Pascal's Con...

For amusing illustrations of every form of logical fallacy, one need look no further than the many purported proofs of the existence of God.  Whether you are a believer or not, the mental gymnastics involved in trying to demonstrate the supernatural through pure reason are hysterical.  More serious-minded theologians, fearing the inevitability of the null hypotheses, try to find reasons for us to believe anyway.  The mother of all of these contingency arguments is Pascal's Wager.

Pascal argues that since reason cannot decide the matter we should look at the trade offs.  Christianity (specifically Catholicism) offers eternal happiness for believers and eternal misery for non-believers, while atheism offers only the satisfaction of being rational and free time on Sunday mornings.  Since Christ promises a better payout, we should play His game.  "Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is," Pascal instructs us. "If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is."

There are many ways to refute this line of reasoning, some quite sophisticated, but any serious gambler should see through it immediately.  It's a con.  Pascal has allowed the very institution which hopes to gain by your "bet" to define the possible outcomes.  By setting the risks and rewards of belief at absurdly high levels, the Catholic church effectively stacks the deck.  A variant of the argument from ignorance, the virtually infinite payoffs in the "wager" magnify any lingering doubt, no matter how tiny, to the point that further rational analysis is rendered irrelevant.  "Nice life you've got here," leer the religious racketeers, "be a shame if something were to happen to it."

This doubt management strategy is all too comfortable to the Bush administration, with terrorism as the virtually infinite danger to use like a lever to amplify doubt.  Yes, the Patriot act limits a few civil liberties, but surely we can't allow even the smallest chance of letting terrorists operate undetected.  Yes, many people said that Iraq didn't have WMDs, but if there was a chance they did, no matter how small, we couldn't allow them to fall into the hands of terrorists. We couldn't afford to wait for evidence -- the smoking gun might turn out to be a mushroom cloud.  Even though they lied about a lot of things, those swift boat guys might have been right about Kerry, and if they were you sure don't want a guy like that as commander in chief.

Of course when the topic challenges an article of faith, the doubt management team goes into reverse.  Global warming, while potentially far more destructive than any act of terrorism, is consistently downplayed by the administration.  The scientific consensus on the human role in altering the climate is solid, and yet administration shills edit scientific findings out of reports on the grounds that the science is inconclusive.  They point to one skeptical environmentalist and pretend that it's evidence of vast rift in the science community where none exists.  Where doubt should be on the side of action, they council patience.  Wait for better science, they say, all the while suppressing the good science with manufactured doubt.

Weighing alternatives is not a simple matter of listing them and picking the one with the lowest penalty or the greatest reward.  Confidence and certainty must also be taken into account, and only a fool would accept the claims of an interested party without independent verification.  When the politicians set the odds, the house always wins -- the White House.

- jack*

Comments

[The Liberal Avenger]

http://www.positiveatheism.org/faq/faq1114.htm

[bedrocktruth]

I enjoyed this post, Jack and I responded to it on my own blog-a new one, in fact, called "But what the hell do I know?".

The response is in good humor and I think you might enjoy it.

But what the hell do I know? :)