The Power of Pascal's Wager

By Andrew Rogers and Liz Jackson

1. What is Pascal's Wager?
Pascal's Wager is a powerful tool when it is used as a framework for apologetics. The power of the wager comes from the fact that it renders irrelevant all arguments for any worldview with a finite afterlife (including those with no afterlife).

French Mathematician Blaise Pascal suggested approaching the question of religious belief as a gambler. Think of belief in God as "betting on God" and atheism as "betting against God."

If you bet on God and there is a God then you will go to heaven. If you bet against God and there is a God then you will go to hell. If, on the other hand, there is no God then it won't matter which way you bet since atheists and theists will all rot in the ground equally.

The obvious conclusion is that one ought to bet on God. As Pascal said, “Wager, then, without hesitation that [God] is” because “there is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain” and “what you stake is finite.”

2. Objections to Pascal's Wager
In this post, we will go over two important objections to the wager and then we will explain how we believe the wager can still be useful for choosing between religions in spite of these objections.  In particular, we will show how Pascalian reasoning can give us a reason to favor religions with infinite afterlives over those with finite afterlives.

2. 1. The Many Gods Objection
One common objection to Pascal’s Wager is to point out that Pascal’s version of the Christian God isn’t the only God possible; the Gods of other religions need to be included in the matrix.  Many of these religions are mutually exclusive, and believing the truth of one theistic religion will often not give you the payoff of another.  If one adds a Muslim God who sends Christians to hell, then the results become inconclusive.

When there are many religions involved the decisions becomes more complicated. However, it still seems that betting on atheism is a bad bet. This is because the best atheism can do is offer an opportunity to sin for a finite time whereas most religions offer an infinite afterlife of pleasure as reward and an infinite afterlife of pain as a punishment.

However, philosophers Sober and Mougin (1994) argue that atheism can avoid this negative outcome. They suggest the possibility that theists go to hell and atheists go to heaven. This could be either because there is a God who punishes theists and rewards atheists or because the laws of the universe are so structured that atheists will live forever in pleasure while theists live forever in pain (given our extremely limited understanding of the universe it would be premature to say that this isn't possible). Let's call this possibility "Atheism +."

Even if one thinks that this possibility has a low probability, it should not be assigned a zero probability. This leads to a situation where it is not obvious that any decision is better or worse than another.

Sober and Mougin conclude, “grant that there is some chance, however small, that [Atheism+] is true, and prudential considerations lead straight to the conclusion that it doesn't matter whether you are a theist or an atheist.” (Sober and Mougin, (1994), p. 386. They call Atheism+ “Theology X.”)

2.2. The Mixed Strategies Objection
In Waging War on Pascal’s Wager, Hájek argues that the original wager is simply invalid. He contends that even if the many gods objection were somehow addressed, the argument would still fail. He points out that any decision one makes includes the positive probability that one will eventually come to believe in God and therefore has an infinite expected value.

The power of Pascal’s original wager is that no matter how small one’s credence in the existence of God - as long as it is positive - that number multiplied by infinity will be infinity. Hájek turns this around on Pascal and argues that any action which could potentially lead to belief in God, no matter how small the possibility (as long as it’s positive) will be infinity once it is multiplied by infinity. For example, if the probability of eventually coming to believe in God given the decision to tie your shoe is greater than zero, the EV of deciding to tie your shoe is infinite.

As Hájek puts it in his paper,
“Wager for God if and only if a die lands 6 (a sixth times infinity equals infinity); if and only if your lottery ticket wins next week; if and only if you see a meteor quantum-tunnel its way through the side of a mountain and come out the other side ... Pascal has ignored all these mixed strategies - probabilistic mixtures of the "pure actions" of wagering for and wagering against God - and infinitely many more besides. And all of them have maximal expectation. Nothing in his argument favors wagering for God over all of these alternative strategies.” (Hájek, (2003), p. 31).

3. Salvaging Pascal's Wager
To a large extent we agree with the points made by Sober, Mougin, and Hájek; they bring out some serious problems with Pascal’s Wager. However, we think that they prove too much if an implication of their arguments is that we cannot rationally rank one infinite reward over another using contemporary decision theory.  There are many situations where it is clearly rational to prefer one infinite reward to another.  Two such examples are as follows.

3.1. Eternity of ecstasy versus eternity of moderate happiness
Imagine a relatively happy moment of your life: perhaps receiving a good grade on a test or enjoying a decent meal. Now imagine one of the most incredibly joyous occasions of your life: a moment of great love, compassion, glory, creativity, etc.  Now imagine that you have the option to choose between two “heavens.” In the first heaven, the moderately good moment is repeated infinitely for an eternity of moderate happiness.

In the second version, the moment of peak joy is repeated infinitely for an eternity of ecstasy. However, without a way to compare infinities, we are multiplying a finite amount of happiness by infinity, so the result will be infinity for both. The natural interpretation of the arguments given by Sober, Mougin, and Hajek do not give us a way to prefer one afterlife to the other.  Therefore, it appears like their arguments have proved too much, because it seems rational to prefer the infinity of ecstasy to the infinity of moderate happiness.

3.2. Same happiness; different probability
Imagine that you have two eternities laid before you.  Both “heavens” are infinite, and in both, you will experience the same level of happiness at each moment.  The catch is, neither heaven guarantees you will receive its reward; in each, there is a chance you could be annihilated instead.  In the first heaven, the probability you will get the reward is 0.000001.

In the second heaven, the probability you will get the reward is 0.999999.  Both heavens offer the same payoff, but it is clear that you should prefer the second to the first.  Therefore, simply because two religions offer the same infinite rewards does not necessarily mean they are equal; the probability you will get the reward should also be a part of the equation.

These two thought experiments show that, in many cases, depending on per-time-period payout and probability you will get the reward, it is rational to prefer one infinity to another. We will incorporate this intuition into Pascal’s decision matrix, and utilize it to response to Sober, Mougin, and Hajek’s objections.

4. Using Pascal’s Wager as a Framework for Apologetics
In order to address both objections at once, we propose that one deal with infinity differently than it is dealt with in the standard formulation of the wager. In the standard formulation, the agent’s credences are multiplied by infinity for the religions offering infinite rewards and, as long as the credences are positive, this always leads to an infinite expected value. We want to reformulate how the quantities of infinity are compared.

