Q&A: Rationality and Secularism
Rationality and Secularism
Question
Is it correct to say that every rational person would be religious, if only because of the chance—no matter how great or small it is—that there is a World to Come which is infinitely better than this world, and it is preferable to die and find there is no World to Come than to die and discover that you really did deny it and go to hell?
Answer
This is Pascal's Wager, and it involves several mistakes. I explained this in my book God Plays Dice, chapter two.
What is surprising is that there is also a mistake here in probability, even though Pascal himself was one of the founders of probability theory. See there.
Discussion on Answer
And what about the possibility that someone who writes comments here will end up in hell?
Why not be Christian? Keep the commandments your whole life, give up quite a few things, and then discover that Jesus is the truth and go to hell? And for Christians, hell is much more tangible and worse.
Or maybe the Muslims are right, and then again you'll go to hell.
If anything, you'd have to bet on all religions together, but I don't know how possible that is. Or choose the easiest religion.
It simply means that it's worth being religious. After that, you have to decide between the religions.
But you can't really decide. There are so many religions and sects that the chance that one of them is right is negligible.
Also, according to one religion you'll go to heaven, and according to another the hell will be worse than the hell an atheist would get.
What about the possibility that someone who does things in order to get to heaven will end up in hell?