Imagine being dead and brought to a divine court to be judged for all those horrible sins you committed when you were alive.
It would be the height of irresponsibility not to be insured against such divine legal drama with a belief in a god and live according to his (excuse the male pronoun) moral guidelines.
Or so at least was the opinion of Blaise Pascal, a 17th-century French mathematician.
Pascal’s mathematical trickery — known today as Pascal’s Wager — was that one should live life with a certainty that there is a god — however impossible proving him may be — fearing his judgment when one is dead. If it turns out that there wasn’t a god, then the wagering soul had nothing to lose. If there was a god and one decided not to take-up the wager, then one would be in trouble.
It is this presumption of morality for the fear of retribution of the almighty that often makes ASU the playground for grumpy old men who shout and frighten students for not being born-again, all in the name of God.
These people carry signs that read things like “Islam is Terrorism,” “The Wicked Shall Burn” or my personal favorite, “Democrats Are Evil.”
It’s charming how the god who has supposedly created the universe with its billions of galaxies and billions of stars while listening to and accommodating everyone’s prayers, also has time to vote Republican — the textbook definition of omnipotence.
Pascal seems to have overlooked the fact that such a powerful god would see through the deception of believing in him as an insurance policy.
He also seems to have overlooked the fact that belief cannot really be a matter of conscious decision to get up one morning and say “I believe.” You either believe in something or you don’t — no playing around.
But those aren’t the main problems with Pascal’s pedantic wager. What if you took Pascal’s advice — which god would you believe in?
Whose moral guidance would you take in order to avoid the misfortune of serving as Satan’s butler in the afterlife?
What if you accepted Jesus as your lord and savior and once dead, you discovered that the universe was, in fact, ruled by Zeus? It won’t be as easy as switching from Allstate to Geico, you know.
Why then the presumption? Isn’t it satisfactory to believe that there is a god without violently insisting that it is an ethnocentric, politically active god? “Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?” as Douglas Adams wrote in “Last Chance to See.”
To follow the moral guidance of a god who asks nothing but constant praise is like working for a boss who values you for the number of times you compliment his tie, not the quality of your work.
Perhaps a new wager is in order. What if we practiced morality regardless of divine praise or retribution — the kind of morality that ignores man-made borders of color, ethnicity, sexual preference and political affiliation? What if we followed Thomas Jefferson and built a wall of separation between church and state, ignoring these men and their message of hatred?
Sohail can be reached at sbayot@asu.edu
