Modifying Pascal’s Wager

 I spent a lot of my youth debating religion and philosophy and politics on message boards. First on the FFOnline boards, then the Gamefaqs boards, and then later on Facebook and Twitter and Bluesky before I finally a few years ago cut myself off for good. Well, or for now, anyways. But one thing that was a big hallmark of those earliest debates were it seemed in the late nineties and early 2000s, is logical proofs for or against the existence of god.

One such argument that I remember coming up a lot is Pascal’s Wager. If you have never heard of it, roughly it argues that one should simply act as if God exists and live a life pleasing to God, because if he does, then doing so will benefit you, whereas if he does not, then you have lost nothing by doing so. Now, there are a lot of issues with this argument. Perhaps the most obvious one is, which God? Not to straw man Pascal, as I haven’t read him since college and never was a philosophy major so I do not consider myself an expert on what he did or did not say or mean or was familiar with, but my impression is Pascal was only contemplating (and most people who use this argument only contemplate) the Christian God. And sure, if the only two possibilities you can imagine are the Christian God exists, or no god exists, then living as a faithful Christian might be logical. However, there are many, many different flavors of Christianity alone, as well as Judaism, Islam, and then all the non-Abrahamaic religions as well, some of whom countenance gods, and others do not. It is simply not possible to live in accordance with all of these religions, so the value of choosing one “just in case” is much smaller than when you are simply contemplating Christian God or No God, unless you think God is so generous that he will count belief in any god as belief in him (or at least, any flavor of Christianity, or any Abrahamaic religion.)

There are other issues, too. The Christian God usually is interpreted as desiring faith and belief from his worshippers, and I think its a fair question whether the type of belief engendered by Pascal’s Wager is true belief - if you don’t really believe but just are acting like you do to cover your bases, can’t God see through that? Might he not count that as not actual belief? You can also imagine that a God might exist who wants people to think for themselves. Maybe he values empiricism? This really kind of overlaps with “How do you know your religion is the right one?” but I do think its worth considering that no religion might be right, but that God still exists, and simply has different expectations of us than the Christian god or any other presupposed deity. Honestly I think I had some other arguments against it too, but I forget them at the moment and they are kinda beside the point, this is background info for what I really want to talk about.

That all being said, I do think there is something to Pascal’s Wager. While I’ve always considered myself some variety if agnostic or atheist, I do pray from time to time. The form this prayer takes is usually, quite frankly, open bargaining. In my mind (or rarely aloud) I say, “Hey God, if you do X, I will do Y.” X can be anything from “make it snow tomorrow.” or “Make Nintendo release a new Earthbound game” or “Make me immortal” or “cure my dad’s cancer” or “make sure my kids live long happy lives,” or “Make sure that when Trump leaves power there is a strong leftist movement born from resisting him that ensures America begins moving to the left.” Basically anything from the frivolous to the deadly serious to the magical to the desperate.

These prayers have never, to my knowledge and awareness, been answered. Not once in my life have I prayed for something, and then had that thing happen, and been aware of the connection. Like, maybe sometime I prayed for something and it happened, but if so, I forgot about the prayer by the time the thing happened. But I keep doing it anyway. Why? Well, because, just like Pascal’s Wager, I have nothing to lose. Like, theoretically, yes, maybe God exists and is offended at me trying to bargain with him… but if so, fuck him. What am I suppose to do? He’s never given me a sign he exists or spoken to me. I’m trying my best and he’s giving me nothing. Most likely he does not exist… but if he does, I’d like him to know what I think I want, at the very least. I want him to know I’m open to believing him, if he wants my belief. I sometimes don’t even ask him for anything, but just discuss what might make me believe in him, in case he wants to inspire belief in me.

Attempting to start a dialogue with God makes sense to me for a few reasons. As noted, Pascal’s Wager, I don’t think there is much to lose even if the prospect of gain is equally remote. By talking to God, but not worshipping him, I’m allowing for him existing in whatever form he may be (male pronouns are being used here by default, not by assumption. Honestly I doubt God has a gender, if he exists. I should probably just have used they but I’m not going back and editing this whole thing). So unlike the normal wager, I really do think its all possible gain, minimal (but not zero) possible loss: God would need to be a weird, vindictive bastard who gets mad merely at being inquired after for it to hurt, and if he is, well, as said, fuck him. If God exists but is unjust, I owe him nothing, to my mind. But even if he does not exist, its comforting to be able to plead with him sometimes. If I have no control over something - which tends to be the connecting tissue between the various things I request of God - it feels good to engage in some magical thinking and say, Yo God, can you take care of this for me? Sure, it has never worked, but I have no control either way, or have at the very least exercised all the control I have, so why not add in a little prayer?

I am sure some atheists would say this makes me not an atheist, that I’m giving in to the saying, “There’s no atheists in foxholes.” But, kindly, to them, also fuck off. I don’t think God exists, even when I’m talking to him, so I’m an atheist, but even if you don’t buy that, I don’t care about your standards. The nice thing about atheism is because it is not organized, my atheism can be completely different from yours and there is nothing you can say about it I have to listen to. Likewise I am sure a lot of religious people would consider this an insult, since I am merely making demands of God without any faith, belief or sacrifice, and you know, thats true, because God, if he exists, has given me no reason to have any or do anything. But neither did Obama and tons of people still thought he was gonna help them. Okay that was a little out of left field I just am at a loss of how to wrap this up.