Pascal's wager: betting on God

Saturday 12 November 2011 1:35PM

This week on The Philosopher's Zone we're wagering on God. Well, why not? What have we got to lose? If God doesn't exist, we lose nothing; if he does, we gain everything. This is the famous argument known as 'Pascal's wager' after the great seventeenth-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal. This week, we examine the wager and try to work out what our odds are.

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Alan Saunders: So, there you are, in a casino, and you're at the roulette table, betting on the number five. What are the odds? There are 37 pockets in the wheel, so you draw a line on a piece of paper, and write the number 37 under it. This is the number of equally possible outcomes. You're interested in only one outcome; the number five. So you write a one above the line. And there are your odds, 1/37. This is what's called the classical theory of probability, devised in the 17th century by Pierre de Fermat, famous for his last theorem, and Blaise Pascal. The idea of probability arose in the context of gambling, of games of chance. But Pascal, a scientist, a philosopher and a devout Catholic, as well as a mathematician, was interested in odds rather simpler than those you might encounter at the roulette wheel. We're tossing a coin. Heads or tails, or to put it another way, God or no God.

Pascal's famous wager was a major contribution to decision theory and to thinking about probability. And to tell us what we've got to lose or to win and why we should make a bet, we're joined now by James Franklin, professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of New South Wales. Jim, welcome back to the show.

James Franklin: Hi.

Alan Saunders: Now, what I've been talking about is what's known as Pascal's wager. But before we get onto that, tell us who Blaise Pascal was.

James Franklin: He was a very wide-ranging thinker from the French mid 17th century, think The Three Musketeers by way of background. Early Louis XIV. He did great work in science in his earlier days, including work on pressure, hectopascals that we measure pressure in weather, called after him. And he founded the mathematical probability theory.

Late in life, when he became very sick, he took to religion, a rather extreme form of Catholicism, and he wrote and failed to complete a book called Pensées which is a different take on the philosophy of religion. And it's that book that includes his famous wager.

Alan Saunders: So, pensées of course means thoughts, and religiously he was what was called a Jansenist, wasn't he?

James Franklin: Yes, that's right. That's a sub-sect you might say, of Catholicism, which takes an almost Calvinist view of predestination and restricts human free will, in contrast to thinking that God has done everything, including being largely responsible for your actions.

Alan Saunders: So, what is Pascal's wager?

James Franklin: Pascal says, 'Look, you've got to bet whether God exists or not, because it makes a big difference to how you live your life.' So he says, 'Think of it as like throwing a coin. Heads God exists; tails God doesn't exist. Now, if you wager that God does exist, and he does, then you will have lived the right life and God will reward you with an infinite payoff, life everlasting.

But if you wager that God doesn't exist, then it's true that you might have a more pleasant life; you have a finite amount of good fun, that you mightn't have if you lead a religious life, what with all that praying, fasting and restraining your urges. But if it turns out that God doesn't exist, well, you will be ahead. But if it turns out that he does exist and you've bet against him, then you will have lost an infinite payoff.

So Pascal says that your decision should go with the infinite payoff, even if it's hard to say whether God does or doesn't exist. The bet, the right bet, is to bet that God exists, and believe in him.

Alan Saunders: There've been many arguments for God's existence, some of them advanced in Pascal's lifetime by Rene Descartes, but this isn't one of them, is it?

James Franklin: No, it's not strictly an argument for the existence of God or even for belief. It's an argument for your accepting God, and Pascal says the conclusion of it is that you should go to mass and pray for faith.

Alan Saunders: When the Abbéde Villars published a criticism of Pascal's argument in 1671, he said, 'I lose patience listening to you treating the highest of all matters, and resting the most important truth in the world, the source of all truths, on an idea so base and so puerile, on a comparison with a game of heads and tails, more productive of mirth than persuasion.' Now, he wasn't the only person who said that sort of thing. The idea seems to be that there's something disgusting in bringing gambling into a religious argument.

James Franklin: Yes, and in fact most religious people are even more keen to say that than atheist people. They, most religious people have not liked the wager and have headed for the hills at the mere suggestion that there's any agreement between themselves and Pascal. People talk about the wager as if the mercenary or gaming aspect of it is very bad. Well, that's just too bad. We're all philosophers here and we're interested in the validity of arguments. Not in whether they're tasteless or not. Or convenient, or have a good look and feel about them.

We want to know, nevertheless, whether it's a good argument, and talk about whether it's base or not is really not to the point. But in any case, Pascal is right, that... A very strong point in his argument is that you are forced to bet. The options are out there, and you're going to live your life one way or another. Given that your first forced to bet, you might as well think about it as betting, and think about the payoffs of the different courses of action open to you. That is rational.

Alan Saunders: But is he saying that one can come to... Supposing you take the bet, you decide that you're going to bet on God. Is he saying that you can come to believe something simply as a result of wanting to do so?

James Franklin: No, no. Many people have criticised the argument on that basis, saying that you can't decide to believe. Belief is not under control of the will like that. Either you think the evidence is one way or it isn't. But yes, Pascal is ahead of you there, because Pascal's, the conclusion of Pascal's wager is not belief but an action. Namely, going to mass and praying for faith. That is an action. And Pascal says it's up to God to do the rest.

That's part of his Jansenism, that he thinks that even with the... Even if the evidence was perfect that God exists, you couldn't gain faith; faith is a free gift of God, according to him. But, he says, your action is to go and make yourself open to that. So, I think he wins on that point again. He's not saying, the conclusion of his argument is not belief, but an action, namely asking for belief.

Alan Saunders: So, one way of putting it is to say that if you wager for God and God exists, then you gain everything. If you wager against God and God exists, the result will be misery. If God does not exist, then in both cases the result is essentially the status quo.

James Franklin: Yes. Well, Pascal says that if God doesn't exist then you will lose something by betting on him. Namely a more pleasurable life, but he says that's a rather small payoff. The difference in payoffs between a virtuous life and an unvirtuous life he says, at least for the sake of argument, is something, but it's not much, especially compared to the other option, that you might win an infinite payoff.

Alan Saunders: He's assuming, isn't he, that the probability of God's existence is 1 in 2. Is that reasonable?

James Franklin: Initially he says that he, you think of it as a heads or tails, and that's 1 on 2, but as he points out, it doesn't really matter what it is. If, because an infinite payoff will beat even a small probability. As long as the probability that God exists is non-zero, then the infinite payoff should counterbalance that and mean that you should bet for God. Because on the other side, there's only a finite difference in payoffs.

Alan Saunders: Is it right, though, to consider that there are only two possibilities to take into account in your wager?

James Franklin: That is the main objection, actually, to Pascal's wager that has been raised. That Pascal has not got straight the range of possibilities. Certainly Pascal does speak as if there are only two options, namely atheism and Catholicism of his variety. Now, that is quite right, that is a problem for his argument, but you have to remember two things. First is that Pascal is addressing a certain man of the world of 1660, for whom those are the two options.

Now, what about our situation? What about somebody else's situation? Well, we have a different range of options, but nevertheless the thinking of Pascal's wager still applies. Perhaps we have a much wider range of options, and we think that there could be lots of different religions with different probabilities of their being true, and perhaps we have a different opinion about the atheist option as well, and its probability. Well, it doesn't matter. The thinking of Pascal's wager is still right. The idea behind the wager is that you lay out the options that are live for you, and your subjective probabilities, what you think initially they're worth, and act accordingly. Which means probably for us we put research effort into finding which is serious.

So let's suppose we're in the situation of somebody brought up in an atheist or agnostic household that's never thought about religion. They get to their teens and start reading about these things and they realise there are religions out there, and they think, 'Well maybe I should think about these things.' I don't know, maybe... Why do people think these things? Probably somebody like that should think in Pascal's terms and say, 'Well, there's some non-zero probability that some world religion is right, but I don't know which. I should take out a book on world religions for dummies and start researching.' Yeah, that's the right way to think. It's not for me to say what the results of those researches may be, but that's what the wager says, I think, to the typical person of today; do some research.

Alan Saunders: So, the wager works even if I'm wagering not on God but on gods, on Vishnu and Kali and Ganesh for example?

