Sunday, September 4, 2016


Unbelievers, Inquirers, and Persecutors:

How Non-Christian Responses Affirm the Miracles

PART I

By Ian Huyett
          Christians believe that a historical person, Jesus of Nazareth, vindicated his claim to be “the Christ [meaning ‘Anointed One’], the Son of the living God”[1] with a series of miraculous demonstrations culminating in his public resurrection from the dead. More than any other, it is this aspect of Christianity – the world’s largest religion at the time of this writing – that makes it comparatively unique.

          To be sure, other faiths have involved stories of persons rising from the dead – perhaps most famously that of the ancient Egyptians, who believed that Osiris was restored to life after his wife Isis reassembled his dismembered body.[2] None of these other persons, however, are regarded by scholarly consensus as historical individuals.

          Perhaps the closest story offered by a major world religion is Al-Mi’raj: a journey to and from heaven which Muslims believe to have been undertaken by their prophet Muhammad: doubtless a historical person. Notably, after returning from Al-Mi’raj, Muhammad is said to have accurately described a distant caravan: something he could not have seen except from the sky.[3] While this report lends some credibility to Al-Mi’raj, however, Muslims do not claim that persons other than Muhammad witnessed his ascent to or return from heaven as such. In contrast, Christ was executed in public – his death was attested to in the Annals of the Roman historian Tacitus[4] and elsewhere[5] – and was then allegedly seen alive by more than 500 of his followers.[6]

          1 Corinthians – the source for this latter claim, widely dated by scholars to the 50s AD – was circulated among the church which reportedly experienced this event.[7] Offering the reader personal immortality, the document goes on to say “Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.”[8] It is plain that, if we wish to know whether a personal God has revealed himself in history, the alleged miracles of Christ cannot be safely ignored.


          Texts and History

        It should be noted at the outset that many attacks on documents like the Annals and 1 Corinthians, though intended as attacks on these documents in particular, are in effect attacks on the whole of history. So-called “Jesus mythicists” seek to obliterate these texts by noting that they depict events which occurred a long time ago, that some time passed between their writing and the events they describe, and/or that the texts are old. Yet human history includes many events which occurred long ago, stands largely upon texts written after the deaths of the persons they describe, and is often studied through texts thousands of years old.

          Applied consistently, the mythicist’s skepticism would lead us to speculate that George Washington fabricated the Battle of Trenton, to relegate Alexander the Great to the historical status of Zeus, and to dismiss the idea that there ever was a Peloponnesian War. Mythicists, needless to say, rarely apply their skepticism consistently. To throw out mankind’s history to escape one man from Nazareth is an exercise so desperate as to ironically glorify the object of the mythicist’s resentment. The structure of mythicism is, in this way, similar to that of conspiracy theories which involve secret cabals of lizard people. In fact, Joseph Atwill – the most recent mythicist to gain widespread public attention – claims that Christ was the elaborate contrivance of Roman officials. Mythicism is, for this reason, held in contempt even by secular New Testament scholars like Bart Ehrman – a fact which many secular people, and even many Christians, do not fully appreciate.

          A comparison with other texts may here be illustrative. The earliest manuscripts of Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, and Demosthenes date from 1,300 years after their writing.[9] The earliest manuscripts of Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars, Livy’s History of Rome, and also Tacitus’ Annals date to 1,000 years after their writing.[10] Of the New Testament, in contrast, there exist 114 manuscript fragments dated to 50 years from their writing – as well as 200 manuscripts of books dated to 100 years from their writing.[11]

          The general reliability of the New Testament is further bolstered by archaeological evidence. As philosophers Timothy and Lydia McGrew have noted, “Archaeology has not been kind to literary criticism of the Gospels and Acts.” Defying the predictions of critics, these texts have been corroborated by the discovery of an inscription concerning Pontius Pilate, a boundary stone bearing the name of Sergius Paulus, the Pool of Siloam depicted in John 9, and other evidence indicating that John was familiar with Jerusalem prior to its destruction in AD 70.[12] More recently, a structure at Nazareth was dated to the time of Christ.[13] An obscure town mentioned in no Jewish sources prior to AD 300, Nazareth had long been thought by critics to be a Christian invention.

