in the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, and I thank the editor of that journal, David Clemenson, for permission to use sections of that article in this book. David Clemenson, Jeff Jordan, Liz Jackson, Michael Loux and two anonymous referees for ACPQ provided helpful comments on drafts of that paper, comments that influenced my treatment of the wager here.

I’m also thankful to the John Templeton Foundation, both for funding the Evolution and Theology of Cooperation project, through which I did a postdoctoral fellowship with Sarah Coakley and Martin Nowak at Harvard University, and for funding the St. Thomas Summer Seminars in Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology, thanks to which I’ve had the opportunity to learn from my co-organizer Dean Zimmerman and a host of talented speakers and participants on most of the major topics discussed in this book. Especially formative were talks by or conversations with Luke Barnes, Nevin Climenhaga, Robin Collins, William Lane Craig, Andy Crouch, Brian Cutter, Evan Fales, Dan Greco, John Hawthorne, John Keller, Tom Kelly, Michael Licona, David Manley, Neil Manson, Bradley Monton, John Pittard, Al Plantinga, Alexander Pruss, John Schellenberg, Elliott Sober, Eleonore Stump and Peter van Inwagen. Michael Murray, John Churchill, Alex Arnold and Dan Martin at JTF have all been a pleasure to work with.

My able research assistants, Matt Sweeney and Kieran Driver, tracked down references with alacrity and located some helpful books I might not otherwise have found.

I owe a special debt of gratitude to my mentor, Eleonore Stump, who has contributed to my philosophical education more than anyone else, and to Peter Kreeft, from whose book Fundamentals of the Faith I first learned about Pascal’s wager, as an undergraduate.

Most of all, I’m grateful to my caring wife, Ann, for her unfailing encouragement, and to my parents for their love and confidence in me.

- Part One -

UNCERTAINTYandCOMMITMENT

- 2 -

Pascal’s Wager

The Basic Argument

Either God exists, or not. These are two possible states of the world, two ways reality might be. And you can take different strategies about how you will live your life. Will you live your life as if God exists? Or not?

To be more precise, let’s consider two possible ways the world might be. One is that Christianity is true.1 God exists and offers you an eternal relationship with himself. The second possibility is that there is no God, or anything like God. There aren’t any supernatural beings, we don’t have souls and when we die it all goes black. Call this “naturalism.” In chapter four we’ll consider additional possibilities and different religions, but for now, just to get the basic argument in view, let’s focus on Christianity and naturalism.

Next, consider two courses of action you might take: you might commit to God, or you might not. By “commit to God” I do not mean “decide to believe that God exists, right now!” When setting up a decision matrix, the strategies are supposed to be actions that the decider can choose between, actions that are within our direct voluntary control. Belief in the existence of God isn’t like that. What one can choose to do is to seek God, to pursue a relationship with God.2 This is the foundational component of what I mean here by “committing to God.”

Committing to God is therefore a course of action that can be undertaken by one who already believes or by an inquiring agnostic. (An agnostic is a person who doesn’t believe that God exists but also doesn’t believe that God does not exist—they’re just not sure either way.) While both believer and agnostic can commit to God, the strategy will look different for the two of them. For the person who already believes, committing to God will involve seeking a closer relationship with God and, indeed, putting one’s goal of closeness with God at the center of one’s life plans. It will involve prayer and the intention to live a life of moral excellence. It will involve attendance at religious services, association with other religious believers, the reading of sacred writings and perhaps study and discussion on religious questions.

For an agnostic, to seek a relationship with God is to seek a relationship with a being whose existence is in doubt. This is atypical but possible—compare a situation in which a person camping alone hears some ambiguous but possibly human sounds outside the circle of firelight and calls out, “Is that a person? If somebody’s out there, you’re welcome to come closer.” For the agnostic, committing to God will involve prayer, likely in a similar conditional form; for example, “If you’re there, God, please forgive me for that, and help me with this,” and so on. An agnostic seeking God will probably also want to attend religious services, although full participation might be ruled out; no duplicitousness or hypocrisy should be involved in an agnostic’s search for God. Association with religious believers, thought and discussion on religious matters, and the reading of sacred writings are all called for by the intention to seek a relationship with God. Most crucially, the inquiring agnostic will want to live a life that would be pleasing to God if God does indeed exist. If you’re seeking a close relationship with God, then you’ll want to live a life that is in harmony with what God would want.

