Essay 4.  On the Divine Question: Who Will Be Able to Say “I Told You So?”

 

                                         Pascal’s Wager from Another Angle

 

Pascal's Wager is an argument in apologetic philosophy which was devised by the seventeenth-century French philosopher, mathematician, and physicist, Blaise Pascal (1623–1662). It posits that humans all bet with their lives — and perhaps, souls — either that God exists or not. Given the possibility that God actually does exist and assuming an infinite gain or loss associated with belief or unbelief in said God (as represented by an eternity in heaven or hell), a rational person should live as though God exists and seek (whatever that means) to believe in God. If God does not actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (supposedly some pleasures, luxury, etc. in mortal life).

 

[Parts of the previous paragraph were culled from an online definition]

 

Proposition: only the theist will be capable of mouthing a boast in the Great Beyond, if there is one.  To make this argument, we will assume the following conditions:

 

• That God’s existence cannot be proven or disproven in this physical world.

• That if God exists, he (we default to this Biblical pronoun for ease) will reveal himself in whatever realm that lies beyond this physical world, which assumes that humans will retain a consciousness and mental faculties of some sort.

• That if there is no God, then there also is no spiritual realm, nor an afterlife nor consciousness after death, and everyone who dies becomes consciously nonexistent. 

• That the question is either God or no God and will not concern with permutations of God or gods, which includes a deist god who may choose to stay continually hidden from view in every possible realm.

• That the terms theist and atheist will be understood in their most basic meaning: respectively, one who believes that there is a God and one who believes there is no God.

 

With these conditions, when a theist dies he can only hear that he is right in that if he is wrong, a nonexistent god will say nothing.  When an atheist dies he can only hear that he is wrong, in that if he is right the same nonexistent god will say the same nothing.

 

When a theist dies and there is indeed a God, the theist will know this fact.  When an atheist dies and there is after all a God, the atheist will also know this fact.  When either the theist or the atheist dies and there is no God, neither of them will ever know this fact, in that both are consciously nonexistent.

 

Therefore, the premise of the theist can be verified but can never be disproven.  Conversely, the premise of the atheist can be disproven but can never be verified.  Obviously, this is merely a restatement of Pascal’s Wager with the emphasis placed on the possibilities for verification, which lie only with the theist: only an existent God can be verified; a nonexistent one cannot.

 

Pascal’s Wager is an argument for the prudence of positing that there is a God, rather than that there is not, in the absence of any proof for either proposition in this physical world; it has the assumption that only a God who exists can do a departed soul any mischief. A nonexistent God would be toothless and impotent, as are all nonexistent “things.” Since a believer in God, for this argument, is presumed to be in no peril from a God who in fact exists, and since that same believer in God would likewise be in no peril from a nonexistent God, Pascal argues that, theoretically, a theist can be in no danger regardless of how the divine question is answered.

 

Conversely, an atheist can only avoid the possibility of peril if God doesn’t exist. If God turns out to exist, the atheist may be imperiled if that God is offended at disbelief. Thus, the theist has a zero chance of confronting an offended God, but the atheist has a 50-50 chance of the possibility of this confrontation. Furthermore, the atheist will never know if he turns out to be right, making his earthly premise moot and the atheist is doomed to never enjoying the satisfaction of verification.

 

Pascal himself was careful to differentiate between a mere posit that God exists (which he conceded was only a facile starting point) and what might be called "true faith," which is well beyond the perfunctory faith of one making a calculated proposition. Pascal however argued that this initial posit that God exists could possibly lead to a deeper faith that might eventually please a God waiting for believers in the afterlife.

 

Pascal had a concept of a God that might reward an honest attempt at basic tossup faith with a deeper faith. He pointed out, however, that positing that God does not exist, leads to no faith at all, and therefore leads to no better than an even chance of possibly avoiding an offended God.

 

He further realized that any given theist might careen into eternity and bumble upon a God quite different than the one he/she has in mind. However, for the sake of our simpler argument in this treatise, we are not considering a dogmatic God who will demand a particular denominational credo, which is an argument confined to differing sects of theists. We are only sounding the primal argument between the “yes there is” and “no there isn’t” camps: theists and atheists with no sectarian trappings mucking up the question.

 

Within this argument, only the theist can ever be proved right, and only the atheist can ever be proved wrong, and in this wrongness, there is the possibility for divine judgment that imperils the soul, or whatever part of him persists in the afterlife. Pascal considered these disparate odds in favor of the theist to be worth the mental exercise and agile thought required to posit that God exists, in that the question is logically and mathematically even, and it is impossible to give one side more weight by means of the scientific method.  Both God and no-God are outside of the physical realm and therefore removed from the investigative and experimental purview of humankind.