James Franklin: Yes, if they're offering you payoffs, which they mostly seem to be doing, then you should do that. Perhaps you shouldn't bet on merely possible religions. I mean, some objectors to Pascal's religion have said that any guru could set up a religion with a suite of rewards and punishments and demand money from you, and actually as people think, perhaps scientologists and the like have done exactly that. But that is not a live option for you. Pascal's wager applies to the live options for the enquirer. And live option means you have some initial and substantial reason for thinking there might be something in that. So yeah, Vishnu counts, Mohammed counts, all of them count. The only person for whom Pascal's wager doesn't apply is the person who is absolutely convinced of atheism, and thinks that there's a zero probability for the sum of all options involving God. There are some people like that around, but that's not most people.

Alan Saunders: The French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal applied probability theory to God in a work published after his death in 1662. And here's what he has to say:
'God is or he is not. Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separates us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance, where heads or tails will turn up. You have two things to lose, the true and the good. And two things to stake, your reason and your will. If you gain, you gain all. If you lose, you lose nothing.'

And that's what I'm talking about this week with Professor James Franklin from the University of New South Wales. I'm Alan Saunders and this is The Philosopher's Zone.

But what about the possibility that God is not a benevolent God, but a malicious God? Or at least a bit of a divine awkward cuss? So If I choose to believe in him on the basis of a wager, he's not going to be too impressed.

James Franklin: Yeah, that is certainly something to be thought about. And especially since, as the people talking about the problem of evil insist, there is some reason to think that there is something cussed about God. Certainly if you look around the world, if it's his creation then there are some reasonable complaints about it. But when you think about what a malicious God implies, I think it doesn't imply anything about what you should do. Your first thought is probably that you should sacrifice a goat and hope he goes away, but who knows what a malicious God thinks about the sacrifice of goats? And if a malicious God has indulged in some revelations and told you what you ought to do, that still gets you nowhere, because a malicious God is a deceitful God. The devil is the prince of lies as they say, and there's no reason to believe that anything he says should be believed. So there is certainly a possibility that there is a malicious God, but it doesn't imply anything for action.

Alan Saunders: One of the things I find fascinating about Pascal's wager is that with it he is more or less initiating a number of areas of study. The psychology of religious belief, probability theory and of course decision theory.

James Franklin: Yes, a remarkable suite of achievements indeed. So, to just take decision theory which is perhaps the most famous outcome of his wager: Decision theory, of which this Pascal's wager is really the first instance, says that if you've got a range of options that you might implement, for anything from choice of life partner to where you should invest your money, you should think of the probabilities involved, like what might happen and how likely it is to happen, and then the payoffs, meaning the costs or benefits that are going to arise.

So that for example if you're talking about building or taking precautions about a nuclear plant, you have to think about the probabilities of something going wrong, which may be small, but weighted by the outcomes which may be a very large disaster. So, it's a very good perspective for deciding on what to do, to multiply the probabilities of outcome, by the costs and benefits that are going to arise.

Alan Saunders: And when it comes to another aspect of that trio of achievements, the psychology of religion, what he understands is that though you cannot will yourself to believe, you can and you've already more or less implied this, you can as it were put yourself in the way of belief.

James Franklin: That's right. You can, so to speak, prepare your mind for belief, which Pascal thinks is a free gift of God. Well, undoubtedly you can; you can do different things to, well, in the first instance you can go and find out about some theory and the reasons people have for believing it, and that will give you some way into whether it's a reasonable theory or not. And I think this is a very rational way to proceed in the question of choice of religion or for that matter, choice of philosophy.

First thing is, you've got to understand why people are thinking that way, and not just sit back and say, 'Oh, well, it sounds crazy to me, I don't know why those people are carrying on like that.' The rational decision is to investigate a worldview in an initially sympathetic way. It might turn out that when you investigate it you have a lot less sympathy than when you started if it looks awful the further you get into it. Still, first thing is some kind of sympathy.

Alan Saunders: I said he more or less initiated three areas of study, the one I hadn't mentioned is probability theory. Now, he's one of the founders of probability theory, but probability theory in his day was really about tossing coins or throwing dice. Probability theory is much more complex these days. Does the wager argument look different in the light of modern theories of probability?

James Franklin: I wouldn't say it did. I think it's turned out to be one of those things, as, like a lot of things in probability theory, where earliest... stacked up remarkably well. We know a certain amount more about probability theory, but it's still a very mysterious topic, probability. And in the light of the distinctions we now make, we now make a very strong distinction between logical or epistemic probabilities, which are about how you ought to think on the basis of evidence, like proof beyond reasonable doubt in law, which is about the relation between evidence and hypothesis.

Well, that's one kind of probability, and it's really the kind that's involved in Pascal's wager. And on the other hand probabilities of a stochastic kind, that deal with the chance outcomes of dice. So they, the chance outcomes of dice and coins form, in a certain sense, a model of other kinds of probability, but the logical kind is not always well thought about, is really about throwing coins.

Alan Saunders: But his notion of probability is that if you want to know what the probability of getting a heads is when you throw a coin, you just write a line on the page and you know the coin has two faces, so you write two under the line, and you want one outcome or the other, so you write one on the top of the line. And that's it, that's your probability.

James Franklin: Yes, that's right, so Pascal and his correspondent Fermat, those two genius mathematicians worked out the early mathematical theory of probability. They didn't connect it with long run relative frequency, like how much heads and tails actually come up. They did it in a very logical and abstract way, and they posed the problem in terms of, strangely a moral problem, the just division of a stake in an interrupted game.

So they asked, they said, two players have been playing, and they're forced to interrupt the game, and they're at a certain position, one is ahead of the other, how should they divide the stake? And they thought of that in terms of symmetry arguments, which are, as you just said, is basically about counting outcomes of different kinds. Well, that works well in a way, and it's certainly remarkable how well in many cases it agrees with what the coins actually do. There's perhaps certainly a little bit of a mystery about how talking about symmetry of ignorance, so to speak, actually works out in terms of how coins actually fall, but there it is.

Alan Saunders: What's your view of the standing of Pascal's wager as an argument today? As you've said, many people, atheists possibly even more than believers are somewhat disgusted by aspects of it, how would you say it stands today in the philosophical world?

James Franklin: Well, the majority of feeling in the philosophical world is certainly against it for the various reasons we've discussed; that it's disgusting, that it applies to anything. I think there's a lot of life left in it still, and I would like to see it taken rather more seriously, but it does need to be adapted to the space of hypotheses we have at the moment, which is much wider than the all or nothing atheism versus Catholicism of Pascal's day. But that's neither here nor there.

And I'd say in fact that it's more relevant now that we have more options, because the more options we have the more we need to think carefully about allocating our effort in researching them in the first instance, and if it comes to the point committing ourselves to them. Committing your life to a religion, or against a religion, is a very serious decision, just as in committing yourself to a life partner. We need to think very, very seriously about that. And the first thing to think is, where you should start. Where you should start thinking about putting your effort. Pascal's gives us the right decision theoretic framework for starting on that. We should go with him.

Alan Saunders: So the first thing we should commit ourselves to is serious thought and research.

James Franklin: Yes, that's right. And serious thought and research, first of all, serious thought and research on where we should seriously put thought and research. That's difficult, considering the chaos out there in the postmodernist world and the options we've got, but time to get straight, because it's very important.

Pascal makes the very good analogy with finding the deeds of a house, and, that perhaps will allow you to inherit a large property. And he says that you don't say to that, 'Oh, well maybe they're forged, I'll throw them away.' Well, that's a nice analogy for the young atheist who says, 'I think religions are all rubbish, I'm not going to investigate.'

Alan Saunders: Well, Jim Franklin, thank you very much for taking a bet on coming in here today.

James Franklin: Thank you.

Alan Saunders: James Franklin is Professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of New South Wales. For links to his paper on Pascal's wager, and much more on the subject, check out our website,

That's also the place to go if you want to tell us whether you'd bet on God. Or for that matter, whether you bet at all, and whether if you do your betting is governed by the calculus of probability.

And the music this week was by some contemporaries of Blaise Pascal, and it came from a favourite film of mine, Tous les matins du monde, starring Gerard Depardieu. The show is produced by Kyla Slaven, Charlie McCune is the sound engineer, and I'm Alan Saunders.