          While such discoveries do not prove that the Gospels are true in every particular, the McGrews concede, authors who are “accurate in matters that we can check against existing independent evidence” deserve the benefit of the doubt within reasonable bounds.[14] The fact that all authors have biases – far from rendering all texts unreliable – is merely one factor to be considered in their analysis. After all: bias afflicts not only dead persons and their writing, but living ones and their speech. If all biased communication is unreliable, then all human relationships, and the whole enterprise of learning, become impossible.

          In his Confessions, Augustine wrote of his realization that – while an anti-Christian – he had been irrationally skeptical in his dismissal of the Bible’s reliability. “I began to realize that I believed countless things which I had never seen,” he wrote, including facts about history, about current events elsewhere in the world, and about medicine and other matters. “Unless we took these things on trust, we should accomplish absolutely nothing in this life.”

          Appealing to ancient texts, then, I will now consider reports of the resurrection and argue for their reliability, endeavoring to focus primarily upon independent sources. I will then advance the historicity of “the works,” or other miracles, by demonstrating that a variety of early non-Christian sources attest to them.


Witnesses to the Resurrection

       Christ was a polarizing figure; reports of his resurrection are relayed through Christian and anti-Christian sources. Temporarily excluding martyrdom from consideration, perhaps the most impressive extant Christian report is that of Christ’s posthumous appearance to the 500.
  
        As already noted, it is well-established that 1 Corinthians – which tells us about this appearance – was circulated among the early church.[15] Paul, moreover, tells us that most of the 500 who saw Christ “are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.”[16] This report is congruent with modern scholarly dating of the letter to the 50s AD. Together, these facts make it highly improbable that this appearance was an invention of Paul’s own. The early church, though dispersed, was a small community; Paul’s letters themselves are evidence that its branches routinely wrote to one another. If hundreds of living Christians did not claim to have seen the risen Christ, Paul’s readers would likely have recognized this statement as a lie. 

        Historical apologists often focus on such reports: that is, reports written by Christians which the authors could not plausibly have invented. Yet, while there are good reasons to regard many such statements as reliable, early anti-Christian sources can be even more helpful to the Christian position. When the anti-Christian sources make statements which advance the Christian narrative, we can trust them to be relatively free from bias. For the same reason, a word of praise from one’s sworn enemy is often a source of greater pride than a compliment from a friend.

        Perhaps the most interesting of these sources is the philosopher Celsus’ book On the True Doctrine. The work survives because the church father Origen quoted it extensively in a response entitled Contra Celsus. Celsus’ polemic was widely circulated enough for Origen’s friend, Ambrose of Alexandria, to urge Origen to refute it.[17] The credibility of Origen’s answer would therefore have been dependent upon his relaying the text’s content accurately.

        Origen dates On the True Doctrine to the 130s AD.[18] Based almost singularly upon one use of the word “those,” however, many scholars have advanced a later date. This has been convincingly shown to be an error.[19] There seems to be no compelling reason not to take Origen at his word.[20]

         Often identified simply as a “pagan” philosopher, Celsus’ religious views are nuanced. He identifies his own view of God with that of Plato’s,[21] criticizing the doctrine of the incarnation as anathema to the purity of “the underivable, the unamenable” God, who “does not even participate in being.”[22] He is also, however, a fervent defender of polytheistic worship, concluding his treatise by recommending that Christians be systematically killed “if they persist in refusing to worship the various gods who preside over the day-to-day activities of life.”[23] He believes that the emperor, also, is “a god”;[24] many years after Celsus’ writing, the emperor Diocletian embarked on the very program of extermination that Celsus desired.[25]  

        Like Tacitus,[26] Celsus affirms that Christ was crucified: “I emphasize that the Christians worship a man who was arrested and died.”[27] While he demonstrates some familiarity with Christian accounts of Christ’s life, moreover, he purports to have access to historical information about Christ from non-Christian sources. For example, he wrote: “I would call your attention to the well-known fact that the men who tortured your god in person suffered nothing in return; not then, nor as long as they lived.”[28] This statement is likely reliable for much the same reasons as Paul’s report on the appearance to the 500.

