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through artificial charitable means for personal benefit? In "The Devil and Tom Walker", dear ole' Tom gives his soul to the devil, but becomes the most religious and charitable fellow in town before he is to die. Isn't taking up the wager a type of dishonest, and self deceiving form of greed? You would then be worshipping God not because you truly believe and honor the goodness, but for a darker reason… You want to go to heaven, and you feel a few moments of your time and blind belief without question is enough to ensure that.
The Puritans held similar beliefs, they lived under stringent rules and followed them down to the very last point. They believed only so many people could be accepted into heaven at a given time, so they were all competing with each other to see who was the "good-est" of them all. Strip away the good intentions of their ways, and see their beliefs actually pitted the entire society in a vicious struggle against one another. The strictest went to heaven, the lax went to hell. An example of the downsides of such a society are illustrated by Hawthorne in "The Scarlet Letter", where Hester Prynne is shunned from society and given more than her fair share of punishment in the name goodness and God.
Pascal's Wager is very convincing when in one piece. For us to fully comprehend and refute it, it is easier to take it apart and analyze it in four pieces.
- We do not know whether God exists.
- Not believing in God is basically bad for everyone's eternal souls if he does exist.
- Believing in God is basically of no consequence if he does not exist.
- It is in everybody's best interest to believe in God.
There are now three ways to further analyze Pascal's Wager. First, let us view Statement 1 as the assumption, and Statement 2 as a consequence. Therefore we are creating information from no information. Information derived from no information is not (valid) information at all. Statement 1 indicates we have no information about God, but Statement 2 indicates benefits are obtainable from this God, even though there is an absolute lack of information about this God and how he hands out these "gifts" and "prizes" for eternal souls. (That is if there is a soul of course!) Therefore, we have violated information entropy--information is extracted from essentially no information at no "cost".
Since that approach is absolutely incorrect, the back door must be tried. Claim Statements 1 and 2 are both assumptions. The problem arises with Statement 2, because it is an assumption which states a Christian position. Only a Christian, or someone with Christian influence can agree with that assumption. The argument has to be narrowed to "If you are a Christian, it is in your best interest to believe in God." This is a rather vacuous tautology, and more than likely not what Pascal intended his phrase to mean.
The back door opens up to a brick wall, so let us try a window entry. We proceed to step two, and see the word eternal soul. Now what is a soul? Is there a soul? A soul to a religious person is usually a clear or white bubble which is marred with a black spot every time the owner sins. To have a soul is to be alive. This is basically trash talk, because never has a doctor ever had to remove a bad soul from someone. Numerous autopsies have been done, and the conclusion that no soul will ever be found in a body has been (Continued on next page)
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