The agnostic who makes a religious commitment need not turn a blind eye to counterevidence, and it may be that one day in the future he or she will decide to back out of religious commitment. Still, adopting the strategy involves a sincere openness to the possibility of God, a desire to search for him and a willingness to accept belief in God, should it come. If future experiences or arguments prove sufficient, an agnostic who is genuinely seeking a relationship with God won’t resist the transition from agnosticism to belief.

Although committing to God will involve somewhat different things for the agnostic and the believer, the essential core is the same for believer and agnostic alike: the effort to form a close, personal relationship with God. This is not necessarily equivalent to faith. According to traditional Christian doctrine, the act of supernatural faith includes belief in God and the ­revelation of Jesus, whereas the strategy of committing to God under discussion here does not necessarily include belief. At the same time, committing to God may serve as a crucial stage on the path toward a robust faith.

One strategy, then, is to commit one’s life to God. The other is to not do that. This could take a variety of forms. One need not join the local atheists club to count as not committing to God. In the most common case, someone who was not committing to God would be someone who just didn’t pay much mind to the question of God, and who lived his or her life focused on the things of this world. He or she might even go to church on Christmas and Easter. So we’re defining this second strategy simply as an absence of the first strategy. Defining it in this way ensures, as a point of logic, that there is no third strategy available. You’re either seeking a close relationship with God or you’re not.

Later I’ll adjust the basic presentation of Pascal’s wager to allow for the fact that there are many different religions one might follow. But just for the moment, simply in order to get clear on the basic argument, let’s pretend that the only way to commit to God is a Christian way. Of course this is false—one can commit to God in a Jewish way, in a Muslim way and so on. But, as I’ll argue in chapter four, the wager still succeeds even after we’ve discarded this false assumption and taken into account the multitude of other religions. For ease of exposition, it’s better to begin by considering just the two states of Christianity and naturalism, and the two strategies of committing to God (in a Christian way) and not committing to God at all, and then later add in the complication of additional states (e.g., Judaism is true) and additional strategies (e.g., commit to God in a Jewish way). With all this in mind, we can represent the wager, for now, with this decision matrix:

Christianity is true

Naturalism is true

Commit to God

Outcome WC

(Wager and Christianity is true)

Outcome WN

(Wager and Naturalism is true)

Refrain from committing to God

Outcome ~WC

(Don’t wager and Christianity is true)

Outcome ~WN

(Don’t wager and Naturalism is true)

Figure 2.1

Filling in the Boxes

We’ve now reached the crucial stage of the argument: how does one fill in the boxes in this matrix? How should one evaluate the situation that would result if one has wagered for God and indeed Christianity is true (outcome WC)? How should one evaluate the situation that would result if naturalism were true and one has committed to God (outcome WN)? And so on for the other two possibilities.

Starting with outcome WC: what sort of value should one place on the outcome that results from committing to God, if Christianity is true? It might be tempting to write into our matrix “eternal life,” perfect happiness with God and others, without end. But that would be to assume that salvation is guaranteed for anyone who embarks on the project of committing to God. Better to merely say that one has maximized one’s chance at eternal life.

Yet there is much more to include in outcome WC. The benefits aren’t just for the decision maker. If God exists and has offered you eternal life, he’s there holding out his hand, so to speak, earnestly desiring that you won’t reject his assistance. You can turn your back on him or you can reach out your hand. Being perfectly good, God loves you and wants what’s best for you, and he knows that an everlasting relationship with him is the best and most satisfying thing possible for you. So by seeking closeness with God, you will bring joy to God and all others who are with God in heaven. Jesus expresses this thought in the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the prodigal son (Lk 15). Christianity presents God as a father who cares for his children, and in another analogy, as a lover seeking his beloved.