4.1. Pleasure Per Period
First, we will distinguish the amount of pleasure experienced in the moment from the duration of time for which one gets to experience pleasure.   We will assume it is possible for a finite being to exist for an infinite amount of time, but that it is impossible for a finite being to experience an infinite amount of pleasure at any particular moment.

Hájek (2003) proposes approaching infinities in a similar way; he considers both the idea of using finite utilities over an infinite time period and the idea that humans have a saturation point for experiencing reward.  Hájek points out that, if God could have created beings with a higher saturation point, salvation would no longer be the greatest thing possible.  Pascal would have rejected this assumption, and so Hájek discounts this approach because it is not true to the spirit of Pascal.  However, this seems to be more of a problem for Pascal’s particular theology than an objection to the logic of the reformulated wager itself.

4.2. Ratio in the Limit
The second way in which we want to deal with infinity differently is that we want to focus on finding the ratio in the limit between two (or more) rewards, instead of simply multiplying everything by infinity. In section 3, we explained how it can be rational to prefer one infinity to another. Measuring different infinite rewards using ratios and limits will enable us to capture the intuition that often, one infinite reward is better than another.

Our proposal is to find what the ratio in the limit between the two options would be; instead of multiplying the two finite amounts of pleasure by an infinite amount of time, we propose multiplying them by larger and larger amounts of time until one finds their ratio in the limit.  In our first example of section 3, where one chose between receiving moderate happiness or ecstasy for infinity, suppose the moderate happiness was 1 unit of pleasure/day and the ecstasy was 100 units of pleasure/day. The ratio would be 1:100, and we could rationally choose the second option over the first, even though they are both infinite rewards.  We will also include one’s credences for each religion in the ratio, since our second thought experiment showed that, ceteris paribus, one ought to prefer the religion for which one has a higher credence over the one which has a lower credence, even if they both offer the same infinite rewards.

4.3. Maximizing Expected Value
We should be clear that when we say we are salvaging the wager, we take the important part of the wager to be that it is a decision theoretic apparatus that favors religions which promise an infinite afterlife over those which do not. Using our approach, an infinite religion with a non-zero credence will always beat out any non-infinite religion.

5. The Power of Pascal's Wager

The power of Pascal's Wager is not that it requires one to automatically convert to a specific version of Christianity. Rather the power of the wager is that it renders irrelevant the arguments for all finite worldviews.

Let's say that some atheist John Doe Atheist knew of only two arguments relating to religion: one for Christianity (such as Nathan Conroy's post) and one for a finite atheist worldview. Let's say that John Doe Atheist has a .3 credence for Christianity and a .7 credence for Atheism based on these two arguments. The power of Pascal's Wager is that it eliminates the argument for the finite atheist worldview with the power of infinity.

Therefore, John Doe Atheist will either need to readjust his credences based on eliminating the atheist argument or come up with arguments for something like the Atheism+ worldview where theists go to hell and atheists go to heaven. This is much more difficult for the atheist because he can no longer simply play defense. The Atheist must give a positive argument for the view that there is either a God (Gods) that sends theists to hell and atheists to heaven or for the view that the laws of nature somehow automatically give atheists an infinite life of pleasure and theists a life of infinite pain.

The power of Pascal's Wager is that it drastically raises the bar for any standard atheist worldview and thus consequently lowers the bar for any theist worldview. 

Renewal of the Mind: The Evolutionary Case for Belief by Ian Huyett (Part 1 of 2)

Do not be conformed to this world,

but be transformed by the renewal of your mind,

that by testing you may discern what is the will of God,

what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Romans 12:2 ESV

         Outline

1.      Happiness
2.      Longevity
3.      Efficient Causes of the Above
   3A.      Serotonin
   3B.      Physical Health

Introduction

The past decade has seen a renaissance of investigation into the role that theistic belief may play as a beneficial evolutionary adaptation.

Esteemed founder of sociobiology E.O. Wilson maintains that “religious belief is itself an adaptation”[1] and “religious practices confer biological advantage.”[2]
Dean Hamer’s 2005 “The God Gene” - grounded largely in the work of devout Catholic geneticist Robert Cloninger - examined the role that a specific gene, part of a much larger polygenetic structure, might play in predisposing humans to religious belief.

Norwegian biologist and health official Bjørn Grinde, perhaps most interestingly, takes matters a step further by arguing that the evolutionary benefits of faith are such that they constitute a case for believing in God.

Although Grinde is, to my knowledge, the only writer since William James to propose in explicit terms the position I will detail here, he also expresses what is likely the - unfortunate - standard theist reaction to this research: a fear that it will lay bare and discredit the nature of faith. I submit to you that this reaction is a misguided one.

After all, if Grinde’s fears are valid and the compelling data on faith’s evolutionary utility – of which, you will see, there is a plethora – is an argument against the truth of God’s existence, one might expect famed atheist Richard Dawkins to make some use of it. Dawkins, after all, is an accomplished evolutionary biologist and an intelligent man by all accounts.

Yet the world’s leading critic of religion – in the face of the myriad studies I will present – peculiarly rejects outright the notion that faith confers any advantage whatsoever. Rather, he insists, religion capitalizes on evolutionarily beneficial behaviors without offering any benefits itself.  Faith is not an evolutionary adaptation at all, Dawkins maintains; it is merely a selfishly self-replicating mental malignancy – a “virus of the mind.”

It’s my opinion – as I imagine it would be William James’, were he alive today – that Dawkins, in his cleverness, chooses to ignore the wealth of research into the evolutionary psychology of religion because he recognizes that it actually forms a strong case for theistic belief. I will present this case here.  

   
1. Happiness
In 2006, the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research released a paper titled “Deliver us from evil: Religion as insurance.”[3] Clark and Lelkes, the paper’s authors, sought to study faith’s efficacy as a buffer against stressful life events. To do this, they amassed data from hundreds of separate studies on the subject.

