A Better Gamble Than Pascal's Wager?

Nietzsche's Wager

Here we go again. Image created by Midjourney.

Blaise Pascal, a Catholic philosopher of the mid 17th century, thinks believing in God is one of the most prudential (self-interested) things we can do. He argues as follows:

Say you stand to gain 100 good in your ordinary life. (This can be swapped out for any finite number). But, if you were to reach salvation (get to heaven), you would stand to gain an infinite amount of good. For Pascal, you are able to reach salvation if and only if there is a God and you believe she exists (and all the things that accompany that).¹

Thus, as there is an infinite amount of good to gain by believing in God, even if we think it’s incredibly unlikely that God exists, prudence demands that we wager on God by believing she exists.²

Here are two graphs representing each of the 4 choices we have, and the good we stand to gain. As I see things, there are two main options: the hell version, and the no hell version.

It’s +90 since you lose -10 by believing in said God, e.g. you don’t like going to church. If you don’t like this addition, feel free to change the 90 to 100 and even things out.

The only difference between the two is that of the promise of an eternity of suffering if there is a God, and we don’t come to believe in them. But even if we suppose hell doesn’t exist, Pascal’s wager can still work-we still have an infinite amount of possible good to gain.

I like Pascal’s wager. It’s one of those philosophical arguments that you aren’t convinced by, yet can’t think of much of any decent response. For a time I thought there were such responses at hand, such as the many Gods objection, or the, I can’t choose what I believe objection. I’ve since been persuaded that such objections likely fall short of what we wanted out of them. For instance, regarding the idea that there are potentially many Gods doesn’t imply that we should refrain from believing in any Gods. The most rational thing to do, prudentially speaking, would be to bet on the God we were most confident about. And regarding the idea that we can’t choose what beliefs we have, we can choose what sorts of things we surround ourselves with. Perhaps it would be prudent to attend all manner of religious services and make religious friends so we may then become more inclined to believe.

In Response

However, I want to consider an alternative possibility. In particular, I was considering a myth discussed by Friedreich Nietzsche-the myth of eternal recurrence. He asks us to consider a case where a demon sneaks up on you in the night and tells you that he will ensure that you perpetually relive your life in exactly the same way you had lived it previously. Every pain and every joy that you’ll experience and have experienced in this life shall repeat in an eternal loop.

As we’ve seen with Pascal’s wager, the presence of an infinity of happiness (and/or suffering) is what grounds the weight of betting on one’s favourite God. But, if eternal recurrence is true, then every happiness and every pain will be relived by us for eternity. In other words, we’re left with an infinity of happiness and suffering depending on our actions in this life. Nietzsche’s wager simply becomes another option to bet on.³

Weighing Up Competing Possibilities

One might think that it’s now simply a case of weighing how likely eternal recurrence is over some God who promises infinite happiness for believing in them. But I think a further consideration really strengthens the case for betting on Nietzsche’s wager. If you’re like me, you’ll find it hard to believe in a God that would punish disbelievers for all eternity. Hell is so absurdly absurd that it borders on being contradictory (if not being contradictory). So it seems that those of us picking which God to take a bet on will likely steer clear of any Gods that promise an eternity of suffering for disbelieving. However, the same is not true of Nietzsche’s wager. It’s plain common sense to believe that there is suffering/pain in our lives. And according to the myth, we’ll suffer through those same things over and over again forever. An infinite amount of suffering-and it’s only going to increase if we sit idly by. So in deciding which to place our bets on:

1. A God who doesn’t promise infinite pain/suffering and infinite happiness, or

2. the notion that we’ll have infinite happiness as well as infinite pain/suffering because everything repeats forever…

… we have to take the infinite pain/suffering into account.

In other words, as a God who inflicts an infinite amount of pain and suffering on disbelievers is outright absurd, we would have more to lose by not placing our bets on eternal recurrence since it does promise an infinite amount of pain and suffering if we incur pain and suffering in our lives.

But Wait

Hold on, you might think. Why not just place your bets on a God you must believe in and on eternal recurrence? Under eternal recurrence, one’s life would repeat forever, regardless of one’s beliefs. All things considered, it would be most prudent to become invested in the religion you were most confident in with a God that promises you infinite happiness, as well as living as though eternal recurrence were true.

Things can get a little tricky here. For starters, some folks would find the prospect of investing in some religion to be an arduous and unpleasant experience. Which would amount to an infinite amount of such an experience if eternal recurrence were true. But on the other hand, as there is the chance of acquiring an infinite amount of good for believing in a God, it may be most prudent to conduct some risk/reward analysis. But it may not be so simple as things tend to get weird with infinities. In essence we’re risking an infinite amount of bad for an infinite amount of good. But are things so simple? It doesn’t seem so.

For example, suppose we have an infinite loop of kicking your toe. Further suppose we have an infinite loop of kicking both your toes (twice as much pain). You still end up with an infinity of pain either way. Perhaps the wagers have to consider how bad the bads are, and how good the goods are on offer before we can settle on a decent risk vs reward analysis of deciding to join a religion-even if doing so promises to be painful.

In any case, it’s far from obvious that disbelievers in God should engross themselves in religion if it entails them having negative experiences.

A Potential Reduction to Absurdity?

Some might object that it would be absurd to act as though eternal recurrence were correct-which is what the logic of Pascal’s wager seems to imply. If it is absurd, then it seems that the issue stems from the reasoning of Pascal-which provides us with some decent reason to reject both Nietzsche’s and Pascal’s wager. In this sense, both wagers can be thought of as companions in guilt. They stand (or fall) together.

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1. For instance, worship, attending church, etc.

2. And/or taking certain steps to maximise the chance of our forming the belief (such as surrounding ourselves with religious people and teachings).

3. I want to be clear that this is a wager I developed after considering Nietzsche’s work-it was never offered as an argument to act as though eternal recurrence were true by Nietzsche himself.