Third, if God exists and you’ve committed to God, you’ve exhibited the virtue of gratitude to God. You’ve done something morally good. There is value in this. In a way, this third point is similar to the second point, but here we’re looking at it from your side—not at the value of God’s joy over your response to his offer but at the moral value of your response itself.

Fourth, it’s very plausible to think that you are more likely to benefit from divine aid for moral and spiritual growth if you seek a relationship with God than if you don’t. No doubt God would not leave you without grace if you didn’t seek him, but it’s reasonable to think that if you’re more open to God’s assistance in your life, then you’ll end up resisting less when God sends help your way.

Fifth, you are more likely to be aware of God’s love during this earthly life. If Christianity is true, a close relationship with God can begin now.

Sixth, if Christianity is true and you’ve attempted to follow a Christian way of life, you’re more likely to be a help to others in their journey to God. Since the ultimate good for human beings will largely depend on their relationship with God, we can include in outcome WC the idea that you’ll be more likely to help others in the most important way possible.

Christianity is true

Naturalism is true

Commit to GodMaximize chance at eternal lifeBring joy to God and othersExpress gratitude to GodMore likely to benefit from divine aidMore likely to be aware of God’s love in this lifeMore likely to help others attain salvationPLUS: This-worldly costs and benefits of outcome WN

Outcome WN

Refrain from committing to God

Outcome ~WC

Outcome ~WN

Figure 2.2

The six goods just mentioned are all goods specific to outcome WC; they are goods that won’t also be present if Christianity is false, and thus are goods that won’t be included in outcome WN. But there are certain this-worldly goods that should be included in both outcome WC (wager for God and Christianity is true) and outcome WN (wager for God but naturalism is true), like the benefits in this life of belonging to a religious community. The same goes for certain this-worldly costs, like the cost of time spent in pursuing a relationship with God. I’ll discuss these costs and benefits at length in our examination of outcome WN. For now the thing to note is that, if Christianity is true, the overall value of these this-worldly costs and benefits tends to get swamped by the massive value of the goods specific to outcome WC. If Christianity is true, the cost of time “spent” in pursuing a relationship with God becomes negligible, if it is construed as a cost at all. So the value one places on outcome WC is almost entirely determined by the value of the goods specific to outcome WC, which are clearly of immense value.

At the end of the day, what should we write in the box for outcome WC? Shall we say that we have an infinitely valuable state of affairs here? That may be an acceptable way to put the point, but it isn’t necessary to think of the value of outcome WC as a single infinite quantity. We make decisions all the time without quantifying the various possible outcomes. Here too, all we’ll need to do is to hold the goods involved in mind for later comparison with the other outcomes.

Outcome WN

On the other hand, suppose you live your three-score years and ten committing to God, going to church, spending time in prayer, and then at death it’s over. Have you wasted your life? Have you squandered your one chance at happiness? Pascal certainly didn’t think so:

But what harm will come to you from taking this course [committing to God]? You will be faithful, honest, humble, grateful, doing good, a sincere and true friend. It is, of course, true; you will not take part in corrupt pleasure, in glory, in the pleasures of high living. But will you not have others? I tell you that you will win thereby in this life.3

Famous early American psychologist William James held a similar view, writing that religion brings with it “a new zest which adds itself like a gift to life, and takes the form either of lyrical enchantment or of appeal to earnestness and heroism. . . . An assurance of safety and a temper of peace, and, in relation to others, a preponderance of loving affections.”4

Could it be that if you commit to God, you will benefit even if there is no God? While Pascal and James say yes, others say no. Thus the philosopher Michael Martin: “There is little empirical reason to suppose that theists are happier and healthier, lead more rewarding lives, and so on than nontheists. . . . Nor does it seem to be true that if one is a theist it is more likely that one will achieve happiness and so on in this life than if one is a nontheist.”5