Pascal's argument is strange, that much is clear to everyone. It is often deployed by believers as a last resort when all the other aces have been refuted by their atheist interlocutor, so it does come up quite a bit, I suppose. But its commonality is both due to it being a fairly simple argument to grasp but also because it constitutes a genuine doubt. So it is kind of ironic that a mathematician of all things, was the one to come up with an apologetic argument that, under the guise of logic and probability, actually has a deep underlying psychological question – what if I'm wrong?
I was gonna include a boring portrait of Blaise Pascal but as I wrote the article, a picture like this one seemed more accurate
I would think that almost everyone, believer or not, and regardless of faith, has at one point or another asked him or herself that very question. If you falter in your religion, you worry about hell, if you consider all the people who follow other religions, you worry about hell, if you think about the people who lived and died before your religion even existed, you worry about hell, and if you're an atheist, you worry about hell... Is there any logic and reason in all that worry and headache? Probably not, after all, most people can very quickly and smartly refute the insanity of Pascal's wager, and with very good arguments too, but can they refute the fear? Do atheists cure their arachnophobia if they slam a Gottlob Frege on a spider? I didn't think so. I would think that some of us, or indeed most of us, can't help but wonder about those questions, and in an ugly but very honest way, the fact that all believers can't be correct at the same time means that if we atheists are wrong, then at least we're not alone. Misery does love company, those who have just lost big at the roulette tables would rather avoid the high-rollers. And like Billy Joel says – I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, the sinners are much more fun...
But ye have heard it said – not all truth claims require the same level of skepticism. So does the wager really ignore all other religions? Maybe, but maybe it is correct to do so. There are many reasons as to why religions collapse, and as a response to that you might say that it's just a matter of time until some of those reasons catch up with the remaining religions. Each religion is thus seen as a thing of the times. If so many people fervently believed in religions that are now wholly extinct, why are we so sure that our religions will stand the test of time and will make it all the way to world series? That may be a safe bet, but the obvious truth of the matter is that some religions have indeed made it to this day. If in a way similar to John Rawls' veil of ignorance you had to place a bet on a religion before knowing anything about human history, you probably would consider Zeus to be a blunder, although I'm sure some people believe in Zeus even now, but if you happened to have been born two thousand years ago and placed your bet in Yahweh or Christ you might have been right, or at the very least, your horse would still be in the running. But will it be the first to cross the finish line? Maybe, maybe not, but the point is that not all bets are created equal, the point is that researching the odds on a case-by-case basis might be in order.
But I digress. That's not the funny thing I wanted to talk about. The elephant in the room is that it seems to me that Pascal's wager is built on a silent presupposition that secular humanism echoes. The wager argues that if you live your life believing in God and then you act morally so as to please him, even if just in case, then you don't lose anything. Atheists understandably contend with all points of the wager, and this one is no different. But to that they essentially say that what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas... I've recently come to find that reasoning rather interesting, it appears to be an injunction to hedonism which, like it or not, gives some ground to the pious claim that atheists only want to sin freely. But I should leave that for another day. For now my main point is the secular humanism comparison. Doesn't secular humanism presuppose a kind of gut-feeling that it is just right, that the bet will just ring-a-ding-ding? You will likely tell me no, you will say that secular humanism is built on reason, it's built on careful and ongoing examinations of biology, psychology, sociology and so on, it's the constant gathering of the cumulative results of all human endeavors throughout history in order to build in this world the best possible world. But is that all that different than counting cards all the way to twenty-one? If, as Christopher Hitchens eloquently put it, we are born into a losing struggle, is secular humanism anything more than hoping for a draw?
I'm not sure, I don't really see much of a difference. The only split is that Pascal assumes one religion, and therefore one set of rules, to be the correct one we ought to live by so as to earn heaven, whereas secular humanists are understandably writing and adjusting the rulebook as they go along, which in a way is a boon, in other ways maybe not so much. But isn't the injunction to be a good person essentially the same? Secular humanism offers no afterlife, it accepts the indifference of the universe as the default position and understands the basis of biology to be the drive to procreate, yet we are expected to be good people just the same, in hope of some kind of reward. Well, what do we care if nobody goes to our funeral?... Or maybe the reward is leaving a good world for one's offspring, but don't atheists have the lowest birth rates? I think deep down we understand what I've been saying – atheism leads to pessimism, or at the very least, to some kind of individualism. If in the end we all bust-out, what's stopping a player from trashing the casino just for fun? If he wins big, great, he's likely to be on his best behavior, if he loses but bounces back, he might behave as well, and even if he loses big, he might still behave because it's in his nature. But what if he just doesn't want to behave, regardless of the outcome? What if he does whatever the hell he wants?
Another strange aspect of the wager is that Pascal advises those who simply cannot believe to just practice christianity, and hopefully, the repetition, the ritual, the community of it all, will get you on a high roll and cause you to believe. In criticizing precisely that claim, Matt Dillahunty said that Pascal's advice was a “fake it 'till you make it” sort of thing. And that is as clear and sharp a criticism as it gets. However... Isn't secular humanism a little bit like that? Being a good person might be good when we receive good things in return, being a good person might be easy when things are easy. But what about when you act like a real cool cat and you're then met with hatred and disgust? What about when people take advantage of you? You're not being a cool cat, you're being a sucker. What about when things aren't so good and it's every man for himself? You may accuse me of taking the extreme scenario, but if a system of ethics only works when, for the most part, things are good and stable, then isn't that kinda like cheating? Secular humanism appears to be a system of ethics that greatly derides religion though it is built on centuries of religious thought, and not only that, it is also built on the religion that, as far as I know, is the one who most strongly allows for the core values that secular humanists defend. It seems like secular humanism can only be proselytized to places that, due to christianity, already agree with the inherent value of each human being. But what about places where they don't? It's almost as if secular humanism, much like skepticism, is built in a way that the house always wins.
And I'm just now realizing that, in some sense, the logic here isn't all that new. It goes back to The Brothers Karamazov, namely the infamous Ivan versus Alyosha debate in which Ivan paints a vivid picture of all the hideous, senseless suffering in the world, challenging Alyosha to defend the notion that a loving god does exist alongside all that suffering. Alyosha, all shy and naive, all eager to befriend his brother Ivan, has no answer for it. All he can do is to continue to be a good person. So Alyosha, as a christian, answers the idea of evil by doing just that, by continuing to be a good person. Pascal, as a christian, defends one should be a good person, even if just in case. And lastly, secular humanists say one should be a good person for the good of humanity. That sounds nice and all, but those two guys at least stand a chance to win big, whereas the secular humanists? Not so much. Therefore, life on Earth has to be its own reward, but that keeps pushing us back to the same idea that, if we are given the chance to improve our lives by acting immorally, we should take it. Even if we get caught later on, it still might be expedient to take our chances. To me this is a very pessimist thing and I don't see secular humanists contending with it. Some people believe God himself lived on Earth as a man and taught us things, and they still have a hard time following his commandments. What makes you think you will have the drive to follow similar commandments if they only come from logic and reason? I mean, are you that convinced your reason is that powerful? And as for logic, have you ever actually picked up a logic manual? Not a fun read, I've found.
Secular humanism admits a whole lot of premises about the contingency of human beings in the proverbial grand scheme of things but then it would appear that, in order to act as good people, we have to willingly narrow our scope. Ironically, that does work in an immediate sense because even the most hardcore solipsist gets hungry from time to time. Or it's like when Parmenides says there's no such thing as movement and you refute him by just walking out the door. It's funny how at times pure philosophical thought works on paper, but in practice it's a whole other ball game... Our human nature inherently and inevitably tilts us towards human affairs, of which secular humanism is obviously made up off. But the question is always the same – how sure are we of the basis for it? If existence itself is contingent then how can life on Earth not be contingent? I guess the best that secular humanism can hope for is that most people look into the odds and don't gamble at all, but while the odds can be low, some people do indeed hit the jackpot.
The way I see it, secular humanism presupposes a kind of faith. You might dislike that word but if you do, feel free to replace it with whatever word gamblers use for that gut-feeling of absolute certainty, because by now my casino analogies are spent. And just like Alyosha's faith was shaken by Ivan's view of the world, and yet he carried on being a good person all the same, secular humanists seem to forget that they are being asked to be good people in that very same world. For that reason, I just can't help but notice that when the chips are down, secular humanism will become a bad bet.
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