        It is unclear how many witnesses to the resurrection Celsus believed there were; it is possible he was unfamiliar with the appearance to the 500. Speaking through a Jewish character, he initially suggests that the only witnesses to the resurrection were “deluded women” who hallucinated the event[29] or else were “deluded by his [Christ’s] sorcery.”[30] Contradicting himself, however, the Jewish character later refers to the disciples’ account of the resurrection in order to accuse Christ of being “a sorcerer.”[31]

        What is clear, however, is that Celsus himself is weary of hearing continuous reports of Christ’s resurrection. Speaking in his own voice, he grumbles that “More and more the myths put about by these Christians are better known than the doctrines of the philosophers.” He further complains: “Who has not heard the fable of Jesus’ birth from a virgin or the stories of his crucifixion and resurrection? And for these fables the Christians are ready to die—indeed do die.”[32] Celsus’ complaint suggests that reports of Christ’s resurrection were persuasive enough to circulate widely and rapidly. This phenomenon is best explained by Paul’s claim that these reports came, not from a few, but from hundreds of Christians.

        Moreover, Celsus bemoans that even people for whom he has a modicum of respect have come to believe in the resurrection, writing “The Christians base their faith on one who rose from a tomb. Even the more intelligent Christians preach these absurdities.”[33] If people whom a Platonist philosopher is willing to label as “more intelligent” affirmed the resurrection a century after its alleged occurrence, this too is best explained by proliferating firsthand reports of the event. The early emergence of a class of “more intelligent Christians” will be discussed in greater detail shortly.

        Interestingly, if less significantly, there is some recent evidence of a Jewish tradition attesting to the resurrection and associating it with sorcery. Christ’s name has been discovered in a late antique curse, inscribed in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic “by the name of Jesus, who conquered the height and the depth by his cross, and by the name of his exalted father, and by the name of the holy spirits forever and in eternity. Amen, amen, selah.”[34] Shaul Shaked, a scholar of religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has concluded that the inscription was written by a Jew.[35] According to Peter Schäfer, director of the Jewish Museum of Berlin, “This does not imply, of course, that the Jewish writer believed in Jesus and the Trinity, but it certainly means that he knew the name of Jesus and believed in its magical power.”[36]

        As an aside, this inscription is congruent with the story of Acts 19:11-15, which states that the miracles performed by Paul became so renowned that a group of Jewish exorcists – though they did not believe in Christ themselves – attempted to exorcise “by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.” Acts continues: “But the evil spirit answered them, ‘Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?’”


        Independent Inquirers



        In 1627, the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius wrote De veritae religionis christianae, a systematic defense of the Christian faith. One of Grotius’ most interesting arguments is his appeal to the conversions of many of the early church fathers. “There were always very many amongst the worshippers of Christ who were men of good judgment, and of no small learning,” he notes.[37] Grotius points out that many of these men were brought up in other religions. Why, he asks, should they “be worshippers of a man that was put to an ignominious death”?[38] He concludes that the best explanation for their conversions is that, after a diligent inquiry, each concluded that the reports about Christ were reliable.

        Grotius begins his list with Sergius Paulus, the proconsul of Cyprus. Paul of Tarsus, a Jewish lawyer familiar with Greek philosophy, might also warrant inclusion in such a list. Both, however, are said to have converted upon witnessing miraculous events themselves. As we now wish to focus on diligent inquiry into reports of miraculous events, let us exclude them from consideration. We might nonetheless assemble a list of educated converts to the early church which includes Luke,[39] Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian.

        Each of these men was a trained physician, philosopher, or lawyer. Justin Martyr alone had studied under Stoic, Aristotelian, Pythagorean, and Platonic philosophers prior to his conversion. Critically, none saw the resurrection or other miracles of Christ firsthand – and none claimed to have converted on the basis of a miraculous sight.

