Pascal’s wager is ridiculous, of course, the idea that we should believe on the outside chance god turns out to be true. First off, belief is not the kind of thing that one can bring into existence simply by an act of will, least of all the kind of conviction required to accept an undetectable and incomprehensible Bronze Age deity. And although it is clearly possible to fake it, surely any god worth half a pillar of salt would see right through the ruse. In addition, Pascal’s argument can be turned around on itself with equal rhetorical force: if you choose the life of a believer, and death brings nothing but the void, then you have squandered your one chance to live life to the fullest.
My own response to Pascal—and to the salvation pushers who occasionally show up at my door—is that if there is a god, he made me knowing full well that I would use his gift of reason to reject his existence and then be consigned to an eternity of suffering. Such a god is a monster not a worthy of anyone’s praise and worship.
But there is something even more insidious about Pascal’s illogic, something hidden, a tacit assumption about the need to choose a path, and the role that chosen path plays in structuring our lives. The decision to believe in the Christian god—or any god, or any comprehensive life-directing principle—ushers in the foreclosure of potential. A chaste and pious path is an exceedingly narrow one. But so is any other path that imposes directions and boundaries and limits our ability to respond to the richness, nuance, and impenetrable unpredictability of the emerging moment. To walk a predetermined path is to close yourself off to the world.
