Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy (26 page)

This is not to say that reports of things hitherto quite outside
our experience have to be false. Science proceeds by finding such
things. But we reason rightly when we maintain a sceptical attitude, until such time as the new phenomena are repeated and established, becoming part of the uniformities of nature.

Once we think of the theology of miracles, things become even
worse. For a deity that sets the laws of nature into motion and never relents at least has a certain dignity. One that occasionally allows hiccups and intermissions, glorified conjuring tricks, is less
impressive. Why just those miracles, just then? It is not what you
would have expected. A little miracle or two snuffing out the
Hitlers and Stalins would seem far more useful than one that
changes water to wine at one particular wedding feast. It is no
doubt very good of God to let St Giuseppe levitate in front of pictures of him, but other things being equal, one would have preferred, say, the miraculous quarantine or destruction of the Aids
virus. It is what one might have expected antecedently, knowing
that the world was under the regime of a good God. But the world
as we know it does not confirm it. We soon see how this piece of
reasoning too can be analysed in a Bayesian way. Here the weak
card is the degree of fit between the evidence and the hypothesis,
the second of the three crucial figures in Bayes's theorem.

INFINI-RIEN

None of the metaphysical arguments we have considered do much
to confirm the hypothesis that the universe is the creation of a traditional God. And Hume's analysis of testimony from miracles
destroys their value as evidence. Faced with these blanks, religious
faith may try to find other arguments.

An interesting and ingenious one is due to the French mathematician and theologian, Blaise Pascal (1632-62), and is known as
Pascal's wager. Unlike the arguments we have been considering, it
is not presented as an argument for the truth of religious belief, but for the utility of believing in some version of a monotheistic, Judaic, Christian, or Islamic, God.

The argument is this. First, Pascal confesses to metaphysical ignorance:

Let its now speak according to natural lights.

If there is a God, he is infinitely incomprehensible, since,
having neither parts, nor limits, He has no affinity to its. We
are therefore incapable of knowing either what He is, or if He
is ... Who then will blame the Christians fiff not being able to
give it reason for their belief since they profess it religion for
which they cannot give a reason?

It is not too clear why this excuse is offered for the Christians, as
opposed to those of other faiths, as well as believers in fairies,
ghosts, the living Elvis, and L. Ron Hubbard. Still, suppose the
choice is between religious belief and a life of religious doubt or
denial:

You must wager. It is not optional. Which will you choose
then? ... Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that
God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain
all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.

With great clarity Pascal realizes that this is rather an odd reason
for choosing a belief. But he also says, perceptively, that

your inability to believe is the result of your passions, since
reason brings you to this, and yet you cannot believe... Learn
o(those who have been bound like you, and who now stake all
their possessions ... Follow the way by which they began; by
acting as if they believe, taking the holy water, having masses said, etc. Even this will naturally make you believe, and
deaden your acuteness.

After you have `stupefied' yourself, you have become a believer.
And then you will reap the rewards of belief: infinite rewards, if the
kind of God you believe in exists. And if it does not? Well, you have
lost very little, in comparison with infinity: only what Pascal calls
the `poisonous pleasures' of things like playing golf on Sundays instead of going to mass.

The standard way to present this argument is in terms of a twoby-two box of the options:

The zeros on the right correspond to the thought that not much
goes better or worse in this life, whether or not we believe. This life
is of vanishingly little account compared to what is promised to believers. The plus-infinity figure corresponds to infinite bliss. The
minus-infinity figure in the bottom left corresponds to the traditional jealous God, who sends to Hell those who do not believe in
him, and of course encourages his followers to give them a hard
time here, as well. But the minus-infinity figure can be softpedalled. Even if we put o in the bottom left-hand box, the wager
looks good. It would be good even if God does not punish disbelief,
because there is still that terrific payoff of+infinity' cranking up
the choice. In decision-theory terms, the option of belief 'dominates; because it can win, and cannot lose. So-go for it!

Unfortunately the lethal problem with this argument is simple,
once it is pointed out.

Pascal starts from a position of metaphysical ignorance. We just
know nothing about the realm beyond experience. But the set-up
of the wager presumes that we do know something. We are supposed to know the rewards and penalties attached to belief in a
Christian God. This is a God who will be pleasured and reward us
for our attendance at mass, and will either be indifferent or, in the
minus-infinity option, seriously discombobulated by our nonattendance. But this is a case of false options. For consider that if we
are really ignorant metaphysically, then it is at least as likely that the
options pan out like this:

There is indeed a very powerful, very benevolent deity. He
(or she or they or it) has determined as follows. The good
human beings are those who follow the natural light of reason, which is given to them to control their beliefs. These
good humans follow the arguments, and hence avoid religious convictions. These ones with the strength of mind
not to believe in such things go to Heaven. The rest go to
Hell.

