re: How did the Big Bang happen?

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Better hope you're right.
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Pascal's wager

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I’m glad someone finally mentioned this, and I see it referenced in a couple of other posts. The “hedging your bet” issue is something that always bothered me, going back to my youth, many years before I had ever heard of Pascal’s Wager or knew that the concept had a name. I’ll link the wiki on it in case folks want to read a bit more.

Pascal’s Wager

Quick summary:

—God either exists or He does not-there are only 2 options/choices

—you can’t reason your way into understanding one or the other—at some point, if we’re intellectually honest, you have to concede you don’t know

—You MUST choose one or the other—it’s a coin flip and you have to call it (As I type this I realize Chiguh’s scene with the gas station attendant in No County for Old Men is an obvious allusion/representation of the wager and I can’t believe I’m just now figuring it out. “What’s at stake?” “Everything.”)

—if you choose God exists (and have lived your life that way), and He does not exist, you have only lost a finite amount (whatever you sacrificed in living your life as if God exists)

—if you choose God exists and He does exist, you gained an infinite amount (eternal life, happiness, etc...)

—if you choose God does not exist (and live your life accordingly) and He does not exist, you have only gained a finite amount (however better you’d have perceived your life to have been had you lived it knowing there was no God)

—if you choose God does not exist and He does exist, you have lost an infinite amount (eternity of hell, torture, and misery without God)

—given that and what’s at stake, the only reasonable choice, is to choose that God exists (and live accordingly)


What always bothered me—and Pascal does address this—is that I don’t think “belief” is a choice. You either truly believe something or you don’t, you can’t choose to believe anything. This cup I am looking at is blue. I can’t choose to truly believe it’s red, try as I might. You can tell you’ll give me $10 billion to believe it’s red, but I won’t be able to make myself. There are no amount of stakes—finite or infinite—that can make me genuinely believe this cup is red. I can say I believe it’s red, but in my heart and head, I will still believe it’s blue. Why is that?

It’s because it goes against everything I understand. All of my reason and experience tells me it’s blue. And since all I am (relative to understanding) is a product of my inherited intellect (which is either simply genetic or God-given—either way, completely out of my control) and my experiences (where I was born, into what family, everything I’ve observed/learned or absorbed through reading, talking, listening, etc..) which, at some level, have been predetermined, how can I be held responsible and punished—by a loving God who created me, no less—for not being ale to convince myself to genuinely believe something that I genuinely do not believe—cannot believe?

That has always been my argument against hell. Not against the existence of God, but rather His decision to punish His creation for something that, ultimately, is not in my control. Like I can’t make myself genuinely believe my blue cup is red, others aren’t able to genuinely believe that God exists, or the literal resurrection and divinity of Christ, whatever. I can’t wrap my head around that God. It goes against my understanding of His nature defined by His given Grace (as I understand it, of course).

Jesus Christ (pun intended), I just realize how much I’ve rambled on. Forgive me.