The Geeky Atheist

I've been reading a so-far great book Philosophers without Gods, and in one of the essays the author notes that he desires for there to be a god, but he just can't bring himself to believe in a god. He goes on to discuss Pascal's Wager.

Pascal's Wager is this:

If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is....

..."God is, or He is not." But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager? According to reason, you can do neither the one thing nor the other; according to reason, you can defend neither of the propositions.

Do not, then, reprove for error those who have made a choice; for you know nothing about it. "No, but I blame them for having made, not this choice, but a choice; for again both he who chooses heads and he who chooses tails are equally at fault, they are both in the wrong. The true course is not to wager at all."

Yes; but you must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked. Which will you choose then? Let us see. Since you must choose, let us see which interests you least. You have two things to lose, the true and the good; and two things to stake, your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two things to shun, error and misery. Your reason is no more shocked in choosing one rather than the other, since you must of necessity choose. This is one point settled. But your happiness? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.

"That is very fine. Yes, I must wager; but I may perhaps wager too much." Let us see. Since there is an equal risk of gain and of loss, if you had only to gain two lives, instead of one, you might still wager. But if there were three lives to gain, you would have to play (since you are under the necessity of playing), and you would be imprudent, when you are forced to play, not to chance your life to gain three at a game where there is an equal risk of loss and gain. But there is an eternity of life and happiness. And this being so, if there were an infinity of chances, of which one only would be for you, you would still be right in wagering one to win two, and you would act stupidly, being obliged to play, by refusing to stake one life against three at a game in which out of an infinity of chances there is one for you, if there were an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain. But there is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite.

This argument boils down to this analogy: you can't win the lottery if you don't play. However, this author knew all of the flaws in the argument, but still saw something in the argument. The part of Pascal's argument that I had not read much commentary on is his argument of how you can believe in something you do not actually think is true.

His proposition is that if you begin to live as a believer, God will eventually reveal himself to you:

God's will has been to redeem men and open the way of salvation to those who seek it, but men have shown themselves so unworthy that it is right for God to refuse to some, for their hardness of heart, what he grants to others by a mercy they have not earned

... Thus wishing to appear openly to those who seek him with all their heart and hidden from those who shun him with all their heart, he has qualified our knowledge of him by giving signs which can be seen by those who seek him and not by those who do not.

There is enough light for those who desire only to see, and enough darkness for those of a contrary disposition.

The author of the essay describes his reluctance in accepting this proposition, even when faced with the idea of being granted knowledge of God:

My worry is different. If I follow Pascal's program, I will, indeed, land in a state in which I believe, and in which I am genuinely convinced that I can give a good reason for what I believe, if challenged. But am I entitled to trust my confidence when I am in that state? After all, I deliberately performed a series of steps that I knew would, if I followed them, put me into exactly that state. Now, it is one thing if, in the course of events, I find myself in that epistemic state. But it would seem to be quite another if I deliberately put myself into that state. In that case, it looks as if I am deliberately going about deceiving myself, believing because I want to believe.

And that wraps up one of the core problems with religious people's reasoning. To them, they feel like they have the evidence. However, to anyone who has not undergone the act of presupposition, their evidence is not evidence at all. Pascal actually summarizes it quite well in this cryptic passage:

Why, do you not say yourself that the sky and the birds prove God?

No.

Does your religion not say so?

No. For though it is true in a sense for some souls whom God has enlightened in this way, yet it is untrue for the majority.

Pascal understands that what evidence believers have is not empirical evidence, but rather reaffirmation of a presupposition.

My journey to unbelief came to a point that I decided the only evidence I could truly trust was empirical evidence, and that anything that required emotions or desires to be true must be discarded in favor of empirical evidence. It was that rationalization that eventually led to me becoming an atheist.