James Franklin
School of Mathematics and Statistics
University of NSW


What science knows: and how it knows it
James Franklin
Encounter Books (2009)
Corrupting the Youth: A History of Philosophy in Australia
James Franklin
Macleay Press (2003)


Improviation sue les Folies d'Espagne
Musical director Jordi Savall
Tous les matins du monde
Marin Marais
CD details: Auvidis Travelling K 4640
Sonnerie de Ste Genevieve du Mont-de-Paris
Musical director Jordi Savall
Tous les matins du monde
Marin Marais
CD details: Auvidis Travelling K 4640

Further Information

Two caricatures, I: Pascal's wager - online paper by James Franklin
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 44: 109-114, 1998
Pascal's Wager
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Pascal's Wager about God
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Blaise Pascal
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Causal Decision Theory
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Interpretations of Probability
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy


Alan Saunders
Kyla Slaven
Sound Engineer
Charlie McCune

Comments (88)

Add your comment

  • A Monotheist :

    09 Nov 2011 1:23:28pm

    Hi Everyone:

    Can we gain faith through gambling? God must have concrete signs; but still, I'll be looking forward to see if this gambling can make me more certain!

      • JamesFranklin :

        13 Nov 2011 7:54:04pm

        Thanks for all those reactions. Some interesting ideas there.
        @Philo: a half-hour program can't expand to ask me all the hard questions. If you want to read my views on the problem of evil, they're here:
        Some of the remarks have mentioned unlikely scenarios, such as the most severe God imaginable, Scientology etc. Those aren't relevant: my conclusion was that Pascal's Wager (updated) means you should put your 'money' on investigating religious views that are live options (including semi-religuous views like Spinoza's). Let's get out there and do that, folks, instead of dragging in red herrings like "atheists can be moral" or "God is about certainty not uncertainty". (The latter might be true in itself, but that doesn't help you in your initital uncertain state.)

          • James Thomas :

            14 Nov 2011 4:51:39pm

            Such propositions are relevant; Pascal's wager neglects the infinite number of possible scenarios (regarding reality/creation), even the updated version only considers benevolent and preconceived gods. For every scenario in which Pascal's wager suggests belief, a counterpart is possible in which belief would be the wrong choice. Hence Pascal's wager does not demonstrate any benefit of considering existing belief systems over one's own rational thought processes.

          • Butters :

            04 Dec 2011 5:32:44pm

            Why is the proposition that 'atheists can be moral' a red herring? It offers a legitimate reason to ignore Pascal's Wager entirely.

  • A Monotheist :

    12 Nov 2011 3:17:39pm

    Hi everyone:









    That's what I call wagering on God, the ultimate oxymoron.




      • Izzy Walker :

        20 Feb 2012 8:45:34pm

        You spout gibberish on a gifted level.
        Do you stop to think about what it is that you are saying before you do so or rather simply attempt to for the largest sentences with the most undecernable lingo as humanly possible?

  • Recher :

    12 Nov 2011 3:41:25pm






  • Franzi Poldy :

    12 Nov 2011 3:46:28pm

    Pascal's wager was actually made in our family. Shortly after the second world war my parents, establishing themselves in Bangkok, were helped by a member of the Salesian Order who became a close personal friend. My parents were lapsed Catholics and, when my younger brother was born would not, of their own accord, have had him baptised. Their Salesian friend, however, urged baptism, pointing out that if they were right (and there is no god) baptism would do no harm, but if they were wrong my brother's soul would be in peril.

    My parents accepted the argument, and my brother was baptised.

    Of course, the stakes were not really Pascal's. For my parents, the issue was not the existence of god but the feelings of their friend.

  • Robert Loblay :

    12 Nov 2011 4:33:50pm







    Wager? No thank you!

  • Ben Morphett :

    12 Nov 2011 7:00:28pm

    I think that important wager is not "is there a God or not?", but rather "is there a hell or not?"

    Personally, I am undecided as to the existence of God, but I am certain of one thing. The idea of hell is an obvious fraud, probably put about by a deranged psychopath, desperate to coerce belief at any cost.

    The existence of hell is a preposterous contradiction to the concept of a perfectly just and perfectly loving God.

  • Bill :

    12 Nov 2011 9:34:11pm

    Well, I guess it all depends on your definition of the word God. Are we talking about the old man in the sky who controls everything below or are we talking about an extremely fine set of self propelled finely tuned phenomena acting in accord to the laws of cause and effect? And where else could our concepts and discriminations come from but our own minds? In that sense, everything is mind made including the God concept. Ultimate reality doesn't deal in concepts. Our own minds do that.

  • Benny :

    12 Nov 2011 9:41:26pm

    Who says you can't live a moral, truthful and meaningful life without believing in a God. Surely these admiral traits occur naturally within all beings to one degree or another?

  • Joana Stella Kompa :

    13 Nov 2011 2:16:27am

    Probability Theory cannot decide if or if God doesn't exist as the outcome is based on the initial belief-state, the prior. If I assume that a rewarding or non-rewarding God is a given then Pascal's wager works perfectly. If I however assume that God is an illusion then his wager can be reversed as follows: given that God doesn't exist, I have the choice of a life without being enslaved by an illusion or a life enslaved by religion and waiting for a reward that never comes. Since God never arrives it is more rational to not believe in him in either scenario. Anyhow, the anthropmorphic concept of God who displays human properties (like rewarding exclusively believers)is highly disputable. Religion has no copyright ownership on living in love and dignity in my point of view. I enjoyed Spinoza's take on the subject.

  • Robert Parker :

    13 Nov 2011 4:40:42am

    My biggest problem, what if you select the wrong God? Which of the thousand of Gods thar man has worshipped is the right one?

      • Friar Broccoli :

        13 Nov 2011 9:39:39am

        That's easy. You must choose the God which threatens the most horrible punishment if you fail to believe in Him/Her/It. That way, if you've guessed wrong, you know you won't receive the worst punishment.

          • James Thomas :

            14 Nov 2011 3:27:30pm

            What if such a god offered no reward for believing in them? (e.g. you cease exist if you believe in them)

  • Philo :

    13 Nov 2011 9:39:57am

    I have many very clever friends who are theists and invariably produce clever but slippery or flippant answers when tackled with the hard questions. I wouldn't mind but some belong to religions which want to use the criminal law in support of absurd propositions such as there being a duty to treat human zygotes and blastocysts as if they were sentient members of the community. But you, Alan Saunders, didn't even ask James Franklin the hard questions. (Not, btw, Joan Stella Kompo's point because she omitted the critical point of Pascal's wager, namely that the reward for believing is infinitely great in value).

    Franklin rightly conceded the inadequacy of Pascal's binary choice. Clearly the answer would be infinitely more complicated by the existence of other claims competing with the Catholic to offer a reward of infinite value for getting it right. (Robert Parker has made this point succinctly). So why not give the Scientologists equal time on the same argument and, apart from all other claimants you know about who are in the business of selling infinite reward you might reasonably assume that the market will attract a very large number of contestants that you haven't yet heard about. That is an empirical matter on which Pascal's logic chopping can't help. Accordingly I applaud James Franklin's recognition that the best he can do with Pascal's wager is to modernise it so that people accept something like it as reason to examine the claims of religions. Nonetheless..... [cont.]

      • Joana Stella Kompa :

        13 Nov 2011 5:06:04pm

        @ Philo: There are other interesting assumptions in the wager that cannot be proven, mainly that a.) an infinite reward is actually possible and b.) that an infinite reward is better or superior to a finite one. Infinity is a good strategy to make everybody else shut up, but we are human after all and we experience ourselves as finite beings within an infinite process. Reward is a finite category: like giving a child an ice-cream. The non-granting of rewards is equally a human and finite trait. The in-humanness of infinity, the raising of demands beyond human and reasonable scale would be a great philosophical topic to elaborate on.

  • Philo :

    13 Nov 2011 9:47:43am


    You shouldn't have let him get away with it. Pascal's wager only works for an offer of infinite or virtually infinitely valuable reward. And one that doesn't depend on one's being an unusually altruistic person. Clearly infinitely valuable rewards require an afterlife and here we run into the absurdity of believing (a) that any sort of afterlife is likely to be rewarding (b) any sort of afterlife is going to be an afterlife of anything which is recognisably me (to me) after the brain has ceased to be a brain.

    Mind you the theist has problems asserting the existence of a Creator who is Omniscient, Omnipotent, Eternal, Rational and also communicates with mankind and cares about it and what it does. What does James Franklin say to the possible existence of such a One who told the Hebrews a lot of unsavoury stuff along with the acceptable 10 Commandments then let Jesus and Mahomet give different versions, didn't tell the Early Fathers or Thomas Aquinas about the facts of conception, didn't steer the Albigensians or Cathars away from slaughter for heresy and so on to sundry Protestants etc. Of course the only logical answer to these objections by those who insist on an Abrahamic God's existence is that God does have an eternal after life of perfect bliss to offer at the end of the Free Will Hurdle Race which overcomes the problem of Evil and gives human beings (sed quaere zygotes?) a chance to qualify. It would be insulting to set out the objections to this childish idea. But you should have called James Franklin on it.

      • Joana Stella Kompa :

        13 Nov 2011 6:29:57pm

        @Philo: I like your elaboration. A third argument came to mind too, let's call it c.) if the infinite reward is not bounded in the equation of lifelong learning then the infinite reward will overshadow all finite rewards along the way. Future rewards need to be rewarded less than current rewards to make learning in the present possible.This doesn't mean that we shall not plan for the future, in contrary (given that our life and our cultural life, including the lives of future generations, is part of the learning environment), but infinity is inherently incalculable and therefore not subject to actual practical application. However, putting a boundary condition to infinities brings us back down to Earth :)

  • Tim.Nash :

    13 Nov 2011 2:57:36pm

    I never thought about Pascals wager in so many different ways, thankyou philosopher zone.
    After pondering it, this angle caught my attention.
    Consider a Christian and who conceded that his god had made it increasingly difficult for him to believe or have faith in him and there must be some divine purpose for that.
    After contemplation of Pascals wager he decides that the best approach is to become an atheist.
    For gods will would rather him ‘living the life of an atheist’ than a devout believer.
    Is this a loophole?
    The believer hedges a good life in atheism and receives or believes he may receive the same reward either way!!!

  • Robert Penny :

    13 Nov 2011 6:46:45pm

    Before you rush out and buy a heap of books to check other’s opinion’s on whether there’s a God or not, let alone an intellectually honest/credible version of God, I suggest that you do a few Douglas Harding experiments, and test out whether the 3,000 year old Perennial Philosophy is correct or not, in its wild rumour that: ‘Who we really are is not a product of the world, it’s the origin of the world’. Harding found that, as a human, he belonged to all levels of the universe, namely: animal-human, cells, molecules, atoms, sub-atomic particles, …the parts of which he is the whole; and Humanity, Life, Planet, Solar System, Galaxy, ...the wholes of which he was a part. To complete his hierarchy series, he added two more units, the Centre and the Whole, or in religious language, God as the Ultimate Unity, Nothing and Everything; the Self-originating Aware Nothing and Everything. Far from being able to live the ‘good life’ without this Self-realization of the Ultimate Unity of our Inmost Essence and Outmost Sum (the One, that Hinduism takes about), Harding and other great sages, such as Ramana Maharshi of the modern era, suggested that to be truly whole (which is to consciously be the Whole), and truly happy (which is to take what-ever happens to us with heartfelt equanimity), it’s necessary to first and foremost realize our True Nature, now, this side of the death of our fleshy bodies; and that to die now (die to who we thought we were) is to die never (by way of identification, now, with our True (and eternal) Nature). This needs to be tested out, and if it’s found to be true, to be lived, in order to be understood. Harding’s experiments are an easy, quick, up-to-date and demythologized way to test this out. None of this is for believing at face value. Douglas Harding developed his ‘Science of the 1st Person’ (SFP) by testing and for testing. I put this to you to test, if you have any Self-interest. One of the principles of Harding’s SFP is that only you are in a position to say what it’s like being you; everybody else is too far away to say! To get do Harding’s experiments, go to the world-wide web-site, and go the Experiments section. In addition to this, each of the following four philosophical books of Douglas Harding have numerous experiments contained there-in, and, together with these experiments, Harding’s pictures and diagrams, his quotes from tradition, and his reasoned case that rests in the science. Harding’s 4-pillared toolkit of Experiments, Drawings, Tradition, and Reason/Logic, which he systematically applies in his essays and books, is proving revolutionary. Here are those four book titles: ‘The Little Book of Life and Death’, ‘Head of Stress’, ‘Look for Yourself: The Science and Art of Self-realization’, and ‘To Be and Not To Be: That is the Answer.’ Best Wishes, Robert.

      • Joana Stella Kompa :

        13 Nov 2011 8:30:18pm

        As much as I sympathize with Harding's aim of putting an equal weight on religious and scientific concepts, it seems to me that most metaphysical approaches try to put some artificial glue (the whole, the sum) over the openness of our existence. Many thinkers seek certainty or a model that comforts some sort of 'wholesome explaining' when in fact there is none. This is a non-comforting stand. Because the process form of the universe is inherently open (besides being infinite), morphology is actually possible. Therefore a priori assumptions about it cannot be facilitated. I agree on the point that human life needs to be lived to be understood, this is what we are doing. But how would you relate your position back to Pascal's wager? We may also consider that, although we do physically belong to different levels, most levels are irrelevant for our actual life. E.g., strawberries and friendship do not exist on quantum level. This goes down to phenomenology and also emergentism... topics I'd put on the wishlist for the philosopher's zone :) Best Regards!

  • Robert Penny :

    14 Nov 2011 1:56:57am

    Thanks for your comments and question Joanna. You ask: “how would you relate your position back to Pascal's wager?” I don’t. I’m impressed by Harding’s approach: he was surprised that, against all the odds, he found that he had happened! He was grateful for having occurred! Logically, he thought, there should be nothing, no awareness, a blank. Harding took the time to be surprised at his existence! At existence full stop. Harding was curious about what exists; about “what’s sitting here in my pants”, as he put it. He had a good go at inquiring into the questions: What am I? and What do I amount to in the universe? Answered these questions as best he could, forgetting the ready-made answers, and in so doing, he found God. His resulting book, ‘The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth; A New Diagram of Man in the Universe’, completed in 1950, C.S.Lewis called a ‘work of the highest genius’. Took Harding 8 years to write, working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, no holidays, after his 10 year search. Harding’s full manuscript of his Hierarchy book has 650 huge pages. First published in 1998 in limited edition of 300 copies, from July 2011 has been available to download as digital copy, for 20 pounds (English currency), from:
    On your point: “We may also consider that, although we do physically belong to different levels, most levels are irrelevant for our actual life”, I disagree! I need all those levels to be human! I need my Sun more than my arms and legs! What I perceive is sensed by my cells! My chemistry (molecular level) greatly effects my moods! My psycho-physical growth occurs within my greater body-mind, Humanity! Humanity needs the other Species! Life (the biosphere) is dependent on the air soil and water, on all the other spheres of Earth! Etc. I agree with you about the “the openness of our existence”, but I cannot see why this precludes the positing of an ultimate unit which may be called the Whole, which is the universe as a strictly indivisible system, as Science points to the inhabitants of the universe being closely knit; each unit makes a living by bringing in the other’s washing. From sub-atomic particles upwards, units of ever-increasing size and value have evolved, by way of socialization, by the absorption of equals: an atom is a society of electrons and other sub-atomic particles; a molecule is a society of atoms; a cell is a society of molecules; an organism is a society of cells; a Species is a society of organisms; Earth is a society of spheres including the biosphere; the Solar System is a society comprising the Sun and its encircling Planets; the Galaxy is a society of Stars/Suns. Is it illogical to posit the Whole as a continuation of that amazing curve? Thanks, Robert.

      • Joana Stella Kompa :

        15 Nov 2011 12:00:31am

        @ Robert: In his lovely script "What is Life?" (1944) Erwin Schroedinger points out that on the scale of molecules (or atoms) our brain (and subsequently our mind)would not be able to function as its statistical laws are simply too random. Our mind and brain only works on the specific scale that it does exists and we extrapolate micro and macro-cosmos from our human scale. Most of the universe is beyond practical imagination and renders only a partially observable environment for us. Semantics evolve by speakers and the interpretations about the universe are assigned by us a posteriori. We can imagine a universe without speakers, but we can't have one. I don't deny the significance of the universe as a creative information-processing superstructure and us as children of it all. I agree with Harding that we are lucky to have occurred. But this realization requires awareness about one's existence. And from awareness comes understanding. Kind Regards!

  • anon :

    14 Nov 2011 11:02:50am

    Hi Philosopher's Zone,
    It's pretty difficult to discuss these sort of things without the ability to use symbols not on the qwerty keyboard.
    I await the transcript with interest as it seemed to me that there was a basic maths problem, in that Pascal's idea seemed to be based on a mathematical convenience used as a tool for working rather than a truth, ie he deems "zero" equal to "pretty much zero". While this can be useful where the difference might be practically seemingly irrelevant, it's not actually true. The infinite set of numbers (values?) approaching zero is not equal to zero, so I don't follow the idea.
    Perhaps a reread is needed.
    Or perhaps he invented some intricacy of probability theory that I haven't looked into that explains how the difference can be brought to equivalence truthfully rather than as a convenience.

