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UNCOLLECTABLE GAMBLING DEBT By William Sierichs, Jr. Blaise Pascal, a 17th-century French writer, was a staunch defender of Christianity, although he was involved in a controversy over a movement called Jansenism - in which he was a follower - and proceeded to savage the Jesuit order for its failings. Of course, it was a case of the mote in their eye and the beam in his own, as these few excerpts from Pascal's collected thoughts ("Pensees") will show. Not an unusual failing among the religious. In fairness, Pascal didn't finish "Pensees," and editors say it's difficult to assemble "Pensees" into a coherent work. Nonetheless, the trends of his thinking are clear, often repetitiously so. Pascal is probably most famous for his "wager," (item no. 233) in which he basically argues that belief in a god is like a bet, and the best way to win is by believing; if god exists, you win eternal life, while if god does not exist, you've lost nothing. Atheists, he argues, win nothing if they're right and lose eternal life if they're wrong. Thus, theism is a better bet than atheism, Pascal concludes. This was not really an original argument. In the 3rd-century, the Christian writer Arnobius of Sicca wrote "The Case Against the Pagans," in which he argues at one point, "Since, then, it is the nature of things which are still in the future that they cannot be grasped and understood by the touch of anticipation, is it not better reasoning that, of two alternatives which are both uncertain and hang in doubtful suspense, we should believe the one which affords some hopes rather than the one which offers none at all? In the former case there is no danger [if] what is said to be in the future proves vain and idle; and in the latter there is the greatest loss, specifically the loss of salvation, if when the time has come, it be made patent that there was no deceit." (Book 2, chapter 4) ["The Case Against the Pagans," Arnobius of Sicca, translated by George E. McCracken, Ancient Christian Writers series, No. 7, 1949, New York: Paulist Press] I probably don't have to point out the objection to this argument to agnostics and atheists, who have usually considered and rejected some variation of it. Not only is there no evidence of any higher power in the universe, but if such a thing exists, it won't care about what humans believe/disbelieve; the issue would be exceedingly trivial to an intellect that could control this vast, complex cosmos. `Eternal life,' if such an improbable thing exists, will not be gained or lost by belief/nonbelief in a god. That's making a higher power into a petty, lower one, which is a logical contradiction. Science also has shown that the natural world operates through complex interactions of laws or patterns that can be understood and defined, often mathematically. Adding `god' to these equations is unnecessary. Even the origin of the universe appears to follow natural laws. If `god' is irrelevant to the universe, why add such a being to it? Irrelevancy doesn't prove some higher power does not exist, but it puts a burden of proof on those who argue for it. Unnecessary complexity is not a good reason to believe in the supernatural. Pascal's answer would be that, even if the odds of a god existing are, let's say, 1 in a million, and the odds of eternal life are another 1 in a million, it's still safer to bet on god and eternal life at 1 in a trillion odds; non-believers simply risk too much. Now, many agnostics and atheists might be willing to say, "OK, I'll believe in `god.' Now that's said, let's forget about it and get on with life." If that's all it takes, belief is harmless speculation. But Pascal, like most religious believers, doesn't stop there. He goes on to argue that religion is also necessary and is also the safer bet than non-religion. There are two serious flaws in his reasoning. First, he fails to note that - if one listens to the many religions and sects of the world - eternal life is not contingent merely upon belief in a god, but upon belief in the correct religion. There are more than 300 sects within Christianity alone, and several major groupings: Roman Catholic, Orthodox Catholic and Protestant. Quite a few Protestants assume they won't see any Catholics beyond the Pearly Gates, while some Catholics expect the Heavenly Choir to drown out the screams of non-Catholics, who are all roasting in Hell. Muslims, meanwhile, advise all Christians to wear asbestos underwear to the grave. Jews expect to dance when "them bones, them bones, them dry bones" of only the Chosen People are reassembled in post-Life Bowl festivities. And Hindus think non-believers have missed the Wheel of Life. At best, we'll be reincarnated as ants or something else puny and