 

Thus the blind faith of the theist is equal in validity to the equally blind faith of the atheist.  Both start with the evidential needle pointing to zero, and both can take, with equal certainty or uncertainty, a first step toward the positive or the negative side of the question.

 

Pascal says, "Either God is, or he is not. But to which view shall we be inclined? Reason cannot decide this question [remember that Pascal's Wager is an argument for skeptics]. Infinite chaos separates us. At the far end of this infinite distance [death] a coin is being spun that will come down heads [God] or tails [no God]. How will you wager?"

 

Whether or not God exists, and whether or not He is the God a theist is hoping for, and whether or not a theist will escape any possible jugdement, one thing seems to be the case: if there is no consciousness after death, then the atheist will be quite incapacitated in this pesky nonexistence. In that debilitated condition, the atheist will be unable to make a nonexistent brain manipulate nonexistent vocal cords to intone, "I told you so!" to the theist. The earth-time theist is also nonexistent, and would be unhearing even if the boast were voiced. 

 

There is a possibility, however, that the theist can make that "I told you so!" boast to the atheist, if they both continue to exist in the afterlife and can communicate. This assumes that the theist is looking at the God he/she expected to see. If it turns out that a God exists in the spiritual realm, and both atheists and theist wind up there, and that God doesn't like either one of them, then the theist was still factually right: there is a God, just a dogmatic one. The atheist is then factually wrong: there is a God, but a recalcitrant one who doesn't like anybody. 

 

There is another permutation, of course, and one rather popular in atheistic circles. It goes like this: assume a God who will strongly dislike the theist because he/she is not sufficiently mentally discerning and questioning. In other words, this God appreciates a good, honest skeptic because skepticism is supposedly a healthy and impressive mental agility that tickles this smart-people-loving God's fancy, even if the atheist has been factually wrong in asserting that no God whatsoever exists. Therefore, even though the theist has posited that there's a God, and thus, turns out to be theoretically correct, God will disdain this person for his blind faith, incoherent beliefs and intellectual laziness... and bad politics.  

 

On the other hand, the atheist appears before this intellectually elite God, and says, "Oops..heh heh..you do exist, don't you? I was sure you didn't because I was so devoted to the scientific method, and so astute in my mental exercises, and so unable to accept any proposition without evidence, that I naturally, and sincerely assumed you didn't exist!  Hooboy, you did a good job of hiding yourself. My fault!"  

 

This kind of God will say to the atheist, "No problem! You were forthright in your intents, and you were following your instincts based on an integrity of the spirit and mind, therefore, no harm, no foul!" This progressive God continues: "This rascally 'theist,' however, is the base creature you always identified him/her to be on earth. He/she also belonged to the wrong political party, and was a hypocrite, as all theists are - as you well know (and said so often on earth). This theist was just not a good person, as are most of you intellectually impressive atheists, so in a great bit of divine irony here, I will cast the theist into outer darkness, and you the former atheist, because you were so clever and politically correct, enter thou into the joy of your belatedly acknowledged Lord." 

 

Now, atheists might not get off scot free even with a intellectually elitist God. He (with a capital 'H') may say to them, "Okay, you disbelieving guys were clearly the Übermensch of earth, as you constantly, ad nauseum, told everybody all the time, especially if you caught them (Me forbid!) coming out of a church. Oh, by the way, that reminds me: Nietzsche is here in heaven, and the surprised look hasn't left his face since he got a load of me!  I put him in charge of sending anti-intellectual, wrong-thinking, commonfolk theists to the nether regions, and he loves the job, need I say?  But I digress." 

 

"Like I say, I revere intellectualism, lucid thought, proper politics, the correct schools, the scientific method, and all that superior claptrap, above all else... even morality, ethics, and minding your own business (which you guys were terrible at!). This is why you're getting a break, even though you stupidly thought I didn't exist, and busted everybody's chops all the time if they disagreed, and you libs couldn't stand anyone disagreeing with you! However, in the interest of fair play, I want to mention a few niggling things you former atheists did that even burnt Me up, and that's saying something, considering that I really dig your grey matter, Book Club memberships, and Ivy League credentials.

 

"But still, you guys were real pains in the Divine Gluteus Maximus with all your buttinsky attacks on those slow-witted religionists. It seems to me that you should have given them a small break. After all, they were genetically inferior to you atheists, which is the only plausible explanation that accounts for them all being dumbed down to a level beneath your house dogs, which I noted, you treated better than the believers."  