  • Ben X :

    14 Nov 2011 2:10:17pm




  • JamesFranklin :

    14 Nov 2011 3:29:34pm

    The spaghetti monster, Scientology and atheism (with initial probabilities respectively zero, zero and substantial) don't promise you any positive expected payoff. Christianity and Islam (with probabilities non-zero, though hard to evaluate exactly) do promise a large payoff. It's irrational to write them off without some effort to genuinely understand them.

      • James Thomas :

        14 Nov 2011 4:59:43pm



          • M. Clark :

            16 Nov 2011 4:39:55am

            In fact, the Flying Spaghetti Monster does offer rewards. According to the Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, if you adhere to the "Eight I'd Really Rather You Didn'ts", you will be rewarded with entrance to FSM Heaven, which includes an infinite beer volcano.

            This is all really a part of the FSM doctrine (you can look it up.) And I agree, it's all _extremely_ silly. But then that's the point, isn't it?

      • Zinzan :

        04 May 2012 11:09:16am

        Hi JF,

        I'm not sure that the FSM and scientology have 'no' prior probability. As I suggested in a different post there is no reason for us to expect that the religions with which we are familiar are the only ones which could be true

        While the FSM has been created as a source of humour amongst atheists that is no reason to dismiss it as being potentially true...

        They may have zero probability w.r.t you but that does not make the probability objectively zero

        *For me* Christianity (Catholicism, Gnosticism and others variants), Islam (Sunni and Shia), Buddhism (Zen or otherwise), Hinduism, Daoism, Confucianism, Bahai, Sikhism, Judaism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, FSM, Scientology, Mormonism, Wicca, Rastafarianism, Bacchic mystery cults, or any other new or old religion that seeks to explain our existence in supernatural terms all have the same prior probabilty i.e. infinitesimal

        It's only rational to investigate them if they have a finite probability (not non-zero, as you say, infinitesimal being non-zero [or calculus wouldn't work])

  • Jerry :

    14 Nov 2011 4:13:22pm

    How can you possibly aproach such subject without including Budhhist consmology, ontology and soteriology. It's so far away from false assumptions that there is a God or eternal being making it all happen.

    I read the book, "The Buddha's Explanation of The Universe" recently. Wow, it gives a whole different understanding to the existence thing and does so without the inclusion of a God. So interesting and closer to the truth of what is actually going on I think.

  • Robert Penny :

    14 Nov 2011 5:18:46pm

    To James Franklin, re your, “Christianity and Islam (with probabilities non-zero, though hard to evaluate exactly) do promise a large payoff. It's irrational to write them off without some effort to genuinely understand them.”
    1. What is your own personal religious position? I ask this because bias inevitably kicks into what we say, and therefore, in the type of discussion we are having, I think it’s always best to be upfront about this.
    2. I’m for the approach of Englishman, Douglas Harding (1909-2006), psycho-physical-scientist/philosopher/mystic-Seer/artist/writer (12 philosophical books in 8 languages)/teacher of comparative religion & philosophy/founder of the Headless Way, a sense and science based approach to philosophy & spirituality/spiritual teacher/army major/architect (Not a blinkered specialist). Harding is for the mystical heart of all the great religions, taken together in the 3,000 year old Perennial Philosophy, which Harding has up-dated, demythologised, and made highly accessible. Aldous Huxley wrote a very good anthology on the PP.
    3. After 17 years of Catholicism (my conclusion: it was all moonshine and humbug), followed by 25 years as a non-card-carrying atheist, for the last 20 years Harding’s been a one-stop-shop for me.
    4. Here’s a Harding quote that I think is relevant to the present discussion: “Science is the great exorcist and debunker of such entities as Star-moving gods and Nature-supervising angels, a Cosmocrat and his Laws of Nature, Gravity and Levity, Phlogiston, Animal Spirits, the Life Force, etc, with the result that the universe of science is now relatively unhaunted”.
    5. Popular Christianity and Islam is seriously challenged by science’s demolition and rubbish removal work.
    7. You do not suggest that people also check out Buddhism, Zen, or Hinduism. Why not?
    8. Because Religion/Spirituality is such a minefield, and because it often takes many years to get to the essence of any one approach, what books or other means of investigation do you recommend to would-be seekers?

  • Anne Maree :

    14 Nov 2011 5:19:06pm


  • Derek B :

    14 Nov 2011 5:20:18pm

    I agree that the key objection is that there are more than two possibilities, but it's not just the existing set of world religions either.

    I now announce a new religion. In mine, there is no god, but there is eternal life. Anyone who prays to or believes in a god will suffer eternal agony, while everyone else will have a most enjoyable everafter. This immediately neutralises the wager.

    Of course, you may ascribe my religion as having zero probability, but it's only one of an infinite number of variations. And zero times infinity is indeterminate.

      • Joana Stella Kompa :

        15 Nov 2011 12:01:59am

        @Derek: Had to smile - like your argument!

      • B. Scott :

        18 Nov 2011 10:09:43am

        "I now announce a new religion. In mine, there is no god..."

        Yes there is. It's what you refer to as I.

  • Robert Penny :

    15 Nov 2011 7:55:57am

    @ Joana: Schrodinger said another great thing: "Conscious is a singular of which the plural is unknown". Harding went further: “Let’s take those tricky terms Self, Buddha Nature, Consciousness and God to mean the One that perceives Itself to be the individuality-transcending, changeless, ageless, boundless and motionless Nothing that is the seer and mover and container of all the things on show; the Reliable One, the Entirely Predictable”. Which means that you, who-ever you are, are, as Subject/1st Person (in contrast to your 2nd/3rd person regional appearances, you (as 1st Person) “are none other than the August One, call It or Him or Her by whatever name you fancy”. Harding is in line with Schrodinger, and other wise-ones down the ages; but Harding developed a new ‘Science of the 1st Person’ which enables ordinary man and women, of any religious persuasion or none, to arrive at this most fundamental wisdom of our Species. Consciousness/Awareness, and not the human, is central to our lives. To realize this is the ‘centre shift’ that humans desperately need in order to live truly sane and happy lives, where separation, confrontation, fear of death, drivenness/restlessness, and feeling small and lost in the universe, are experiences of the past; and where love at last has a chance, not because one is a good person, but because one simply notices that, in the act of perception, the observer disappears in favour of the perceptee! The act of seeing my hand involves light waves travelling from the Sun, being digested by earth’s atmosphere, travelling to my hand, where part is absorbed by my hand, the rest is reflected off, some of which enters my eye, upsidedown right-side-left images are formed on my retina, a chemical is given off, optical nerves are effected, incoming traffic travels along optic-nerve-cells to the visual-cortex region of my brain, where, if the full story is told, cells, molecules, atoms and particles are effected, and only when the Terminus is reached does the creation of my hand happen, not in my head/brain/brain-cells (these are all regional manifestations for my observer to appropriate), but at and in the Centre or Terminus, which is thing-free Awareness. It is in Awareness that my hand and the rest of my world is created and projected; each object being projected to its proper region in ‘outer space’. There is no object that is not an object of/in Awareness; no object that is not an observed object. There is one world, not two worlds. This one world is the observed world, observed sensorially or in imagination, it does not matter; the same principle based on the facts applies. Joana, you raised other important issues, but I chose to pick up on and run with the all-important and misunderstood issues of Awareness, God, sense-perception, and the two-worlds myth (one supposedly inside and the other outside my head). Thanks.

      • 68592 :

        23 Nov 2012 8:34:56am

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  • M. Clark :

    16 Nov 2011 4:26:44am








      • Brendan :

        17 Nov 2011 1:03:36pm

        M. Clark - 16 Nov 2011 4:26:44am

        Well said!

        Hopefully James Franklin is still reading this thread. I would really like to read his reply to M.Clark's argument. As far as I can see it refutes Mr Franklin's assertion that Pascal's wager is worthy of serious consideration.