Presenting their paper at the 2008 Royal Economic Society conference, they announced confidently that “Believers are happier than atheists.” The irreligious, they found, are not only broadly less satisfied than their theist counterparts, but suffer more psychological damage from divorce or the death of a partner.  Conversely, they reported that people become happier the more they pray and/or attend worship.[4]

This means that increases in happiness associated with worship attendance and prayer are separate. For example, a 1998 study in the American Journal of Psychiatry followed 542 elderly patients who developed depression after being hospitalized for medical reasons. It charted their – rather understandable – despair and compared it to their intrinsic religiosity: the extent to which their faith actually held day-to-day importance through, for instance, personal prayer. It found that those with strong intrinsic religious faith recovered over 70% faster from depression than their desacralized peers. Among patients whose physical illness was not improving, the intrinsically religious recovered over 100% faster.[5]

The influence of extrinsic religiosity on our happiness is, of course, no less considerable. A 2000 study in American Psychologist found that, of people who regularly attended religious services, 47% were “very happy” as opposed to 28% who attended less than monthly.[6]

Studies of extrinsic religiosity are, in particular, sometimes labeled as dubious because benefit can easily be alleged to originate from some other source. Writer Warren Davies, of psychology blog Generally Thinking, offers us a prime example of such an allegation in his discussion of this last study.

To his credit, Davies shared my initial response to the 19-point disparity: to laugh at Sigmund Freud – who said that “When a man is freed of religion, he has a better chance to live a normal and wholesome life.” Davies aptly points out that Freud, had he actually used the scientific method instead of generating sweeping hypersexual narratives out of the air, might have known better. Davies then offers a disclaimer, however:

“Could this be divine intervention? Alas, these studies can’t inform us as to whether there is a God, only that people who believe in one tend to be happier. There are variables that need to be controlled for – religious people have communities that provide social support, and a belief system that provides structure to their lives and may alleviate some fears to a degree, such as the fear of death.”

Davies’ first point will be the focus of the fourth chapter: I believe studies like these can, in fact, tell us that there is a God. His next point, however, I’ll begin to refute now.

Unfortunately, it’s common for critics to assume that any benefits we see in studies of faith are merely the result of some correlate to which religion is ancillary. The average religious person, a skeptic might point out, is more likely to be a woman. Or they might argue that, as Davies implies, religious people are benefiting from interactions they could just as easily have through a community sports team or a book club.

Yet researchers can and have controlled for these factors – and when they do, the results become even more convicting. A 2010 The Telegraph column was aptly titled “Dawkins and Hitchens are wrong: Religious people are actually much nicer than atheists”[7] after a five-year study by David Campbell and Robert Putnam showed just that.[8] Says The Telegraph’s Toby Young:

“The authors were initially a little skeptical of these findings, but after controlling for a huge range of factors – women are more religious than men, for instance – their conclusions proved to be robust.”

Not only did the authors control for one’s number of friends, but they discovered that, in their own words:

“While having more friends is, for civic purposes, better than having fewer friends, what matters most is having friends within a religious congregation.”

The demographically-controlled data was striking. It showed that, compared to those who never attend religious services, worship-attending Americans volunteer for the poor and elderly 25% more, for school and youth programs 21% more, 13% more for neighborhood or civic groups, and 8% more for healthcare. Religious people are more likely to help someone find a job, donate blood, spend time with a friend in need, attend local meetings, vote in local elections, and work for social or political reform. Not only do religious Americans disproportionately donate to charity, they even donate more to secular charities than do secular Americans.

It seems, then, that you can become happier not only by becoming a theist yourself, but by having theist neighbors. Moreover, the desire to donate blood is, empirically, a symptom of religion; if religion is – as Dawkins says - “a virus,” then it is a dangerous virus indeed.


2. Longevity
Confront an atheist with the well-documented association between faith and longevity, and you’ll have put him in an interesting position. To avoid directly crediting theism with increasing longevity, he may grant that religion promotes the sorts of healthy behaviors that prolong life. Yet by conceding that religion actually benefits those who practice it, he’ll have ruled out Dawkins’ “virus of the mind” approach entirely.

In addition, he’ll have left himself open to another attack. While it’s true that religion promotes long life by encouraging healthy behaviors, faith itself - again - retains a powerful effect no matter how many of these behaviors we control for.  

A 1998 study in the American Journal of Public Health scrutinized 1,931 elderly residents of Marin County, California and followed up with them 5 years later.  Broadly speaking, persons who attended religious services were 36% less likely to have died during the follow-up period. After the authors controlled for age, sex, marital status, chronic disease, lower body disability, balance problems, exercise, smoking status, alcohol use, weight, depression and two indexes of social functioning and social support - those who attended religious services were still 24% more likely to be alive.[9]

If the elderly residents of Marin County don’t sound like a persuasive cross-section, consider a seven-year follow-up on the 1987 National Health Interview Survey of 28,000 people. Researchers were aware of the association between infrequent or no religious attendance and mortality and hoped to learn more about it. They controlled for education, income, marital status, number of friends, number of relatives, smoking, alcohol use, and broad indexes of health and behavior.
 
They found that people who never attended religious services had an 87% higher risk of dying during the follow up period – giving the religious, on average, about seven additional years of life. Specifically, those who never attended were twice as likely to die from respiratory disease, diabetes, or infectious disease. The research team also reported that, in particular, blacks and women can enjoy especially longer lives if they are religiously active.[10]

It should be no surprise, then, that centenarians – people who live to be 100 – disproportionately report being deeply religious. In fact, the New England Centenarian Project reports that almost all centenarians have a strong theistic faith.[11]  


3. Efficient Causes of the Above

3A. Serotonin          
In a 2003 study in the American Journal of Psychiatry, Jacqueline Borg and her colleagues asked their subjects, males aged 20-45, to complete a personality test called the Temperament and Character Inventory and then measured their serotonin binding potential, which limits the amount of the neurotransmitter serotonin circulating in the brain.      