        Luke, a physician,[40] corroborates Grotius’ theory at the beginning of his eponymous text: he has undertaken, he says, “to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us.”[41] In other words, though Luke did not personally witness the events he is relaying, the eyewitnesses were there for him to interview. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians, “most of [the witnesses] are still alive.”[42] Luke writes that he has compiled this evidence so that Theophilius, to whom he dedicated his text, may have “certainty concerning the things you have been taught.”[43] It is precisely this certainty that many early converts to Christianity enjoyed.

        Christian apologists rarely make Grotius’ argument – perhaps because of its air of intellectual elitism. Christianity has long been hostile to elitism of any kind, instead appealing – in Celsus’ words – to “whoever is a wretch.”[44] God’s wisdom, writes Paul, “is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away.”[45] Likewise, Paul advises “let him become a fool that he may become wise.”[46]

        Even independently, Paul’s admonitions are commendable: the massacres of the Jacobins and Marxists were the result, not of simplemindedness, but of the mental gymnastics of intellectuals. Where exceptional testimony is concerned, however, education seems to be associated with skepticism – not with credulity. That “men of good judgment, and of no small learning” quickly found reports concerning Christ credible, therefore, is evidence both of their frequency and of their having the ring of veracity.


        Martyrdom 



        It should be noted that, as so far presented, Grotius’ argument is as much evidence for the other miracles as for the resurrection. It can be particularly helpful to the resurrection, however, for one reason: while belief in miracles is a good explanation for conversion, belief in the resurrection is the best explanation for martyrdom.  

        Importantly, Grotius’ argument does not mention Paul – not because of the miraculous nature of Paul’s conversion, but because Paul was a Jew.[47] Jewish monotheists, Grotius seems to have assumed, would naturally have been more receptive to Christianity than non-Jews. This assumption, however, is dubious. Jewish law states that whoever is hung on a tree is cursed.[48] As the great Christian apologist William Lane Craig often states, “Jews had no expectation of a Messiah who, instead of triumphing over Israel’s enemies, would be shamefully executed as a criminal.” The disciples therefore came to believe in the resurrection “despite their having every predisposition to the contrary.”[49] It is especially striking, then, that both Jewish and non-Jewish Christians gave their lives rather than deny it.
  
        The martyrdom of Christians likely began with the judicial murder of Stephen in about AD 34: an atrocity in which Paul – then still a militant anti-Christian – was a participant.[50] Paul then led a “ravaging [of] the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.”[51] James bar Zebedee, the first apostle to be martyred, was put to death on the order of Herod,[52] likely in AD 44. According to the McGrews, his murder “is not in any real historical doubt.”[53] Likewise, the subsequent slayings of Peter and Paul in Rome are attested to by multiple early Christian sources.[54] In terms of the historical value of early martyrdoms, however, Christ’s brother James outdoes all of his predecessors.

          During Christ’s ministry, it must be noted, James did not believe that his brother was the son of God or – apparently – that he could even work miracles.[55] Yet, after James reportedly saw the resurrected Christ,[56] we learn – not from the New Testament, but from the Jewish historian Josephus – that James was martyred for his Christian faith.[57] James, it must be emphasized, would have been even more predisposed to disbelieve Christianity than other Jewish Christians. In Jewish eyes, Christ’s crucifixion proved that he was not the Messiah; in James’ case, this defeat should also have confirmed a preexisting assessment of his brother. If James, against all odds, instead came to believe that Christ had been right after all, it stands to reason that some overwhelming personal experience changed his mind.

          The McGrews note the objection that “kamikaze pilots, suicide bombers, and Nazis were willing to give their lives for what they believed was true.”[58] In response, they point out that this argument fails to distinguish “between the willingness to die for an ideology and the willingness to die in attestation of an empirical fact.”[59] While this answer is a powerful one, there is at least one additional distinction: in each of the three aforementioned groups, martyrdom was proportionally more common among lower- than higher-ranking members.[60] Among early Christians leaders, however, it seems to have been a rite of passage to saunter boldly into the arms of death, asking – as Paul did – “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”[61] Other early matyr-fathers include Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, and the aforementioned Justin Martyr.

