Proof #46 - Ponder Pascal's Wager
You will frequently hear believers make the following rationalization:
Suppose you are right. Suppose there is no God. Then when I die as a
believer, I have lost nothing. I just die, as a man that devoted his life to
love and morals. But if you, as a non-believer, are wrong and I am right,
you have to spend an eternity in hell. See, I have nothing to lose, but you
have everything to lose.
This argument is best known as Pascal's Wager.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that there are thousands of gods
that humans have imagined. A person who believes in Allah can make this
statement, and so can a person who believes in God, and so can a person who
believes in Vishnu. This multitude of fictional beings shows the silliness
of the argument. There is no way to know which god to choose, because there
is no evidence whatsoever indicating that any of them exist.
The fact is that religion is delusion. All human gods are imaginary. By
believing in an imaginary god, a believer has not "lost nothing." Believers
commit themselves to a lifetime of delusion, instead of commiting their
lives to reality.
Non-believers, in contrast, live moral and loving lives without having to
resort to delusion. Non-believers are normal human beings who embrace
reality rather than delusion. As a result, they live much healthier lives.
The fact that there are so many gods proves that all of these gods are
imaginary. If there actually were an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving
"god" in any form, he would be obvious to everyone and we would all align on
him. His existence would be undeniable and impossible to hide.
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