Always Betting on God Pascal’s wager revisited around Easter
Forever interacting with a world where both he and the things around him are beyond his reach, man longs for infinity. Although his powers of action are limited by the constraints of time and space, man clings to his reason not only to order the reality of scarcity, but also to probe the mysteries of the beyond. He has only one life ahead to understand what awaits “beyond” and his only guilt is that of not being aware enough of the full importance of this “before”. We were endowed with reason from the very beginning and we use it to productively take part in the social metabolism, otherwise the animal instinct activated by implacable bio-physical-chemical laws would have sufficed. Reason is also the source for the understanding of the world as it is (to us) and of the world as it should be (to us). This assumption leads to the idea that reason is not only the best means to detect temptation but more often than not, the biggest temptation itself.
It is hard to tell whether arrogance or despair has triggered man’s search for evidence of the existence of Divinity. Unmediated or confessed revelation has undergone the test of reason, whether in an empirical experiential sense or in a deductive, a priori sense. If we were to import Blaise Pascal and his famous “wager” within the realm of economy, we might consider him “the ultimate investment guru”. A brief interlude: reason allows us to distinguish among certain economic laws and uncertain social tastes and to discard the fetish of perfect prediction - that state where abstract precepts would fuse with real perceptions in order to find “the perfect gain”. Coming back to our idea, it seems that “Pascal’s wager” not only aims at the perfect prediction but the investment is paramount: the relationship with the Almighty. It’s “only” infinitely efficient, although it has a rather steep initial cost for some: a life lived differently.
If you believe in God and God exists, you will be rewarded with eternal life in Heaven, so an infinite gain. 2. If you do not believe in God and God exists, you will be condemned to eternal damnation, so an infinite loss. 3. If you believe in God and God does not exist, you will not be rewarded hence a finite loss. 4. If you don’t believe in God and God does not exist, you will not be rewarded, but you have lived as you wished; thus, a finite loss. Briefly put, this is Pascal’s theory according to which, rationally speaking, choosing faith offers maximum gain, regardless of the uncertainty of this world’s design. The argument, ruminated by the minds of canonical theologians together with those of theorists of probabilities, games and decisions, has flaws that do not provide that implacability that the trained eye validates; the argument remains seductive in spirit if not in letter.
Around Easter celebrations, we witness, statistically speaking, an epidemic of such personal bets. People are trying to be better, more merciful, consume moderately and behave humbly. The church is rediscovered, prayers are made, sins are confessed, and purity is shared. Outer gestures draw closer to ritual rather than substance. Manifestations are ample, with one eye turned towards the sky, as if checking His vigilance, and with the other towards fellow-people, posing for them rather than inspiring them. Before “the ultimate investment”, that is living His teachings, He is valued through capitalization. The most ferocious are the professional sinners in the halls of earthly power: they burn through candles like cigars, “receive the light” from the headlights of expensive cars, quote from the Scriptures approximately, shed tears. Miming the sign of the Holy Cross, they calculate their forgiveness following the rule of three: the human being is subject to mistake and great people are subject to great mistakes. Amen.