They found that binding potential was inversely associated with self-transcendence – the dimension of the personality test most related to religious faith – and specifically with a subscale called spiritual acceptance. No correlation was found to any of the other six dimensions of personality on the Inventory. In other words, religious people have higher levels of serotonin.[12]

Many Americans are likely familiar with the function of serotonin thanks to, ironically, television commercials for antidepressants - which often act by reducing the brain’s serotonin binding potential. While dopamine is sometimes called the brain’s ‘stick’ – punishing, in a sense, detriment by withdrawing from the brain, serotonin is called the brain’s ‘carrot’ – rewarding benefit by proliferating in the brain.

Geneticist Dean Hamer’s The God Gene focuses on VMAT2, which works to increase serotonin levels in the brain – and is one of many genes that may predispose people to theistic belief.[13] Hamer’s book discusses two poignant, opposing examples that illustrate the neurotransmitter’s power.

In Walter Pahnke’s Good Friday experiment – alternatively called the Marsh Chapel Experiment – 10 students at Harvard Divinity School were given a placebo.  Another 10 were given psilocybin - a compound that acts as a, perhaps exaggerated, mimic for serotonin. Together, the twenty students listened to a passionate Good Friday sermon about the life of Christ, then answered questions on a psychometric designed to measure spirituality. While the placebo group scored an average of 14%, the group that took the psilocybin scored an average of 64%.

After 25 years, subjects were given the same set of questions. While the control group’s average score had not budged, the independent group’s score had actually gone up one point to 65%. All reported enduring, positive changes in well-being. The experience had affected the students in ways that persisted for a quarter of a century.

If these results sound severe, consider Hamer’s contrasting example. One common method of determining a gene’s function is to create “knockout mice” – rodents engineered such that said gene is rendered inoperable.  To better understand the function of VMAT2, Hamer’s colleagues created mice without it.[14] The VMAT2 knockout mice “showed little interest in suckling or eating … they were inactive, spending most of their time lying on the cage floor” and suffered “premature death”.

If these studies offer us any practical advice, it’s clearly to pursue behaviors associated with higher, rather than lower, levels of serotonin. Hamer’s serotonin-challenged mice were, in a sense, rodent atheists. Their unfortunate fate was a murine macrocosm of the heightened vulnerability that atheists have to psychological damage - and the comparatively low effort that secular people devote to secular charities.

I would certainly not advise anyone to go out and take psilocybin in order to have spiritual experiences - any more than I would promote antidepressants as a long-term solution to depression. On the contrary, the reliance of so many on substances like these is a consequence of our being designed for something more like the transcendence of Marsh Chapel yet living in a society constructed for atheist mice.

As of 2011, roughly 15% of men and 25% of women in the United States take prescribed psychiatric medication – a majority of which are antidepressants.[15] It’s difficult to believe that our creator – be He a conscious deity or a naturalistic evolutionary force – designed nearly all of us to have sufficiently operative eyes but so few of us to produce enough serotonin to function socially without artificial drugs.


3B. Physical Health
We know that the gap in longevity between theists and atheists is largely not caused by differences in alcohol use, chronic disease, depression, education, exercise, income, lower body disability, marital status, number of friends, number of relatives, smoking, social functioning, or weight – among other things. Theistic faith appears to offer a longer life both by promoting beneficial behaviors in many of these areas and offering a more direct benefit that transcends them. At present, the best explanation for this phenomenon may be that faith acts to prolong life by lowering blood pressure and bolstering the immune system.

In 1998, Koenig and colleagues published a 6-year study of 4,000 older adults in the International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine. It examined the effects of church attendance, studying the Bible and prayer on blood pressure.  After controlling for age, sex, race, smoking, chronic illness and body mass index, researchers found that participants who attended church once a week - and prayed and/or studied the Bible once a day or more – were 40% less likely to have diastolic hypertension.

Blacks and the recently elderly could expect religion to offer them especially lower blood pressure – perhaps explaining a similar pattern in the National Health Interview Survey. Of subjects who had been prescribed blood pressure medication, religious people were more likely to actually be taking their medication, but “this could not, however, explain the differences in blood pressure observed.”[16]

Another study by Koenig, published in the same journal, followed a sample of 1,718 older adults over a period of six years. It measured their levels of plasma interleukin-6, or IL-6 - a substance found at elevated levels in people with AIDS, osteoporosis, Alzheimer's disease, and diabetes, among other things. The study found that frequent religious attendance predicted for lower IL-6 levels in 1986, 1989, and 1992. Researchers suggested that their findings may partly account for the more robust health that religious people are known to enjoy. Moreover, they noted:

“Religious attendance was also related to lower levels of the immune-inflammatory markers alpha-2 globulin, fibrin d-dimers, polymorphonuclear leukocytes, and lymphocytes. While controlling for covariates weakened most of these relationships, adjusting analyses for depression and negative life events had little effect.”[17]

It’s a fascinating pattern that, in studies of religion and physical health, controlling for depression does little to make the disparity between unbelievers and the faithful go away. Though we’ve seen that religion acts to stave off depression - and that atheists are more likely to succumb to it - faith appears to offer a benefit to physical health distinct even from its protection against misery.

We again see this pattern in a 2009 study by Dalmida and colleagues of 129 – predominantly black – women living with HIV. Researchers took blood samples from the participants and charted their spiritual well-being, religious well-being, and depression – while controlling for demographic variables, HIV medication adherence, and HIV viral load.

Predictably, there was a strong inverse association between spiritual well-being and depressive symptoms. As you also may have guessed, there was a positive association between immune cell percentages and both measures of faith. Interestingly, however, depressive symptoms did very little to account for immune cell percentages. Though faith reduced depression in the patients, it also seems to have bolstered the immune system in some other way.[18]

To be continued in The Evolutionary Case for Belief by Ian Huyett (Part 1 of 2)

[1] http://www.salon.com/2006/03/21/wilson_19/
[2] Edward O. Wilson: On Human Nature - Summary by Michael McGoodwin, prepared 1991
[3] http://www.ugr.es/~teoriahe/RePEc/gra/paoner/per06_03.pdf
[4] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1581994/Believers-are-happier-than-atheists.html

[5] A skeptical reader will doubtlessly be unimpressed by this last statistic. Having once opposed religion as adamantly I’m presently defending it, I can understand that, when not verified by observed results, the ability of theistic belief to comfort the dying seems almost a point for the other side. In the second and third chapters of this section, however, I will demonstrate not only that faith promotes actual physical recovery, but that it does so even independently of its ability to reduce depression.
[6] http://generallythinking.com/are-religious-people-happier-than-atheists/
Myers, D. G. (2000). Funds, Friends and Faith of Happy People. American Psychologist. 55(1), 56-67.