          The practice of martyrdom was, nonetheless, far from confined to church leaders. The killing of obstinate Christians soon blossomed into a Roman routine, and the church’s explosion onto the world stage occurred amidst unearthly cycles of bloodletting. This fact is extraordinarily well-established by the extant writings of Roman persecutors and their supporters – who, after all, had little incentive to exaggerate Christian bravery. 

          Writing between AD 111 and 113, Roman governor Pliny the Younger reported to the emperor Trajan that a number of persons had been denounced to him as Christians. While some denied being Christians or repented of their faith – “They all worshipped your image and the statues of the gods, and cursed Christ” – “those who persisted I ordered executed… There were others possessed of the same folly; but because they were Roman citizens, I signed an order for them to be transferred to Rome.”[62] In his short response, also extant, Trajan agrees that “if they are denounced and proved guilty, they are to be punished.”[63]

          Decades after Pliny’s letter, Celsus mocked Christians by arguing that, though Christians purported to be able to blaspheme the pagan gods without consequence, “those who do stand next to your little god are hardly secure! You are banished from land and sea, bound and punished for your devotion to [your Christian demon] and taken away to be crucified. Where then is your God’s vengeance on his persecutors?”[64] Christians, he adds, “offer their bodies to be tortured and killed to no purpose when they think that in so doing they are defying the demons and going to their eternal reward.”[65]

          Finally, Lucian – an anti-Christian satirist who died in AD 180 – says of Christians that “The poor devils have convinced themselves that they are all going to be immortal and live forever, which makes most of them take death lightly and voluntarily give themselves up to it.”[66]

         





