What if you are wrong?

I see it time and time again, after a non-believer has explained away creationists arguments, the creationist will often end their argument with the question, “What if you are wrong?”

When a creationist asks a non-believer, “What if you are wrong?,” what they are really suggesting is that if a non-believer is wrong about god not existing, then the non-believer may go to hell for not believing in god. With this question they are proposing that these “operant conditions,” heaven and hell, be ones motivation to believe in god, that if you believe, you have nothing to lose, if you don’t believe in god then you put yourself at risk of going to hell. This train of thought is commonly known as Pascal’s wager or Pascal’s Gambit. It does not try to prove that a god exist, It only proposes that one believe that god exist even without proof.

There are several problems with this reasoning mostly due to it assuming way too much:

  • It assumes we know which god to believe in, and that we have accurately interpreted this gods character, will, requirements, ect… If a god did exist, it could be equally possible that this god does not interact with us at all, did not create us, does not have a reward or punishment system, or does have rules that lead to reward or punishment but is different then how we have interpreted them, etc. There could be multiple gods with different rules and requirements. Or as Richard Dawkins suggested, “the wager does not account for the possibility that there is a god that rewards for honest attempts of reasoning and instead punishes one for blind faith.”

  • If god is intelligent and moral enough to decide whether you go to heaven or hell, then he will see through your simple reasoning of believing in him just because of the reward and punishment conditions he has set in place. And if that is ones only reasoning for believing, for ones own self interest, it is rather selfish and unbecoming. You will only do good if big brother is watching and then expect big brother to reward you for it?

  • If there is no god, you have indeed lost something, a large portion of your life that you wasted away dedicated to an imaginary being.

  • It assumes we have free-will to choose what we believe or disbelieve.

  • It assumes god created us with a spirit that will live on beyond our physical death.

    • Additional resources on the problems with Pascal’s Wager –
    http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/
    http://www.abarnett.demon.co.uk/atheism/wager.html
    http://atheism.about.com/od/argumentsforgod/a/pascalswager.htm
    http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/heaven.html
    http://www.religioustolerance.org/pascal_w.htm
    http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/pascalswager.html
    http://www.freethoughtfirefighters.org/a_refutation_of_pascals_wager_Massimo_Pigliucci.htm
    http://godisimaginary.com/i46.htm

    There are 10 comments in this article:

    1. 17/04/2008Anok says:

      I once had my mother tell me that I should baptize my child. I said “But I’m not Christian.” She retorted, “Well you should any way, you know, just in case.”

      And she’s an Atheist!

      I personally love reason number two, by the way. Yup, if God is omnipotent, s/he will know if you’re a liar ;)
      Anok’s last blog post..Political Surveys, and All That Jazz.

    2. 17/04/2008Travis says:

      Oh my! What did you do?

      Yea, I like number two too. I like your “s/he” distinction. I try not to use “he” or “she “as I don’t think god should be personified, but it is hard to write on the topic without doing so. I might start using “s/he” instead if and when I need to.

    3. 17/04/2008Anok says:

      I told her she was crazy, and basically used reason number 2 as my basis - I just didn’t say it as well :D I mean honestly LOL…. “Just in case”….

      And then, I did nothing. I didn’t even do a Wiccaning, which would have been nice, I suppose. It doesn’t really mean anything, it’s like a first birthday welcome to the world thing. But still…it would have been fun.

      Yeah I like s/he way of doing things. It makes life very easy , but not everyone gets it. I used it all the time on the religion debate boards I used to frequent, it was common though….

      Anok’s last blog post..Political Surveys, and All That Jazz.

    4. 19/04/2008Tiffany says:

      “When a creationist asks a non-believer, “What if you are wrong?,” what they are really suggesting is that if a non-believer is wrong about god not existing, then the non-believer may go to hell for not believing in god.”

      It’s a little presumptuous, isn’t it, to decide what a widely varied number of people “really mean” when they ask a question? It seems like a leap to assume that they all mean the same thing at all, let alone that you’re inside their heads and can translate into something more true than what they’ve communicated.

      I don’t think I’ve ever asked anyone that question–in fact, I’m sure that I haven’t. But it has meaning to me as a Christian, and that meaning has absolutely nothing to do with the one you’ve assigned to it here. As a Catholic, I (and the billion other Catholics in the world, if they’re following church teaching) don’t believe that people who strive for the truth and get it wrong go to hell for that. Thus, at least from a Catholic perspective, the question CAN’T have the meaning you’ve assigned to it, because that’s not the natural consequence of being wrong in this circumstance.

      Tiffany’s last blog post..Advice? Insights? Anyone?

    5. 19/04/2008Travis says:

      Tiffany, No, it’s not presumptuous, because after they ask, “what if you are wrong?” and the non-believer replies, “what if I am?” they themselves explain and clarify the consequences. So there is no need for me to assume anything, they explain it clearly. If the question CAN’T have the meaning THEY assigned to it (not me), then I suppose THEY need to be better educated on the implications of the sources of their own beliefs.

      Obviously, as you can see here, not everyone interprets the Bible the same, as they are not interpreting it the same as yourself.

    6. 20/04/2008Kobra says:

      Richard Dawkins is awesome :D.

    7. 8/06/2008Kat says:

      Came over to check out your sight, nice layout, pics are cool, was reading your description of your blog and couldn’t help but chuckle when I saw the ad below lol

      God Loves You
      Here is a Prayer That Can Change Your Life

      Kat’s last blog post..Be Careful What You Ask For

    8. 8/06/2008Kat says:

      Came over to check out your sight, nice layout, pics are cool, was reading your description of your blog and couldn’t help but chuckle when I saw the ad below lol

      God Loves You
      Here is a Prayer That Can Change Your Life

      Kat’s last blog post..Be Careful What You Ask For

    9. 9/06/2008Travis Morgan says:

      Thanks Kat. That ad showed up on blogcatalog!? LOL. Figures. Must be grabbing some keywords. Thanks for checking me out.

      Travis Morgan’s last blog post..Back to Cybertron

    10. 2/07/2008the jadedconformist says:

      Thanks for the links, Travis. It’s funny - I’ve heard Pascal’s name thrown around before, but I’ve never really read anything on Pascal’s Wager. What is amazing to me is how unoriginal most of our thoughts are, to a certain degree, when concerning the existence of ‘God.’

      I remember during a lecture in Sunday school in 9th grade, our teacher said something along the lines of, ‘What do you have to lose by being saved if God doesn’t exist?’

      And Richard Dawkins said something that I’ve also thought to myself at times. If there were a God, why would he punish those who asked honest questions–those who used the minds they were ‘given’ and sought the truth. It’s almost a paradox to suggest that God wants to be willfully chosen by those who are governed by fear over those governed by reason.

      Let’s assume that hell isn’t even described in the bible - I wonder how many practicing Christian’s we’d have today.

      -erick180 (on blogcatalog)

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