This is not such a familiar deity as the traditional jealous God, who
cares above all that people believe in him. (Why is God so jealous?
Alas, might his jealousy he a projection of human sectarian ambitions and emotions? Either you are with us or against us! The
French sceptic Voltaire said that God created mankind in his
image, and mankind returned the compliment.) But the problem
for Pascal is that if we really know nothing, then we do not know
whether the scenario just described is any less likely than the Chris tian one he presented. In fact, for my money, a God that punishes
belief is just as likely, and a lot more reasonable, than one that punishes disbelief.

And of course, we could add the Humean point that whilst for
Pascal it was a simple two-way question of mass versus disbelief, in
the wider world it is also a question of the Koran versus mass, or L.
Ron Hubbard versus the Swami Maharishi, or the Aquarian Concepts Community Divine New Order Government versus the First
Internet Church of All. The wager has to be silent about those
choices.

EMOTION AND THE WILL TO
BELIEVE

We can now briefly consider the `fideistic' line, that although the
arguments are negligible, nevertheless people at least have a right
to believe what they wish, and there may be some merit in blind
faith, like the merit attaching to the mother who refuses to acknowledge her son's guilt in spite of damning evidence.

Philosophers professionally wedded to truth and reason are not
apt to commend this attitude. The faith that defies reason might be
called a blessing by others who share it, but credulity and superstition by those who don't, and distressingly apt to bring in its wake
fanaticism and zealotry. Chapter 2 of the famous essay On Liberty
by John Stuart Mill (18o6-73) talks memorably of the atmosphere
of'mental slavery' that sets in with the absence of the questing critical intellect. Even the truth, Mill says, when held as a prejudice independent of and proof against argument,'is but one superstition the more, accidentally clinging to the words which enunciate
a truth. One classic discussion (by the late-nineteenth-century
English writer W. K. Clifford) compares beliefs held on insufficient
evidence to stolen pleasures. An apt quotation is from Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth, will
proceed by loving his own sect or Church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.

But although these views are attractive, it is actually quite hard
to show that the habit of blind faith is necessarily so very bad. If,
having got to Hume's inert proposition, we then invest it with
hopes, fears, resolutions, and the embellishments of our own particular creeds, where is the harm in that? Is not simple piety it Good
Thing?

Some people certainly think random belief is a good thing. I
have in front of me the advertisement for a company calling itself
'your metaphysical superstore'. It specializes in New Age hooks and
music, flower essence, essential oils and aromatherapy, magnetic
therapy, light balance therapy, astrology and numerology, tarot
and rune cards readings, crystals and gemstones, and at the end,
like a rueful note of something approaching sanity, healing herbs.
Why should thinkers mock the simple pieties of the people?

Of course, there are simple pieties that do not get this general
protection. If I check into the Mysterious Mist and come back convinced that God's message to me is to kill young women, or people
with the wrong-coloured skins, or people who go to the wrong church, or people who have sex the wrong way, that is not so good.
So we have to use our human values, our own sense of good or bad,
or right or wrong, to distinguish an admirable return from the
mountain from a lunatic one.

We seem to be irretrievably in the domain of ethics here. And it
would be impossible in a brief compass to assess the harms and
benefits of religious belief, just as it is hard (although not impossible) to estimate the benefit or damage done by belief in magnetic
therapy or Feng Shui or whatever. It clearly fills some function, answering to some human desires and needs. Some of the needs may
be a common part of the human lot: I have already mentioned the
need for ceremonies at crucial parts of life, or the need for poetry,
symbol, myth, and music to express emotions and social relationships that we need to express. This is good. Unfortunately some of
the desires may be a little less admirable: the desire to separatism,
to schism, to imposing our way of life on others, to finding moral
justifications for colonialism, or tribal or cultural imperialism, and
all made guilt-free because done in the name of the Lord. For every
peaceful benevolent mystic, there is an army chaplain, convincing
the troops that God is on their side. Myself, I have never seen a
bumper sticker saying `Hate if you Love Jesus, but I sometimes
wonder why not. It would be a good slogan for the religious Right.

It is, perhaps, surprising to find the issue here turning into a
kind of practical or moral issue. It might seem to be a purely intellectual case of Reason (good) versus Faith (bad, or at least suspect).
But Hume himself is responsible for clouding the picture. For reasons we are about to meet, there seems to be quite a lot of brute
trust or faith in many everyday elements of common sense. We al ready met in Chapter i our 'fingers-crossed' faith in the external
world or past time. And in the next two chapters we come across
other places where Hume was the first to see that everyday confidence seems more a matter of faith than reason.