 

"You guys really didn't go much in for the 'Live and Let Live' maxim, did you? What was all the rage and noise about? You should have given us all a break by keeping your big mouths shut, which, if you had, I would now be putting you in change of the angel seminars (only kidding... angels are even smarter than you are, if you can ever believe that, and knowing you pompous atheists, I doubt it!). But no, you're just barely getting in here, and that's only due to your fat I.Q.s. But no special promotions... and no soup for you!  Let's face it, you were not exactly Mr. Rodgers down there!"

 

"Oh, and one more thing: all that steaming crud about religionists, especially Christians being responsible for most of the world's miseries, wars, and untold deaths: where did you arrogant stupeheads get that goofy statistic?! Believe me (ha!.. get it?!. believe me!), I have the final tally here on my Great Scorecard in the Sky, and all the religions and all the religious wars in history don't even come close to my pals, Stalin and Lenin, and I don't have to remind you what their "religion" was, do I? "

 

"I said 'my pals' in jest, by the way. I sent those guys, plus Mao to a special little place reserved for those who manage to kill more than 10 million people during one crummy lifetime. Josef and the other guy, whatshisface, did in over 100 million, so they got the red-hot throne chairs in this place. And if you're wondering about Hitler, he was a mere pauper in the death count, but I lumped him in with the atheists. Why?.. because as that weird Goebbels guy correctly wrote in 1941, Hitler "hates Christianity, because it has crippled all that is noble in humanity."

 

"Did you get that quote?  Sounds a lot like you atheists on earth, doesn't it? Here, this Hitler guy talks about Christians destroying noblity, while he tried to kill the earth! Talk about chutzpuh (delicious Yiddish word, eh-h?), a genocidal mass murderer who tried to exterminate a race of people...no wait,..lots of races of people, yammers about noblity!  If I didn't hate all this mass murdering so much, I'd love the irony! I mean, you have to begrudgingly be impressed when a guy like Hitler rags on Christianity for doing bad things!"

 

"And,..ahem!...with whom did you atheists agree while on earth, regarding the value of Christians??.. that's right! the answer we're looking for is 'Hitler.'  You loudmouths were in his camp with regard to the ignoblity of Christianity, and I gotta tell you: the lowly believers weren't all that bad and,.. may I remind you, that they were right about Me, and you guys, with all of your book-larnin', were el wrongo!  

 

Okay, I grant you, the Crusades were a crock of baloney, but my Scorecard gives the death count there as below 50,000 — and it took 200 years to get it up to that! After all, how many people can you whack way back in the 12th c. with bows and arrows, and a steenking catapult that sometimes exploded and killed all the operators?"  

 

"Final tally? You moralizing  atheists killed 200 million, counting the Chinese communists clowns, the doofnagle Russians, and those Khmer Rouge rogues. All the deadly religionists in history amount to a few sprained ankles compared to the I-Hate-God crowd. You atheists were all-time champs in snuffing out human life, and I have to say: that really honked me off, which is why those particuar atheists are... well,..you-know-where!

 

"But you modern-day, sophisticated, civilized, A-List-School atheists are lucky to be in a safe place in history. Had you been back there with ol' Vladimir, you'be be shoveling lava right now! But you managed, by an accident of time, to confine your murderous activities to only character assassinations, unending hate-speak, a continuous flow of bad statistics, and unabated nosiness, all the while laughably blaming those dimwitted Christians for the woes of humankind: all crapola, by the way. You atheists are a riot!"  

 

"Nevertheless, because I am the intellectually haughty God of all time, and love your superior, transcendent minds, I wink at all your inhumanity, lack of ethics, intrusiveness, wrong-headed maliciousness, and questionable character, and grant you eternal life based on only one thing: your brain stem. Oh, and about Jesus: He wasn't a bad guy, so you messed that up too.

 

Yes, it's a real problem how you trashed the principles of the Sermon of the Mount (Jesus is a good friend of mine,.. I know Jesus,.. and atheists, you're no Jesus!) You were 'peacemakers' in about the same way Joe was, except you didn't actually kill anybody...or did you?.. lemme check the ledger!"  

 

If this kind of God exists: who agrees with the atheists, that all theists are drooling Neanderthals who hate all people who differ from them, have the audacity to go to the wrong schools and take up the wrong politics, and go through life corroding society, then the atheist will be able to say, "I sort of told you so! You theists are all subhuman misanthropists, and no God of any discernment will ever smile on you."  

 

So, theists, beware the Elite God: he's won't like you unless you were a champ on Jeopardy and went to Harvard.  And atheists, better hope first for: No God, and second: a God who condescends toward theists because they are the unwashed and worthless cretins that you salt-of-the-Godless-earth, enlightened, exalted, good-hearted atheists always said they were.  

 

I give this Mensa-member version of God a chance... not a big one, mind you. Finding out God is Lex Luther is a far better chance than SnobGod in my estimation, in which case, we are all doomed.