underfoot of the devout. Buddhists pity those of us who are Unenlightened; we're babes in the woods to them. So Pascal's wager turns into a gigantic roulette wheel: According to all religions, unless you pick just the right belief system, you will get a `Go to Hell, Go Directly to Hell, Do Not Pass Heaven, Do Not Collect Salvation' card. As the odds are perhaps 1 in 500 of picking the correct sect, there's hope only for a very lucky few. Problem number two is that religion encourages supernatural beliefs. God is not merely sitting out there somewhere, She's also making magic to change reality whenever She wishes. To a religious person, the ground always has that potential to shift underfoot, the universe to mutate without warning. "Latest miracles on Earth. Film at 10." If you piss god off, you could be zapped by lightning or washed away in a flood or have an agent of the Angel Bureau of Investigation make you an offer you can't refuse. Some of these beliefs also have led to extreme violence, bigotry and repression of religious dissenters. If you believe that your god commands you to smite the infidels or blot out ideas that challenge your religion, such as Copernicus's or Darwin's theories, then any atrocity can be justified. Only when people broke away from religion and rejected the idea that nature is run by arbitrary deities did humanity begin to discover the natural laws that underlie the universe. First came the philosophers of the Classical World who sought rational causes behind natural events, then - after Christianity's superstitions began unraveling - came the scientists of the modern world who have systematically explored nature. Where people once could do nothing in the face of epidemics, fatal diseases and crippling ailments, we now have vaccines, antibiotics and many types of scientifically-discovered treatments, with new ones appearing every year. We live in a world built by science. Religion is like the crank who writes letters to the editor complaining about how scientists cause hurricanes when they launch rockets to the Moon. When people had only religion, they lived in candle-lit darkness and damp, drafty castles; news came via Sandal Express. Science gave us light, central heating and TV. (OK, so 2 out of 3 ain't bad. But it was religion that put televangelists on the air. You can't blame scientists for that!) Rejecting religion also allowed the expansion of individual freedom and of human rights, which was followed by an explosion of not only scientific but artistic and philosophical progress, while reducing the level of bloodshed in those countries which have fully adopted secular democratic ideas. So Pascal's wager really boils down to: Shall we bet on a very large roulette wheel that we can pick the single, `real', unseen, unknown god and religion out of the hundreds to choose from, thereby gaining a dubious hope of some mystical life-after-death; or shall we concentrate on reality and defeat disease, go to the Moon, and free large numbers of people from the barely-surviving existence that so many endured in the past, with the hope of freeing the many who still just get by - and not always that. Personally, I prefer reality. History shows it's a sure bet. From a secular humanistic viewpoint, Pascal has other, more serious problems: First, item no. 98: "It is a deplorable thing to see all men deliberating on means alone, and not on the end. Each thinks how he will acquit himself in his condition; but as for the choice of condition, or of country, chance gives them to us. "It is a pitiable thing to see so many Turks, heretics and infidels, follow the way of their fathers for the sole reason that each has been imbued with the prejudice that it is the best. ..." Then, from item no. 640: "It is a wonderful thing, and worthy of particular attention, to see this Jewish people existing so many years in perpetual misery, it being necessary as a proof of Jesus Christ, both that they should exist to prove Him, and that they should be miserable because they crucified Him; and though to be miserable and to exist are contradictory, they nevertheless still exist in spite of their misery." Now read item no. 895: "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." He really needed to expand that last item, in the light of his items no. 98 and 640: `People also are never so blind to their own prejudices and the flaws in their own reasoning as when they are blinded by religious conviction.' We may have to forgive his blindness, for it was based on ignorance. In item no. 741, he claims that "The two oldest books in the world are those of Moses and Job, the one a Jew and the other a Gentile." After that whopper, one can hardly credit Pascal's subsequent claim that "Both of them look upon Jesus Christ as their common centre and object." Moses - if he even existed, for which there are strong doubts - did not write the books attributed to him. And neither the books of Moses or Job are as old as The Iliad, The Odyssey, Hesiod's works, the Babylonian Enuma Elish, The Epic of Gilgamesh, the story of Atrahesis, the epic poem-cycle of the Sumerian goddess Inanna, a number of Egyptian and Mesopotamian works on morality - from which the Bible obviously copied many moral ideas - and perhaps other works not yet recovered. (For example, Homer was not the only poet telling stories about the Trojan War. Other Trojan War poems simply were not preserved, but are known only from later synopses.) Also, the idea that those books and others in the Jewish scriptures were written with a foreknowledge of Jesus is an idea rooted solely in Christian propaganda, not historical analysis. Christian writers have long loved to reinterpret Jewish literature so that obscure passages become prologues to Christian scripture. Any honest analysis would find no such links, as historians have pointed out, and the "prophets" of Judaism would be astounded at how their works were vandalized by followers of a quite-alien religion. Don't blame Blaise. He died long before archaeology and Biblical scholarship demonstrated how wrong he was. He was simply repeating the errors of his time. The same cannot be said for modern Christian fundamentalists who pursue the same line of attack (the Bible is literally true, it comes from god, it's the oldest book, etc.) The evidence is in front of them; blind belief prevents them from admitting its existence. Finally, though, on Pascal, what can be said about someone who writes, in item no. 51, "Sceptic, for obstinate"; while in item no. 272 claims "There is nothing so conformable to reason as this disavowal of reason." The latter idea follows a series of items in which Pascal says reason must recognize that there are "an infinity of things which are beyond it," which must include not only the natural (i.e., stars unseen before telescopes) but the supernatural as well. He then argues that people must know when to doubt, when to feel certain (of a thing) and when to submit (when evidence is lacking.) He says (item 269) "Submission is the use of reason in which consists true Christianity." and adds, for good measure (item 271) "Wisdom sends us to childhood." Admittedly, Pascal had a clue. In item 287, "I confess indeed that one of those Christians who believe without proofs will not perhaps be capable of convincing an infidel who will say the same of himself." Unfortunately, after showing insight by recognizing the glitch, he puts his foot into his mouth. "But those who know the proofs of religion will prove without difficulty that such a believer is truly inspired by God, though he (i.e., the believer without proofs) cannot prove it himself." So how come Christianity's Finest Thinkers have never converted those billion or so Muslims, nearly a billion Hindus, another billion or so animists, and millions of Jews. The non-Christians stick to their own `proofs of religion.' Pretty obstinate of them, eh. Sorry, Blaise, but skeptics are obstinate in the use of reason because we are in search of truth; we do not accept false or circular logic such as yours as evidence. Blind adherence to religious faith - into which Christians are born as well as Turks, heretics and infidels - is a lazy way out of a tough chore. Jews were not made miserable by a god but by Christians' religious conviction. Reason requires a good bit of intellectual sweat, not easy rationalizations of prejudices or beliefs brainwashed into unwary children. Reason in this century has battered religion into a state of utter helplessness; it now falls back purely onto blind faith and the intellectual inertia of people taught from birth that their religion - out of all the many religions - is the only true one. So Pascal is not unique. Rather, he is all too representative of the level of thinking behind religions. That strange mixture of ignorance and the intellectual arrogance it breeds - in which the believer perversely assumes without proof that his ideas are inherently superior to everyone else's and anyone who disagrees is automatically wrong - has been characteristic of theology for centuries. Religion is a powerful argument for a better educational system and for courses on critical thinking. An educated person reads and studies
widely, takes claims with a grain of salt until good evidence -
not `submission' - dictates their acceptance, and continually seeks
verification or disproof of claims, particularly the conflicting
ones of the world's many superstitions. A pensive person would bet
on nothing less.
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