      • Ben X :

        22 Nov 2011 6:18:01pm

        Spot on. Similar to what I was saying earlier, except without the spelling mistakes :-)

  • Stephen Coates :

    16 Nov 2011 11:09:42am




      • Joana Stella Kompa :

        16 Nov 2011 2:04:00pm

        To me Pascal's wager exposes the weakness of how people construct the concept of a God in the first place and I agree with your comment. God has been modeled according to human properties, sometimes vengeful, rewarding, punishing and then loving which, taken all properties in corporae,makes pretty much for a sociopath God-personality. Abstract notions of God run into similar explanatory weaknesses: if a God cannot be observed, doesn't intervene in human affairs and all a God takes credit for would be the creation of the universe, then this renders God de facto epiphenomenal. Since concepts about the creation of the universe falls into the more capable hands of science there is nothing really left: the concept of a God is disposable on all accounts. The only rational social function for religion I could think of is that people ritually (by payers and meditations) reflect upon their lives and that this may increase the probability that their actions are more considerate towards others. Religious fundamentalism around the world has even diminished this slim rational chance.On the upside: to live free from religious superstition and to find liberated and responsible ways of life is a great joy.

      • Daryl Sturgess :

        29 Nov 2011 12:27:23pm

        Stephen, I like your point about other options present in Pascal's time.

        This illustrates that, in spite of his brilliance, Pascal was guilty of that fundamental religious thinking error; that of deliberate, wilful oversimplification of the argument, and rejection of factors that would render his line of reasoning transparently flawed.

  • JamesFranklin :

    16 Nov 2011 2:30:56pm

    I do approve of including Buddhism as one of the non-zero-probability options (though in my view it's too serious about its desire for nothingness, not positive enough about being). Also the Perennial Philosophy/common-denominator-of-religions idea; well worth a look. Someone asked what was my own religious view - my biography is not relevant to the discussion, but if you like you can work it out from my website ( "Science as exorcist" is an interesting idea, but, the more we get how science has exorcised vital spirits, the Corn God etc, the more we see that it's getting nowhere exorcising consciousness and objective ethics (more on that in the last chapter of my book, What Science Knows).

      • Alistair :

        16 Nov 2011 11:00:20pm

        "the more we see that it's getting nowhere exorcising consciousness and objective ethics"

        Not quite. Unless you're just talking about *human* ethics. But then it's not really objective, is it?

        Assuming every "sane" human agrees that killing for pleasure is inherently wrong, doesn't make it an objective ethical truth. There are many millions of species out there, many of which behave without any thought to "am I doing the right thing"?

        Ethics is a purely human consideration. I'm sure science will get its head around it one day. It's always most difficult to observe something "from the inside". I've always thought if aliens came to Earth, we'd learn far more about ourselves than we have in the past 1000 years, merely because of the value of outside observation. :)

  • Ken :

    17 Nov 2011 5:09:46pm

    How is the discussion changed if we assume that there is only one 'God' and that the different religions and belief systems are merely different ways of understanding? What if the rewards of belief are to be found in this world through finding a greater inner peace for the individual and social harmony among people? The alternatives are now not so great and Pascal's wager may not be as ridiculous as argued by some.

      • Peter :

        17 Nov 2011 5:57:01pm

        Given the number of people killed in the name of one god or another, if it were the same Being, it would be a rather sick Being to continue the multiple manifestations in the face of this.

          • A Monotheist :

            18 Nov 2011 12:42:03pm

            Hi Peter:

            Thanks God, you haven't been selected for the judiciary panel. Otherwise, you would convict an inneccent one for a crime, committed by a criminal, using the name of the inneccent one!!!!!!

      • Joana Stella Kompa :

        18 Nov 2011 1:27:05am

        The issue are the initial assumptions for which there is no proof. For the variables of eternal life and God we have 4 possible initial probability sets:
        a.) there is a God and there is eternal life
        b.) There is no God and no eternal life
        c.) There is a God but no eternal life
        d.) There is no God but eternal life

        Option c.) would be an utter disappointment for ll believers and option d.)could just mean that our universe inherently creates life. Given how much suffering religion has created (and still creates) I agree with Peter's comment. Buddhism seem to be the only spiritual non-religious way of life that has not created violence and puts the avoidance of suffering and the other's happiness in its center. Living in a Buddhist country myself this is perhaps a realistic alternative to the dominance of monotheist belief-systems. Why do we need a God? Why would we need a wager in the first place? Best Regards!

          • B. Scott :

            18 Nov 2011 10:32:35am


            Sounds like hedonism.

              • Joana Stella Kompa :

                18 Nov 2011 11:51:02am

                To look out for the happiness of others is not hedonism, which is selfish... pretty much the opposite of Buddhism. Buddhism reminds me a little on the talk on Martin Buber the week before: where does the "I" end and where does the "you" start? It is a more social concept of human interaction than the Christian centering of love, individual sacrifice and suffering (Jesus as the central figure). What is the point of loving when it doesn't bring fulfillment and inner happiness? The historical track record of religions is a truthful representation of the consequences of their implementation.

              • B. Scott :

                20 Nov 2011 4:59:50am

                An example of hedonism understood as selfishness: "What is the point of loving when it doesn't bring fulfillment and inner happiness?"

                "It is a more social concept of human interaction than the Christian centering of love, individual sacrifice and suffering (Jesus as the central figure)." That makes society God, and that's the creed of social democracy (i.e. societal people rule). As history shows, individuals suffer under that conform or die creed regardless of where it exists.

      • Ben X :

        22 Nov 2011 6:09:02pm

        *Perhaps*, yes. But this (what you assume) is simply one of an *infinite* number of possibilities. Hence the whole 'wager' is still absurd.

      • Daryl Sturgess :

        29 Nov 2011 12:31:40pm

        So Ken, you're running with the MPD version of God, are you?

        Or is it only followers that contaminate and misinterpret this 'one true God'?

        Your apparently elegantly simple solution to the wager odds, creates as many problems as it attempts to solve.

  • B. Scott :

    18 Nov 2011 10:49:25am


    In other words, it is an argument in favour of humility, not I...I...I...I...I...I...

      • Chris W :

        19 Nov 2011 10:25:47am

        I see your point - "If you're there, Creator of the Universe, I bow to you in salute of your handiwork (though what's with all the nasty parasites?) and with gratitude for being alive .." - though that seems ironic given the argument is based on self-interest - ".. and if there's an after-life to enjoy beyond this, please count me in and help me as a believer in what seems like a troubling though half-decent narrative/Matrix/promissary delusion to use fear, love & hope so people can tolerate and act in the interests of their lords & priests".
        If only believers retained humility instead of proclaiming they have all the answers and even warping science to suit dogmas.
        But that might be inevitable, as psychology suggests actions based on a delusion - like worship on account of Pascal's wager - will reinforce that delusion in our world-'Matrix' (as one can recognize in the churches' edicts against bowing to anything but the divine).

  • Gezza :

    18 Nov 2011 11:58:38am

    Could you look at the odds differently? There have been thousands upon thousands of gods proposed over the centuries. Aren't the odds 1 over that number?Almost every believer would contend that all or almost all of the others do not exist.

  • Gezza :

    18 Nov 2011 12:03:39pm

    When almost everyone agrees that more than 99% of all proposed gods don't exist, why should the odds be 50/50 for any one of them?

  • Robert Penny :

    18 Nov 2011 4:33:48pm

    1.Belatedly, I make clear my position on Pascal’s Wager. I join with Douglas Harding and other wise teachers down the ages in saying that the answer to your problem is to see who has the problem. Before I consider Pascal’s Choice, let alone survey the religions, the odds will be in my favour if I firstly see who’s doing all this. If I’m wrong about my identity, I’m likely to be wrong about all else. If I don’t have true self-knowledge as a gauge, I’m flying blind and likely to be taken for a ride.
    2. Harding and other wise ones down the ages, who have pursued and succeeded at self-inquiry, consistently report, each in their own vernacular, that we are mistaken about our true identity.
    3. Harding suggests that our mistaken identity is the root cause of our five basic human problems (and many secondary ones), namely, being separate and lonely, confronting, afraid of death, restless/driven, and lost in the universe; that we usually repress these problems; that those who are prepared to admit to these problems generally say that others, and not themselves, have them; that we have our cupboards well-stocked with the following opiates and anesthetics, which we regularly take in order to repress these problems: shopping every day, telesoap every night, a 500 page fictional book a week (real life is too difficult), mind-narrowing holidays, some forms of religion, alcohol…...But to suppress is to exacerbate! Resulting, sooner or later, in a nightmare….Dear reader, I do not suggest that any of this applies to you!
    3. In line with the Perennial Philosophy, the solution that Harding proposes is to turn up the candlepower of our awareness, and see what/who we really are. Contrary to some, Harding found that seeing who we really are is the easiest thing in the world to do. The Perennial Philosophy tells us precisely where to look, when to look, how to look, and what to look for, namely: look here; look now; look with childlike naivety; and look for what, Harding describes, has no form, features, colours or limits, but is like light or air or clear water or space, Great Space, filled to capacity with what’s on show. Great Space, aware of itself as thus empty and thus full. Those who, helped by Harding’s experiments, have done this, for instance by simply pointing to their face and noticing what they are pointing at, have noticed that what they are pointing at, in Harding’s terms, is space-like, is non-human, is no-thing, is boundless and limitless, and is alive to itself as such; alive to Itself, in all Its blazing obviousness and uniqueness and, yes! power.
    5. None of this is for taking at face value. You are the sole and final authority on what it’s like being you, because everyone else is literally to far away to know! Harding made his discoveries by testing, and presents them for testing.
    6. If you do test this out by doing Harding experiments, found on the website and in his books, I suggest you will then be well

