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AFTER PASCAL

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The existence of a personal Supreme Being has been proven by several irrefutable arguments.  The existence of a “God to whom mankind is accountable” has not been proven after millennia of the world’s best minds working on it.  Should we not move on to the next question?  If we don’t (and probably can’t) know which premise is true, possibly we can determine which is most worth betting on.

Pascal, in my opinion, gave us a good start, but failed to take his reasoning far enough.  He stopped at the God of the New Testament, and figured that the benefit of betting on this deity and being right would far outweigh the benefit of betting against him and being right.  Conversely the punishment for betting against this deity and being wrong – yada yada.

But the God of Pascal’s wager was arbitrary.  It could have just (or almost) as rationally been Allah.  And this deity administers rewards or punishments based not on people’s ethics but on their believing the right spiritual sales-pitch.  Furthermore, those rewards or punishments are both exorbitant and eternal.  Those two factors make him not only arbitrary, but unjust and evil.  Would our Creator, who designed our sense of justice, then reward us for worshipping an apparently unjust God?

Let’s take Pascal a step further.  What is the most sensible bet a human can make, given the uncertainty of an afterlife?  If we love justice, an unjust God cannot possibly get us to worthwhile life, so that option is out.

But what are the odds that a just God is out there, given what we have seen of this planet?  Close to zero – unless there is an afterlife in which everyone gets exactly what he deserves (at least approximately).  Only in that case is sufficient justice possible.  Since there is no demonstrably reliable evidence for or against an afterlife, there is absolutely no way to judge those odds.

Therefore, I would assert that an afterlife with just rewards & punishments is a reasonable bet – not because of any compendium of allegedly holy scriptures, but largely in spite of them all.  Nevertheless, one necessary precondition of a just community is to have just persons in charge of it.  And strangely enough, most Jews, Christians, and Muslims believe their God to be somehow just and righteous - often despite scriptural evidence to the contrary.  Each of these religions, in fact, holds both a just and an unjust version of its respective God - one who rewards & punishes appropriately, and one who rewards & punishes inappropriately.  Therefore, instead of trying to convert others to our own religion (or lack of it) should we not be trying to convert them to the just version of their own God?

If ultimate justice does notexist, then nihilism - God or no God.  If ultimate justice doesexist, what are the necessary preconditions of it?

Note that ultimate justice does not need to be perfect in order to make life worth the trouble.  A close approximation is sufficient.  If a person deserves a million dollars and gets only 950,000 is he likely to curse his Creator and blow his brain out?  Probably not.  In fact, I wouldn’t balk at a 10% reward shortage, if there were a coin-flip chance of getting 10% over.  I don’t need a perfect God.  I just need to be convinced that my God is doing as well as I would be doing in His place.

This reasonably just God, I contend, is our only chance of worthwhile life, and therefore not only a reasonable bet, but the only reasonable bet.