[7] http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100063761/dawkins-and-hitchens-are-wrong-religious-people-are-actually-much-nicer-than-athiests-according-to-magisterial-five-year-study/
[8] http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2010-11-15-column15_ST_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip
[9] Oman, D., and Reed, D. 1998. Religion and mortality among the community-dwelling elderly. American Journal of Public Health 88: 1469-1475.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9772846
[10] http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/05/990517064323.htm
[11] http://www.thecentenarian.co.uk/religion-and-spirituality-among-centenarians.html
[12] http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleid=176492
[13] Hamer, Dean H. The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired into Our Genes. New York: Doubleday, 2004. Print.
[14] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC23302/
[15] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2062634/One-American-women-medication-mental-disorder.html#ixzz1eOEzcqlj
[16] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9724889
[17] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9565726?dopt=Abstract
[18] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19533506

Unity and Diversity, and the Person Behind Them, or How Our Finiteness Begs Trust in God

I gave the following presentation for a Spring 2014 Ratio Christi meeting. There are a few imperfections in the argument. I note them here. (1) I seem to have conflated the idea of relation and unity. (2) The argument for the unity of the person behind our phenomena feels stretched. I feel confident in it's ability to be made perfect however. (3) The pacing is a little wonky. And some of the material seems superfluous.

Even with the imperfections, I still think it gets at an intuitive point. When I want to remember God, the idea I try to communicate here is my first recourse. Whatever it lacks in rigor, I hope you may show in the comments, either through challenge or through development of the idea.

The idea is not original. I thank James Anderson of the website "Analogical Thoughts" and F. H. Bradley of the 1800s for many of the ideas herein expressed.

Unity and Diversity, and the Person Behind Them, or How Our Finiteness Begs Trust in God 

"[We are] incapable of certain knowledge or absolute ignorance. We float on a vast ocean, ever uncertain and adrift, blown this way or that. Whenever we think we have some point to which we can cling and fasten ourselves, it shakes free and leaves us behind. And if we follow it, it eludes our grasp, slides away, and escapes forever. Nothing stays still for us. This is our natural condition, and yet the one furthest from our inclination. We burn with desire to find firm ground and an infinite secure base on which to build a tower reeling up to the infinite. But our whole foundation cracks, and our earth opens up into abysses."

- Blaise Pascal 

Pensées, trans. Roger Ariew

It is a truism to say “we are finite creatures”. We find ourselves in a vast space of unknown, but it is a burning desire within us to make sense of our experience.

All experience. Including: Science, Mathematics, Politics, Romance, Theology. We are curious about how Quantum Mechanics relate to Relativity. We want to understand the ABC conjecture. We are at pains over the problem of our national debt. We feel frustration about intimacy with another person. And we want to know why we feel pain.

But often we don’t know an answer. And it pains us into searching for answers.

If we want to solve any of these problems, we must make sense of a wide array of data. As for physics, we have experiments and theory. As for mathematics, we have formalism and intuition. As for government, we have understandings about the nature of man and of our power over one another. As for romance, we have each other’s words and actions and our biologically rooted desires. As for pain, we have experience, tradition, history, and a list of promises and expectations which were fulfilled and broken.

In short we don’t know as we want. We see in a mirror dimly. But we sometimes press on. We press on to find meaning. Facing this disparate experience, we hold hopes of making sense of it. But why do we believe that the universe is meaningful? I mean meaningful in the broadest possible sense. Why do we feel the universe is coherent? In any sense? Some sum it up as being the chance configuration of atoms: what is real is the parts. Emotions and desires are really only chemicals. And chemicals are really only atoms. Others hold that unity is fundamental; the point is to be complete oneness with “it all;" all else is illusion and only the broadest encapsulation of the data will give us understanding.

Why do we hope our passions for understanding will be filled? In some sense, it is because we already believe in God.

Let me explain. Our whole existence is bound up with two things: (1) correctly unifying our diverse experience and (2) with proper division of united experience. I’ll give two examples to illustrate.

1. When Copernicus studied the stars, he was trying to find a theory which most beautifully corresponded to the movement of the stars and planets. Heliocentrism unified diverse experience.
2. When Aristotle analyses the word “good”, he brings out the many associations we have with the word: pleasure, happiness, usefulness, etc. There he is making proper division of united experience.

And with a little imagination, you can see that our whole quest for meaning is bound up with balancing unity and diversity.

I say “balance”. For we cannot even conceive of a universe which is all particular things, disjointed, or all one thing where all particulars are realized by one concept. We must stay in-between: all things are united and yet all things are diverse.

Fig. 1 Unity and Diversity

You might say: “your arguments might have some persuasive power, but when you say ‘that just cannot happen’, you are just appealing to our sense of meaning. Perhaps our sense of meaning is false.” To this objection I can only say, I believe that we can make sense of reality. All people must so believe. But I don’t have a ready argument against it now, and it may be that no strict argument for it exists. In this might be the true sense of faith: trusting in beauty and goodness even though you don’t have a God-like certainty of things.

This reflection might make us uncomfortable. If I believe that which is chosen by me, it seems arbitrary. To that I must insist: look outside yourself. Don’t worry too much. Trust. Otherwise is to distrust all your thoughts, and it is to inter a world of darkness. For your eyes tell you nothing. Your ears, nothing. Your touch, nothing. Even your language is dark, because it refers to nothing.

In short, along with the Christian Church through the ages, I say the alternative to believing in God is Hell. But again, I get ahead of myself. For I have not yet related my argument to God.

Let us look at the harmony between unity and diversity. How is it sustained? There are three options:

1. It is sustained by (non-personal) inanimate matter.
2. It is sustained by multiple (that is differing) intensional wills.
3. It is sustained by one intensional will.

I hope it is clear that dead matter cannot organize itself. So (1) is out.

