Pascal's Wager and Volitional Belief
It's a bit unusual for me to blog about something like this, but why the hell not?
Pascal's Wager is sometimes called a proof of God's existence, but that's not really what it presents itself as. It's more of a thought experiment, and it goes a little something like this, in my own words:
Maybe we can't prove that God exists. But even so, it's better to believe in him just in case. There are four possible scenarios:
you believe | you disbelieve | |
God exists | REWARD | PUNISHMENT |
God does not exist | null | null |
There are problems with this thought experiment (or whatever we want to call it). They are obvious and they are not very interesting. Note the either-or proposition of God's existence, which does not allow for the fact that the god (or gods!) that exist might not be the one you believe in. And then there's the assumption that God rewards belief and punishes disbelief (which is kind of a silly thing to assume).
And then, of course, there's the fact that it's not a logical proof for God's existence, just a recommendation that you hedge your bets and choose to believe.
Again, not that interesting, and kind of obvious.
The interesting thing, in my opinion, is the notion that you can choose to believe in God. Can you choose to believe in anything? Because I sure can't. I believe those things that seem true to me and I do not believe those things which seem untrue to me. I can't just choose to believe that the sun will not rise tomorrow. Nor can I choose to believe that God does or does not exist.
Now, there's a pretty neat trick that human beings do called "lying to ourselves." You know what I'm talking about. You've done it before, and you've frustrated your loved ones. And you've been frustrated when your loved ones did it. The way this works is not so much by choosing to believe things, but rather choosing to alter our on mental filters. You can choose to ignore certain information, which has a bearing on a particular belief. In that way, you can trick yourself into "believing" whatever you want. It's called intellectual dishonesty.
By doing this, someone who really, deep down in their gut, believes in the existence of God, can trick themselves into believing that God does not exist, and vice versa. But I'm really not so much interested in the big question of God's existence as I am in the relationship between belief and the will.
I suppose I don't really have much of a point other than to muse on the issue. So I'll just sort of trail off here.