  • Robert Penny :

    18 Nov 2011 4:58:57pm

    A CONTINUATION OF MY PREVIOUS ENTRY .....well equipped to consider Pascal’s Wager. Armed with true self-knowledge, you will also be well equipped to safely survey the religions. In relation to such a survey, Harding suggests that we do a lot of diverse reading before we make up our minds.

  • JF :

    18 Nov 2011 9:46:34pm

    If Bertrand Russell was not able to see enough evidence for God's Existence, that was (clearly!) Bertrand Russell's misfortune.


    Luke 6:39

      • Chris W :

        19 Nov 2011 11:11:34am

        That's an ironically good question, given Russell revealed new horizons of thought, while religionists are stuck with the same ol', same ol' view - or digging themselves deeper and deeper (and returning us to hell on Earth even faster than, though helped by, the love of money).

          • JF :

            20 Nov 2011 9:43:32pm

            The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

            Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, Scene iii.

            Did Bertrand Russell's new horizons of thought enable him to confer on himself and anybody else the property of everlasting Life?


            Matthew 6:27 (King James Version)

            Ronald Knox, in his translation of the New Testament, observes in a footnote to the above verse, in which he has rendered 'stature' as 'height',

            'Height'; The Greek word here used can also mean 'length of life'; and some have thought that 'cubit' is used, by a metaphor, for a short space of time.

  • John :

    19 Nov 2011 9:41:22am

    Please find a completely different Understanding of God, or more correctly Reality and Truth, and religion too via these two references

  • John :

    19 Nov 2011 9:50:42am



    I wonder if Jesus ever practiced bodily mortification?

  • JamesFranklin :

    19 Nov 2011 9:53:15am

    I've been wondering about the question someone asked - if you decide to investigate religions, what is there to read? Good question. Books on "world religions" tend to emphasise the colourful differences, but that's not what we want. 'God, Actually' by the Sydney lawyer Roy Williams is not bad on the Christian option in general (in a forensic rather than inspirational style). I don't know what to recommend on Islam, Buddhism, pantheism, Platonism ... Suggestions welcome. It's worth reading something on the atheist option, which is the default and can look good until you examine it more closely. Dawkins has done a service to religion by showing how bad atheism can be, but even the more intelligent atheist writers are hard put to make atheism more plausible at the end of the book than at the beginning.

    Some contributors are still trying to draw parallels between serious religions and merely possible religions or "the thousands of gods that have been thought of". That misses the point of the non-zero probabilities needed in Pascal's Wager. The Wager only applies to something that's a live option for you - meaning something that has non-zero probability, on the evidence you have (you being a rational person who, like a juror in a criminal case, doesn't entertain merely fanciful possibilities).

      • Brendan :

        24 Nov 2011 3:42:07pm

        JamesFranklin 19 Nov 2011 9:53:15am

        Dear James,

        Re your second paragraph re "serious" religions.

        You claim that those making the argument about "the thousands of gods that have been thought of" miss the point of the non-zero probabilities needed in Pascal's wager but that is precisely the point of the argument. The point being that there is no evidence to suggest one religion (serious or otherwise) is more probable than any other.

        You are not using the words "rational" and "evidence" properly.

        How does one rationally ascertain that something is a "live option/non-zero probability" when there is no evidence as to the existence of any particular god or the nature of that god's wishes as to how one should behave?

      • James Thomas :

        20 Dec 2012 4:39:44pm

        It is a sign of a feeble argument to resort to trashing one's opponents (Implying Dawkins is less intelligent than might be expected) especially when they're not even in involved in the given conversation.

  • Robert Penny :

    19 Nov 2011 4:43:32pm

    1. If I had one book to take to a dessert island, that clarifies what religion is and is not, and that gives an accurate introduction to the religions, it would be D.E.Hardings inspiring 110 page book RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD, published by The Shollond Trust, England. Its back cover states: In this short book, Douglas Harding guides us to the heart of the world’s chief religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Zen, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This journey, at the same as being an adventure into other cultures and world-views, is also an opportunity to look within ourselves. In the final two chapters, Harding discusses ‘Religion and Science’, and his own religious position.
    2. In RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD, Harding gives an elegant diagram of his, which clearly shows historical roots and linkages between the following fourteen religions, beginning 2000 BC and ending 2000 AD: Confucianism, Taoism, Zen Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhism, Theravada Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism; and Western religions: Orthodox Christianity, Roman Catholic Christianity, Protestant Christianity, Judaism, Sunnite Islam, Shite Islam, and Sikkism.
    3. Refreshingly, Harding acknowledges the following: In his words: An explorer from outer space might well conclude that we suffer from a foul and exceedingly mysterious disease, with an astonishing range of symptoms. It causes some of us to burn or butcher or bomb our fellows in great numbers, for no obvious reason. It causes others of us to torture and mutilate our own bodies, to hold up an arm til it withers and is useless, to starve ourselves almost to death, to perch on top of the highest column we can find. And so on. There’s no sign of remission or cure as time goes on. Rather the reverse.
    4. Harding sees three alternatives to this disease called religion. 1. Atheistical scepticism: This aims to root out the bug in all its forms with the scalpel of reason. 2. Conversion: The forlorn hope that one form of the bug – ones own religion of course – will, by persuasion or force or some combination of the two, triumph over the rest; and 3. Integration: Harding’s idea is that we can turn this pathological condition into a wonderfully healthy condition, so that warring forms of the bug declare a peace to which each contributes its special gifts, and what was the curse of mankind becomes its blessing. THERES MORE, BUT ROBERT IS NEARLY OUT OF SPACE!

  • Joana Stella Kompa :

    20 Nov 2011 5:55:37pm

    Pascal’s wager necessarily provokes the old positions of atheist versus theist convictions which make of for the great majorities of comments.
    I wonder if there is a second alternative of thinking more profoundly about the topic.

    All belief states have both strengths and weaknesses: without belief there is no projection of Self, culture and society. Even Ernst Bloch from the Frankfurt School once wrote: ‘The one who hopes is ahead of the facts’ (which was in indirect reference to Marxist utopian ideas to create paradise in the here and now).
    A non-belief state has not the property of transformative power.
    At the same time belief-states diminish via observation. We can believe for all we want, at the end, what counts, are the practical outcomes of these belief-states., both on individual, societal and historical level. The historical dimension of actual outcomes forces us to critique on our belief-states.

    Lastly, belief states have the power to be self-fulfilling prophecies. ‘The religion’ never existed. If we have a look on the variety of Christian or Muslim’ flavors’ of the ‘same’ religion the argument becomes clearer. E.g., the discrimination of women is apparent in the Middle East whereby my younger Muslim friends in Singapore and Malaysia live fairly balanced lives with women even taking the lead in education and business – Just as an example that ‘the belief’ (in a Kantian ‘as such’ understanding) does not exist per se.
    Belief systems create a multitude of realities.

    I live in Asia where people mix their own ‘cocktails’ of belief systems: there is no contradiction to be e.g., a Buddhist, A Christian and a Taoist at the same time. What counts is the resulting experience of belief-states and the subsequent attitude and behavior towards the other.

