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Game Theory: Which Faith Gives the Best Payout?
I'm sure that most of you are familiar with Pascal's wager. It proves that atheism is a gamble not worth taking. If the atheist is right, then when he dies he's just dead, and the Christian doesn't fare any worse for being wrong. If the atheist is wrong, however, then he will pay for it by burning in Hell for eternity while the Christian receives eternal bliss in Heaven.
The situation can be summed up by the following chart, showing the payoffs of the two beliefs compared to the truth or falsehood of those beliefs.
As you can see, the atheist gains nothing by being right, and the Christian loses nothing by being wrong. You would have to be really bad at math to think there is any benefit to atheism. :lol: Last Friday morning I was doing some street preaching in Raleigh just across Hillsborough Street from the NC State campus, and I brought up this topic. An atheist heckler in the crowd shouted at me, "What if the Muslims are right? Then you'll be in Hell with me!" I said in response, "You don't know what you're talking about, friend. According to Islam, Christians like me are considered 'people of the book', so in the off chance that Islam is true, I will also go to their Heaven. I would be a Dhimmi, or a second class citizen, but that's better than the Muslim Hell, which is where unbelievers like you would be." A tired objection that skeptics always raise to the Pascal's wager argument is that it only accounts for belief vs. unbelief, and is unhelpful in choosing among religions. So I expanded the payoff chart to account for Christianity, Atheism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Wicca. Before I compiled the chart, I knew how it was going to turn out. Christianity is the only religion where salvation is based solely on faith. All other religions are either partially or completely works-based. I counted any Heaven as infinite payout and any Hell as infinite punishment. I arbitrarily decided that Dhimmitude in the Muslim Heaven is half as good as being a first class citizen of Heaven, but any fraction of infinity could have been used without affecting the relative payout. I also arbitrarily chose +1/-1 as the values for being reincarnated into a better or worse life, respectively, but any positive/negative fininte numbers could have been used without affecting the relative payout.
You should already be able to see that if you are a Christian who does good works, then the worst case scenario is that the atheists are right and you're just dead -- but then so is everybody else! But let's go into the details anyway. Now we have an expanded version of Pascal's wager that will allow people to pick a belief based on the payout. If Atheism is true, it doesn't matter what you believe or how you lived, because everyone gets the same outcome, so there's no point in picking this one. If Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, or Wicca are true, then what you believe doesn't matter, but how you lived does matter. Since you get the same payout whether or not you believe, there's no point in picking one of these either, but you might want to consider being a good person in case they are true. Now we are left with the only two where your particular belief matters, Christianity and Islam. I'll draw a smaller payout chart to give a cleaner comparison.
If Christianity is true, then the Christian is rewarded no matter what, and the Muslim is punished no matter what. If Islam is true, then the good person is rewarded no matter what, and the bad person is punished no matter what, but the good Muslim receives a better reward than the good Christian. The worst case scenario for a good Christian is Dhimmitude in the Muslim Heaven if Islam is true, but the worst case scenario for a good Muslim is Hell if Christianity is true. It's far better to be a good Christian and risk being a second class citizen in the Muslim Heaven than to be a Muslim and risk an eternity of torment in Hell. Pastor Billy-Reuben |
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Sadly, I must fine you one month's salary and benefits for equating Christianity in the actual terms of a gamble. Since you are not being paid, the automatic tithe will obviously not be deducted from your check this month. We will take a double-deduction next month plus one more for interest. Yours in Christ Pastor Al |
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I just put it in mathematical terms so that those "logical atheists" (yeah, right :rofl:) can relate to it. Pastor Billy-Reuben |
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I like your chart Pastor Billy. I'm a bit confused about how the christians who are bad people go to heaven. Don't you believe true christians don't sin anymore? Or sin rarely?
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Praise Pastor Billy-Reuben, your exposition is on a par (like Schrödinger's Cat) with some of the great physics thought experiments of all time. Even Einstein once remarked that God does not play dice with the universe.
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You do not want to cross the good Deacon. I can attest to this personally. And yet nobody alive, with the possible exceptions of Pastor Deacon Fred and Sister Betty Bower, is a better Christian than Deacon Hardwick. He just distributes the Lord's mercy, and that's not always what the rest of society thinks of when they contemplate mercy in general. |
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Imagine a man (we'll call him Frank) who spent sixty years of his life lying, cheating, and stealing, but then repented of that, got saved, and then did good works for the remaining 10 years of his life. The works based religions believe that a good person is one whose good deeds outweigh their evil deeds. So according to those faiths, Frank was, on balance, a bad person. According to our faith, however, those sins were all washed away the moment he got saved, and he didn't need to go out and try to make up for it because the debt has already been paid. Pastor Billy-Reuben |
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I get it now. Pastor, you should write a book. I bet you could outsell even Billy Grahm and become America's Favorite Preacher. Praise God!
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I like those payouts, Pastor! Christianity is like getting the Mega-Ball every time!
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That's an interesting matrix you have compiled there Pastor. (thought it made more sense to post here, rather than in Joe's Qs).
For me, there’s an interesting clue in the header. It works only if there’s some future payout. (You will say that this is too obvious to even mention!) Is Pascal’s wager any sort of sensible or adequate guide with which to approach an ineffable and supreme divinity? It's a big concern, because this is not some flutter on a football game we're talking about. It comes from the deepest longing of the soul, doesn't it? But anyway, can we agree it only works on future events? Which makes ‘salvation’ an ideal beneficiary. Except......... Pascal failed to notice a very dark flipside: you must spend your three score years and ten in this life subscribing to psychologically and spiritually destructive belief. Everything is deferred in favour of an almighty unknown, so all your earthly years are spent in limbo, missing any opportunity right in front of your face. Some would say that’s a pretty big deal. It denies the value and worth of this life, and it denies the possibility of any ‘salvation’ in this life. By loading a payoff so heavily in another world, it exerts a tremendously destructive force on the soul. You have to see the toll this takes on the psychology and the spirit. Is salvation possible in this life? If not, then we are all imprisoned in a constant cycle of fear and hopefulness for our time here. It’s really quite horrific. [Btw, Hindu and Buddhism are not really ‘deeds’-based; but nor are they a matter of singular belief. It would be closer to the truth to say that they involve a synthesis of both of these, and much more. The spiritual laws are more subtle and complex than have been suggested here. For one thing, thought and action are not treated as separate entities. Ultimately they are not divorced from each other as they are in your theology; where, as you say, one can commit all manner of unspeakable acts, as long as your faith is strong, before the crucial moment.] Could the kingdom of God also be within each of us? What does that mean, is it jibberish? If it’s possible to know this, then Pascal’s wager as an invite loses all value, and becomes a bit of a meaningless exercise. Like playing roulette, and knowing that one need never put any money down. Quote:
Why buy a Lotto ticket when are you rich beyond your wildest dreams, and know you have been all along? |
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If Buddhism is true, then a good Buddhist should get a better reincarnation than a good non-Buddhist, and an evil Buddhist should get a worse reincarnation than an evil non-Buddhist, because he should have known better. The same goes for Hindus and Wiccans. I edited the original matrix to take that into account. Pastor Billy-Reuben |
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You are right, Pascal may not have expressly denied the possibility of salvation in this life, but it is implicit in the theology. Your example emphasizes this – the preconditions for salvation may happen right before earthly death but the actual salvation is always, always just beyond. You say it is never possible to have it now. So the toll is this denying of truth right now, and denying yourself the possibility of truth and salvation for every moment of this life. It is crippling to do so. Fear and hope are two sides of the same coin, one can not exist without the other. Both are painful. |
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Some pagan mathematician might say there is no Nash equilibrium for the expanded game, because Christianity does not offer the highest payout for all religions. I say, John Nash was a demonic schizo, so there!
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However, all roads to The Lord are good roads. Quote:
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