Multiple wills cannot be jointly ultimate. For then our supposition that everything in the universe is relatable is destroyed. For then, in some sense, a collection of atoms won’t have anything to do with another collection of atoms. But to validate this point more thoroughly, I suspect, would be a laborious, though a probably beneficial, process. I hope it is clear however. So (2) is out.

So there must be a singular Will. Is it within the universe or without it? If it were within, it would have to Will it’s own willing into existence. That doesn’t make much sense. For its will would be dependent on its will to will. So the Will is without the universe.

And this Will is God.

This Will is similar to ours in creative power, but it is obviously much more. And the nature of the person or persons behind the will can be touched on using a similar method as we have just employed. For if there were just one Person behind the Will, alone, he would have nothing to say, for he has nothing to relate to, but if there were distinct Persons behind this will, who were in some sense not relatable to one another, lacking some unity, then they couldn’t be said to have a single will. Thus God is some kind of multi-unity.

That is the argument.

Let us review the argument. We began by reflecting on our own experience, our trust that the universe is meaningful. Meaningfulness involves a dance of unity and diversity. Since meaningfulness is a quality that only a person can appreciate, what sustains this universe is a great personal Will that stands outside this universe.

This Will must be involved with this world, and it must care for it to some degree. For this Will sustains the world at every moment. 

But how can we say that God cares about us? That he (literally) gives a damn about humans; that is, hold them morally responsible? Couldn’t he just stop at making neat configurations of atoms? Whence the human aspect?

This is difficult to argue. But it goes along these lines: we look again within ourselves. We count our human relationships as meaningful. But oddly, the meaning does not lie in any identifiable particular of our existence. Suppose your grandmother baked you a carrot cake. The happiness you feel when we eat the carrot cake, is not strictly identifiable with any the pleasurable sensations you feel in gaping at the cakes orange and white frosting, or in the creamy texture of a mouthful of a slice, or even in the recollection of all the happy summer afternoons your grandmother baked these cakes in the past. But somehow all these data of experience, point outward towards new connections, and at the same time all these data point inward toward your experience.

My contention is that these data will keep on pointing outwards. It is our duty to find meaning: to follow the data and make sense of it all, but at the same time we have to realize that since these data are not pointing towards itself, all attempts to make an object the interpretive key of the universe is intellectual death. I’d call this the most general definition of idolatry. All things must be pointing outwards towards the Will of the Personal Sustainer of it all. For the Sustainer is making it for his purposes. And it should be our curiosity to know what the purposes of the Sustainer are. If we want a meaningful life, we are to listen. Listen to creation. Listen to ourselves. Listen for God.

And this is the injunction of the Bible, to listen to the triune Creator and to mold ourselves after his Will. For His Will is the only thing which will lead to a meaningful life. I shall end with the most famous quote of John Calvin’s:

“Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But while joined by many bonds, which one precedes and brings forth the other is not easy to discern. In the first place, no one can look upon himself without immediately turning his thoughts to the contemplation of God, in whom he “lives and moves”. For, quite clearly, the mighty gifts with which we are endowed are hardly from ourselves; indeed, our very being is nothing but subsistence in the one God. Then, by these benefits shed like dew from heaven upon us, we are led as by rivulets to the spring itself.”

- John Calvin

The Institutes of the Christian Religion, Trans. Ford Lewis Battles

On the Reliability of the New Testament

Problem

Two problems present themselves to the person investigating the credibility of the New Testament.

1. Do the copies of the N.T. that we have today reflect what the writings of the N.T. originally contained?
2. Did the writers reflect the Jesus of history?

Let's expand on these two problems.

(1) We have only copies of copies of copies of the N.T. Many of these are only fragmentary. How do we know that these reflect what the N.T. actually said?

In addition, the manuscripts differ amongst themselves. In fact it is estimated that we have 400,000 variants in the New Testament text. That is there are 400,000 different readings of the N.T. Almost every manuscript differs from the others in some respect. And some of these are almost certainly intentional.

Maybe the church changed the writings to suit their beliefs and to fit their agenda.

(2) It is sometimes said that the Jesus of history is a very different Jesus than the one presented us in the N.T. In fact, the Jesus of history was a great stoic teacher, or a political revolutionary, or a peaceable peasant sage, or someone who did not exist at all; and the N.T. reflects a distortion or a mythologization of this Jesus.

This seems plausible. it isn't impossible that an inspiring man's life would morph into a legend that embellishes on his teachings and character.

Resolution

To answer (1). We have over 5,600 MSS of the Greek New Testament. Some of these are within 50-100 years of the original writings. We have over 10,000 versions of the N.T., that is, translations into other languages than Greek. We have over a million quotations of the N.T. from the Church Fathers. From these quotations alone we may reconstruct the majority of the N.T. without even looking at the MSS.

And yes, there are very many variants. However, most of the variants hardly give us differences in the meaning of any book or the passage of any book.

In fact, the plethora of N.T. variants actually helps us understand what the Bible originally contained. First, if there was any doubt in the first place, it proves that no one standardized the text. So no church controlled all the manuscripts.

Further, the science of textual criticism has many reasonable methods of arbitrating between these. I’ll describe one.

Say we have manuscript A and manuscript B. And say that these differ. But they are clearly similar to one another. It is reasonable to assume that they represent a common, and earlier, reading of the N.T. We may compare readings that because of geographical and lexicographical distance must have had a distant common ancestor and achieve strong confidence in how early the documents ought to be dated.

Bart Ehrman, a prominent N.T. critique, and certainly non-biased authority, even says, "Scholars are convinced that we can reconstruct the original words of the N.T. with reasonable (although probably not 100%) accuracy."

The general consensus of those who study these things for a living under peer review is that we do largely have the original documents.

To answer (2). The other question faces us. Do the writings of the N.T. reflect the Jesus of history? We know that people are unreliable and are given to sensationalism. They also cheat and lie for private gain. Sometimes they are bad relayers of information, purely accidentally. Like the game of telephone an original message may become garbled over time, changed completely from what it was.

The N.T. could not have developed in this way for a few reasons.