  • Robert Penny :

    20 Nov 2011 10:33:59pm


  • Zinzan :

    22 Nov 2011 1:46:26pm

    So there's nothing to lose by wagering on God? What if the God you wager on is a jealous monotheistic God and so are all the false gods...
    i.e. if you show belief in a non-existant god you will be punished by God (by being thrown in a lake of fire for example)

    Then Pascal's wager becomes...
    E(b) = inf1 - inf2 -inf3 -inf4 -inf5 - inf6 - ... -inf100 - b
    where b is the cost of attending church, wearing hairshirts, fasting, etc.

    Because the payoffs and punishments are infinite, we do not need to worry about the relative probability of each religion being true... Sounds weird, huh?

    But why should we limit ourselves to the probable religions (oxymoronic perhaps, but I mean the ones we know of,m or which have been accepted by some proportion of humanity)?

    There is no reason a priori to assume that any of the religions we know of are the true. Maybe the real God is out there watching and waiting for us to discover her Truth and punishing everybody... The number of possible gods is infinite (think about it ... a God like the monotheistic christian one, omniscient, omnipootent, etc, but his name is Kevin)

    This means that the wager becomes ;
    E(b) = inf 1 - inf 2 - inf 3 - inf 4 - inf 5 - ... - inf (inf) -b
    which means that the expected dowsnide of belief is uncountably infinite and negative

    So lets examine two cases:
    1. God exists and you believe ... expected payoff = -inf
    God exists and you don't belive ... expected payoff = -inf
    2. God doesn't exist and you belive ... expected payoff =-b
    God doesn't exist and you do believe ... expected payoff =b

    So the only rational belief is non-belief

      • M. Clark :

        23 Nov 2011 3:21:24am


        Thanks for this. This is a mathematical treatment of the probable cost and benefit of wagering in the "infinite gods" scenario. I posted about this scenario a few days ago, but did not get into the probability math. You did so, and very clearly too.

        I should note that your claim that "the only rational belief is non-belief" is only true if you think belief ('b') is costly. I think there probably exists a not-insignificant number of people who intellectually ('rationally') find no reason to believe in a particular conception of god ('any god'), yet they continue to find value and comfort in their lives through religious ceremony or through unexamined ('irrational') belief.

        Or to put it more succinctly:

        If you think that belief will cost you in this life, then the rational decision is disbelief. If you think belief will benefit you in this life, then the rational decision is belief.

          • csrster :

            07 Dec 2011 12:57:28am




          • Zinzan :

            04 May 2012 10:51:22am

            Hi M. Clark,

            Thanks :)

            You're right, non-belief is the rational choice if belief has a cost, if belief has benefit then belief is rational (even if the foundation of the belief is irrational). It would even be rational to irrationally defend the irrational belief !!

            Good summation I agree with your conclusion. (I guess I was modelling the costs for me not a general seeker)

  • JF :

    22 Nov 2011 7:26:10pm


    Psalm 14:1





    Psalm 2:1-4



    Revelation 19:6 and 16


    The Oxford Dictionary describes a 'heathen person' as 'unenlightened'.

    According to the Hendrickson Interlinear Bible (Hebrew, Greek and English), the Hebrew word translated into English as 'a vain thing' is 'emptiness'.

    The same word in rendered in the Latin Vulgate as 'inania'.

  • Robert Penny :

    23 Nov 2011 10:19:13pm

    Four hundred years ago Galileo Galilei, along with a handful of other European intellectuals, succumbed to an attack of childlikeness, of inspired idiocy. Taking leave of their wits, they came to their senses. To find out what was going on they dared to look instead of looking it up in the Bible or Aristotle or the Fathers of the Church, or thinking it up in their studies. Actually to look and see, for instance, whether heavy stones do fall faster than light ones. That word LOOK! was enough to trigger the scientific revolution that has transformed our lives beyond recognition – for better and for worse. And now, four centuries on, we desperately need to invoke that same magic word, to pronounce the same spell, but extending it to LOOK ROUND! The well-meaning but over-rated habit of scrutinizing what’s on show at the far end of our instrument, for every least hint about what might be here at the near end, is no substitute whatever for looking here, for the quite easy feat of looking round without turning round. The time has come for attending to what’s simultaneously on show at both ends of our tele-micro-scopes, for panoramic instead of tunnel vision. Thanks to Galileo and successors, superstition is on the run from the far end, but all the more dug in at the near end, which it blocks with a fictitious observing thing – as if a thing could observe anything, or take in and respond to any appearance without disappearing in its favour, or get the picture without being the screen.
    What an opportunity for science to give rein at last to its own splendidly uninhibited spirit, which is an even-handed and unbiased humility in the face of all the evidence, coming from what-ever direction, given at no distance from the observer! After all, it isn’t as of the promise of precision and predictability and practicality, plus the “wow!” of never-ending discovery, were to be found only at the far end of or instrument, in the object and never in the Subject. And the reason why we can confidently be objective about the Subject is that, at our deepest level, we find them merging in the First Person Singular ( in religious language, in God as the Self-aware, Self-originating Aware Nothing-Everything, whose Home is every Centre) who, Scientist par excellence, takes Himself to be His own most penetrable, revealing Specimen. D.E HARDING,Essay: The Near End.

    It may be questioned whether anything essential to the Christian faith would be lost in thinking God in Buddhist terms. The key requirement is that God be understood to be wholly, unqualifiedly empty. This would not be new in Christian theology, but its consistent working out would indeed be new. God must be conceived as wholly lacking substantiality. Re divine receptivity, it is precisely by being perfectly empty that God like a Buddha, is perfectly full. JOHN B.COBB, JR. Book: Beyond Dialogue: Towards a Mutual Transformation of Christianity and Buddhism.

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  • Laurie :

    25 Nov 2011 10:25:56pm

    The question and the probabilities of the outcomes being discussed are dependent on no change to the status quo if there is no god.

    If no child could be molested because there was no formal religion with an all powerful god then would your society gain an infinite benefit from there being no god?

  • Robert Penny :

    26 Nov 2011 11:04:14am

    Douglas Harding and others say: this is for settling now.





  • John Neilson :

    28 Nov 2011 7:20:08pm

    Alan Saunders states more than once that you cannot choose what you believe. This is nonsense. You CAN change your beliefs by conscious decision. And your values, which are collections of beliefs. What's more, beliefs are not absolute truths - they are things which the believer HOLDS to be true. Which is why people at opposite ends of an argument can be absolutely convinced of their respective positions.

      • Daryl Sturgess :

        29 Nov 2011 12:52:49pm

        John, I like this point.

        Belief seems a simple word, but it buckles under close scrutiny.

        As a child raised Mormon I struggled with people standing in Fast & Testimony meetings the first Sunday of every month claiming they 'knew with a certainty' certain things about their professed faith. This faith was well served by narrow reading and lack of serious research and study.

        Even as a child I could work out they believed because they wanted to believe, and leaders actively encouraged such self serving practice.

        It was not truth-seeking, but comfort-seeking.

        Of course research in various cultures has established that a high percentage of people function this way, apparently untroubled that people of other faith-traditions are as equally convinced on a similar rationale, of a completely different belief structure.

        Apparently a large percentage of human beings prefer comfort-seeking and fitting-in to truth-seeking.

  • Daryl Sturgess :

    29 Nov 2011 12:08:07pm

    Having struggled over many years to escape the indoctrination of a Mormon upbringing, I have found philosophy an oasis that I wish I discovered in my early twenties. It could have expedited my escape.

    I have a problem with the basic 1/2 equation that sits at the centre of Pascal's Wage. Pascal, in a typically own-culture-centric manner had a comfortably monolithic concept of God.

    However, step outside that narrow western European niche, and study more widely and "God' singular, blows out to a minimum of 2,600 Gods and many counts way higher. Many of those Gods were mutually exclusive, having no room for others.

    I'm no expert on probability and the relevant mathematics, but it seems that the 'safe bet' rationale of Pascal starts to look extremely shaky when the equation gets to 1/2,600 or 1/5,000. Further, obeying all those Gods to hedge your bets, lacks any viability at all.

    That concept can be widened (and complicated) further when one examines different concepts of God even within Christian sects.

    In so many cases, pulling back from any religion, its narrative and its claims, it looks more and more untenable with a broader reference set and more data.

  • Bazz :

    25 Dec 2011 4:25:04pm










    Another assumption and more black swans!


  • Sceptical Prophet :

    06 Nov 2012 8:36:12pm

    This is a pretty weak topic, I think. Pascal's Wager can be conclusively dismantled in many ways. Here's one: