Gambling on God:
And the Lord spoke unto the philosopher, “I am the Lord your God, and though you have no proof I am who I say I am, let me give you a reason to believe that will appeal to you: a gamble based on self-interest.”
“There are two possibilities: I exist or I don’t exist. If you believe in me and I exist, you will get eternal life. If I don’t exist, you get a mortal life with some comforts of belief. Maybe you wasted some time praying and missed out on some pleasures, but that won’t matter when you’re dead. But if I do exist, eternal bliss is yours.”
“If you don’t believe and I don’t exist, you have a free and easy life but you will still end up dead and you would have lived without the reassurance of belief. If I do exist, it’s an eternity of torment for you.”
“So gamble that I don’t exist and the best is a short life with the worst being eternal damnation. Gamble that I do exist and the worst is a short life, but the best is eternal life.”
We all see examples of people all around the world that don’t regularly worship or follow their religious teachings. However, they still don’t give up their belief in God or gods. For example, they still baptize their children, arrange bar mitzvahs, have religious funerals, pray in times of need, etc.
These people have the same principles that underlie their behavior: it’s best to maintain a minimal commitment to God, just in case. It is a similar reasoning to purchasing insurance: it’s not a lot of time or effort, but it might save your soul.
This wager makes sense if there were only two possibilities like it suggests, but of course there aren’t. There are many gods to believe in. Christians believe that you must accept Jesus as your savior. So if you practice Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, Buddhism, Judaism, Confucianism, or any other religion, you still lose if Christ turns out to be the King of heaven.
The stakes are still the same: eternal damnation is one possible outcome of being wrong. However, you can’t insure against this highly probably eventuality because if you pick the wrong religion, you’re damned anyway.
Maybe you think that an all-loving God wouldn’t condemn people to hell for believing in the wrong religion. However, a God this kind and accepting would surely not damn atheists to eternal damnation either. The only God worth taking out insurance against is a fundamentalist one, and those policies are valid for one very specific deity only.
Also, it seems odd to think of a God who can see into our very souls would accept a belief based on such shallow and calculating self-interest. Perhaps over time you would genuinely come to believe and not just be going through the motions. However, God may still recognize the insincerity that motivated your belief and judge you accordingly.
Therefore, the gamble needs to be stated differently. Your choice is between believing in one particular vengeful and punishing God who commands belief in only one of the fundamentalist religions as opposed to the many more competing ones; or believing either that there is no God or that he is not so egotistical to demand that you believe in him before he’ll offer you the opportunity to redeem yourself. Even if you bet on a nasty God, there are many to choose from, each of which will be displeased that you chose someone else. This bet doesn’t have the best odds.