1. At the heart of the Christian message is a crucified and resurrected Jewish messiah.

1. This message would not have been palatable to the Romans, Greeks, or Jews

1. The Romans, Greeks, and every nonJewish person was not looking for the resolution to Israel's O.T. story. They were not looking forward to God's promises to Abraham and David.

1. Further the Romans would have taken the Christian message as treasonous. For the Christians proclaimed a Jewish King who was King over everything in the whole world. The Christians said this man overcame the Roman legal system. It was tantamount to suicide to proclaim this message.

1. And further, the Greeks had no place for the material resurrection of the human body that the resurrection promised.

1. Even the Jewish people expected someone very different than this Jesus. They expected a political deliverance from Rome. They were looking for a King like David that would restore the national kingdom of Israel. Needless to say, Jesus did not do this.

1. Basically, it fit no one's expectation. It fit no one's story. It even was against everyone's story on a deep level. So it is hard to imagine anyone intentionally distorting the main message: a crucified and resurrected Jewish messiah. Given it’s disagreeableness to the Roman government, among these other reasons, a lie would hardly gain him anything. And further, a liar couldn't expect success. The message wouldn't appeal to anybody unless you could produce very strong evidence, for instance: the mass testimonial witness the N.T. proclaims.

1. It is no less easy to imagine the story being a mythologization. A myth would tend to fit the tastes of the people, and myth does not base itself on open and observable fact. This is precisely what the N.T. argues is the case.

In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, the only explanation is that the N.T. does indeed give an accurate picture of the proclamation of the earliest Christians. The Jewish messiah came into this world and was very different than what anyone had expected.

Discussion of the Screen Argument with Philosophy Professor

I recently had the pleasure of meeting with Dr. Joel Velasco, an Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Texas Tech University. Dr. Velasco specializes in the philosophy of science, biology, and epistemology, and he also has a firm grasp of many of the arguments related to philosophy of religion. More info on Dr. Velasco can be found here: http://joelvelasco.net/. Also present was a good friend of mine, Neil.

We met to discuss the "Screen Argument", which I have been writing on frequently.

http://honestsearchfortruth.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-screen-argument-re-explained.html
http://honestsearchfortruth.blogspot.com/2013/10/examples-of-screens.html
http://honestsearchfortruth.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-screen-argument-further-explained.html
http://honestsearchfortruth.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-screen.html

I recommend checking out this post from Scientia Salon as well: https://scientiasalon.wordpress.com/2015/05/18/ned-block-on-phenomenal-consciousness-part-i/

I hope you will enjoy the "fly on the wall" experience of listening in on our conversation.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz2XdaYyzVc

 I would love to hear your perspective on our conversation in the comments.

Charles Leslie's Criteria for Determining the Truth of a Religion

     In his short work, A Short and Easy Method with Deists, Charles Leslie (1841) puts forth a set of rules for determining the truth of a religion. Leslie claims that his method is able to demonstrate that the Christian religion is true and that Islam and Paganism are false. Leslie writes:

I suppose that the truth of the doctrine of Christ will be sufficiently evidenced, if the matters of fact, which are recorded of him in the gospels, be true; for miracles, if true, do vouch the truth of what he delivered (Leslie 5). 

     His method for determining the truth of these religions consists of two steps. First, he will lay out his four rules. Second, he will apply the rules to Christianity, Islam, and Paganism. With his methodology in hand, I will now discuss Leslie's four rules.

The four rules are as follows:

1. The matters of fact be of such a manner that man's outward senses, their eyes and ears may be judges of it. 
2. The matters of fact be performed in public experienced by many witnesses. 
3. The miraculous events should have monuments kept in memory of them and outward actions performed to remember these events. 
4. The monuments and actions that are established are instituted at the time that the matters of fact occurred.

Next, I will discuss Leslie's analysis of Christianity, Islam, and Paganism with respect to these four rules. 

    First Christianity. Christ performed his miracles in such a manner that men and women could see with their own eyes what Christ was doing. Moreover, many of Christ's miracles were done in front of a multitude of witnesses numbering in the thousands. Therefore, we can conclude that Christianity satisfies the first two of Leslie's four rules. 

     Next, Christ instituted the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper as a memorial of the miracles that he performed. Moreover, these sacraments were established not in later ages, but at the time of the matters of fact. In addition to being established at the time of the events, the memorials that were instituted by Christ have been observed since they were instituted up until the present day. Christ also ordained the ministers of these memorials himself. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that since Christianity satisfies all of the Leslie's four rules, the matters of fact that Christianity speaks of, most importantly the resurrection of Christ, is true. 

     Now I will discuss whether Islam is able to satisfy all of Leslie's four rules. With respect to the first two rules, Islam fails. First, Mohammed writes in the Qur'an that he did not perform any miracles. Moreover, the miracles that are attributed to Mohammed are considered by many Muslims to be fables. Let's suppose that the miracles attributed to Mohammed are believed by most Muslims and that Mohammed did claim to have performed miracles, the one's that are recorded still do not satisfy the first two rules. Mohammed's putative conversation with the moon, his single night journey from Mecca to Jerusalem and then to heaven were not performed in front of anyone. Since these miracles were not performed in front of anyone, we have very little reason to trust their reliability. Since Islam fails to satisfy the first two of Leslie's four rules, the matters of fact that is founded on are most probably false. 

     Last I will discuss whether the matters of fact concerning the pagan religions satisfies all of Leslie's four rules. Ancient paganism has many claims of the miraculous. Mercury is said to have stolen sheep and Jupiter is said to have turned himself into a bull. Leslie focuses on the pagan religion's failure to satisfy the fourth rule. The priesthood and feasts that celebrated the putative miracles that the gods performed were done much later than when the matters of fact occurred. Moreover, the priests who ministered at these feasts were not directly ordained by the gods, but by other people. The priests were chosen much later than when the events occurred. It is for these reasons that the pagan religions fail to satisfy Leslie's fourth rule, and hence, are probably false.        