[1] Matthew 16:16
[2] See also “Dionysus.” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2015. (“At the direction of Hera, the infant Zagreus/Dionysus was torn to pieces, cooked, and eaten by the evil Titans. But his heart was saved by Athena, and he, now Dionysus, was resurrected by Zeus through Semele.”).
[3] Ibn Isḥāq, Muḥammad. The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Isḥāq's Sirat Rasul Allah. Ed. Ibn Hishām ʻAbd Al-Malik. London: Oxford UP, 1955. 184. See also Rippin, Andrew. Muslims: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices. London: Routledge, 2001. 52 (“Such miraculous stories are not abundant in the popular life accounts of Muhammad, as compared to Jesus’s for example, but they do tend to play an important role both in providing a guarantee of Muhammad’s status and in supplying a focal point for popular belief.”).
[4] Annals 15.44.
[5] e.g. Celsus, and R. Joseph Hoffman. On the True Doctrine: A Discourse against the Christians. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1987. 72 [hereinafter Hoffman]. (“I emphasize that the Christians worship a man who was arrested and died.”).
[6] 1 Cor. 15:6
[7] Kümmel, Werner Georg, Paul Feine, and Johannes Behm. Introduction to the New Testament. Nashville: Abingdon, 1966. 202 [hereinafter Kümmel]. (“The authenticity of 1 Corinthians is not disputed. The Epistle was already clearly known in I Clem. 37:5; 47:1-3; 49:5; Ign., Eph 16:1; 18:1; Rom 5:1; Phila 3:3.”).
[8] 1 Cor. 15:51-52.
[9] McDowell, Josh. Evidence for Christianity. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2006. 65. Thanks to Andrew Rogers for pointing me towards this source.
[10] Id.
[11] Id.
[12] McGrew, Timothy, and Lydia McGrew. "The Argument from Miracles." Eds. William Lane Craig, and James Porter Moreland. The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. Chichester, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. 600 [hereinafter McGrew].
[13] "Nazareth Dwelling Discovery May Shed Light on Boyhood of Jesus." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 21 Dec. 2009.
[14] McGrew at 600.
[15] Kümmel at 202.
[16] 1 Cor. 15:6
[17] Contra Celsus I (“…my pious Ambrosius, why you wished me to write a reply to the false charges brought by Celsus against the Christians…”).
[18] Hoffman at 30.
[19] Hargis, Jeffrey W. Against the Christians: The Rise of Early Anti-Christian Polemic. New York: Peter Lang, 1999. 22 [hereinafter Hargis] (explaining that, when Celsus imagines what would happen if “those who now reign over us” became Christians, his argument “involves a hypothetical sequence of rulers”; his use of “those” therefore does not mean that co-emperors reigned when he wrote).  
[20] Pliny’s systematic killing of Christians in 111-113 shows that the persecution to which Celsus refers was well underway before the 130s. The sophistication of Celsus’ arguments, used to promote a late date, is not dispositive. Nor is the fact that Celsus felt the need to write the work at all.
[21] Hoffman at 103.
[22] Id.
[23] Hoffman at 122. Christians, moreover, should not even be “permitted to live until marriageable age.”
[24] Id. at 124. (“You are swearing by the man to whom all earthly power has been given: what you receive in life, you receive from him. And this is what it means to be a god.”).
[25] Fears, J. Rufus. "Christianity." 2007. Lecture. (“The very suspicion of being a Christian was enough to bring you before a tribunal – and with the prospect of death. But instead of breaking Christianity, it only seemed to strengthen it. And non-Christians who watched these men and women – these girls, even, and boys who were Christians – stand up to the Roman bureaucracy and say ‘No, I will not worship your gods: put me to death.’ There must be something in this idea that gave it power.”).
[26] Annals 15.44.
[27] Hoffman at 72.
[28] Id. at 119.
[29] Id. at 68.
[30] Id. at 67.
[31] Id. at 60. (“One wonders why a god should need to resort to your kind of persuasion—even eating a fish after your resurrection. I should rather think that your actions are those of one hated by God, the actions of a sorcerer.’ So says our Jew to Jesus.”). Cf. Luke 24:36-42
[32] Hoffman at 54.
[33] Id. at 72.
[34] Schäfer, Peter. Jesus in the Talmud. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2007. 38 [hereinafter Schäfer].
[35] Id.
[36] Id. at 39.
[37] Grotius, Hugo, and Jean Le Clerc. The Truth of the Christian Religion in Six Books. London: William Baynes, 1829. 101 [hereinafter Grotius].
[38] Id.
[39] Paul, Luke’s teacher, is said in Acts 19:11-12 to have performed several miracles: indeed, he performed the miracle that converted Sergius Paulus in Acts 13:6-12. It is possible that Luke converted because he experienced one of these miracles. That we are never told as much, however, distinguishes Luke from Paul and Sergius Paulus and warrants his inclusion in this list. 
[40] Colossians 4:14
[41] Luke 1:1-2
[42] 1 Cor. 15:6
[43] Luke 1:4
[44] Hoffman at 74. (“But the call to membership in the cult of Christ is this: Whoever is a sinner, whoever is unwise, whoever is childish—yea, whoever is a wretch—his is the kingdom of God. And so they invite into membership those who by their own account are sinners: the dishonest, thieves, burglars, poisoners, blasphemers of all descriptions, grave robbers. I mean—what other cult actually invites robbers to become members! Their excuse for all of it is that their god was sent to call sinners: well, fair enough. But what about the righteous? How do they account for the fact that their appeal is to the lowest sort of person? Why was their Christ not sent to those who has not sinned—is it any disgrace not to have sinned?”).
[45] 1 Cor. 2:6
[46] 1 Cor. 3:18
[47] Grotius at 101.
[48] Deuteronomy 21:23
[49] Craig, William Lane, and Shabir Ally. "Who Is the Real Jesus?" University of Western Ontario. Mar. 2002. Debate.
[50] Acts 7-8
[51] Acts 8:3
[52] Acts 12:2
[53] McGrew at 614.
[54] Id. at 615.
[55] John 7:1-5
[56] 1 Cor. 15:7, Acts 1:14
[57] Antiquities 20.200
[58] McGrew at 624.
[59] Id.
[60] Matome Ugaki, a Japanese admiral and kamikaze pilot, is one counterexample. My point is not that leaders of these three groups have never willingly faced death for their respective causes, but that such cases are atypical.   
[61] 1 Cor. 15:55
[62] Pliny, Letters 10.96-97
[63] Id.
[64] Hoffman at 119.
[65] Id. at 122.
[66] Id. at 27.

Saturday, June 13, 2015

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.