A Defense of Strong Exclusivism: Why Some Religious Claims are False

     In this post I will address the problem of religious disagreement. I will summarize what seems to me to be a good defense of the position. I will explicate Peter van Inwagen's (2010) paper, "We're Right. They're Wrong". You can find van Inwagen's paper in the book edited by Ted Warfield and Richard Feldman entitled "Disagreement", published by Oxford University Press. The paper defends a strong exclusivist account, not only for religious beliefs, but political, philosophical, and scientific beliefs as well. A solid defense of the strong exclusivist position will demonstrate that at least some religious claims are false. I will now proceed in explaining van Inwagen's paper. 

     First, van Inwagen assumes for his argument that we have more or less a grasp as to what constitutes a religion, or religious institution. Next, van Inwagen uses his own term that is a variable for any religion. He calls this term "ism". Ism can be any religion (Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, etc). Now, van Inwagen gives conditions by which an "Ism" is what he calls weakly exclusivist. He states that a religion is weakly exclusivist if the adherents to the Ism at hand subscribe to. 

     Weak exclusivism: An Ism is weakly exclusivist if the following two theses   are logical consequences of the theses that Ism requires its adherents to believe.

1. Ism is logically inconsistent with all other religions. Any system of belief (besides Ism) that is logically consistent with Ism, is not a religion. For example, if Christianity is weakly exclusivist, then any Christian who thinks that Berkeley's metaphysic is consistent with Christianity is logically committed to the thesis that Berkeley's metaphysic is not a religion (van Inwagen 11). 

     Consider another example. If according to Hinduism, Hinduism and Islam are both religions, and it is a tenet of Hinduism that one can consistently be both a Hindu and a Muslim, then Hinduism is not a weakly exclusivist religion. 

2. According to Ism (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism), it is rational to accept Ism. Moreover, it is epistemically permissible for the Ismist to accept the teachings of Ism. 

     A few comments on weak exclusivism. It doesn't follow that if a religion is weakly exclusivist that it requires its adherent to believe that the adherents of other religions are necessarily irrational. This is what van Inwagen thinks does follow from weak exclusivism: 

 ...if Ism is a weakly exclusivist religion, those who accept its teachings will (at least if they are logically consistent and capable of a little elementary logical reasoning) reach the following conclusion: "The teachings of all other religions are at least partly wrong, and it is rational for is to believe this about the teachings of all other religions."

     A few things follow from this quote. Consider Christianity and Zoroastrianism. If it is rational for me to accept Christian teaching, or conversely if it is rational for me to accept Zoroastrian teaching (it is rational to believe one or the other if both are weakly exclusivist religions, recall the two theses above), then it is rational for me to believe what logically follows from my rational beliefs. So, if Christianity is a weakly exclusivist religion, then one of its teachings will be (or on of its teachings will at least imply) that it is rational for me to believe that Zoroastrianism teaches something false. van Inwagen generalizes the point. 

 A weakly exclusivist religion X contains a teaching Y such that it is rational for its adherents to believe that all other religions teach something false. 

     Now that we have established what it means for a religion to be weakly exclusivist, let's move on to van Inwagen's definition of strong exclusivism: 

 Strong exclusivism: A religion (Ism), is strongly exclusivist if it is weakly exclusivist and it teaches (or its teachings entail) that for any other religion, it is not rational for anyone who is in an epistemic situation of the sort in which Ismists typically find themselves to accept the teachings of that religion (van Inwagen 13). 

     Again, let's discuss a few things that follow from this definition. First, it is consistent with Ism being strongly exclusive that it doesn't require its adherents to believe that people of other religions necessarily or typically violate the norms of rationality. For example, if Islam is a strongly exclusivist religion, then if a person were to convert from Islam to say, Christianity, and if that person was in an epistemic situation that is typical of Muslims (they understood and believed their faith just as well as any faithful Muslim) then other Muslims must believe that the person who converts is irrational. 

     But, it is consistent with Islam being a strongly exclusivist religion that a well informed Muslim can regard a Christian, Pagan, or Jew (who have not been properly exposed to the teachings of Islam) as possibly rational. 

     Last, for sake of completeness, I will discuss very strong exclusivism. Very strong exclusivism is the view that it is a teaching of Ism that all other adherents of every other religion besides Ism are ipso facto irrational. This is not my nor van Inwagen's position, but there are people who believe this so it is worth mentioning. 

     Now, why should we adopt mere weak exclusivism or strong exclusivism. First, as noted by van Inwagen, not all religious claims can be true. They all could be false, but not all of them can be true. So, unless someone wants to give up logical consistency, they should subscribe to some form of exclusivism regarding religious belief. Next, is there any reason to favor mere weak exclusivism over strong exclusivism, or vice versa?

     It seems to me that the strong exclusivist position is more plausible. When we adhere to a religion, not only do we think that that religion is true, but we also think (or should think) that all other religions make at least some false claims. It strikes me as odd to think that if I believed my religion to be true and that other religions were incompatible with my religion (say for example that my religion requires that I believe P and another religion requires its adherents to believe ~P), I couldn't also believe (at least if I wanted to remain logically consistent) that the religion that requires its adherents to believe ~P is also true. For example, if my religion requires me to believe that Jesus claimed to be the son of God and another religion requires me to believe that Jesus did not claim to be the son of God, then if I believe the former (which entails that I believe the claim is true) then I cannot also believe that the claim that Jesus never claimed to be the son of God is true. If I did, I would believe both P and ~P, which would render me irrational. So, if Christianity is a strongly exclusivist religion, and I am adherent of it, then I must believe that at least some of the claims from other religions are false.

Welcome to Evidence-Based Christianity

This blog is dedicated to communicating evidence for Christianity. It is the sibling of Honest Search for Truth, http://honestsearchfortruth.blogspot.com/, the wildly popular hit-blog that burst into the limelight in 2011.

Honest Search for Truth documents the journey of one of our authors, and explores the process of developing a coherent, evidence-based worldview from the ground up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3HpUUP9DfI

Evidence-Based Christianity will explore arguments in favor of Christianity, specifically--although it maintains the same willingness to follow the evidence wherever it leads, even if that is away from Christianity.

Our authors:

Dax Bennington, Grad student in philosophy
Nathan Conroy, Grad student in mathematics
James Kunz, Grad student in philosophy
Andrew Rogers, philosophy student
Joshua Willms, MD/PhD Candidate