A reverse Pascal's wager

I think Pascal’s Wager is behind considerable opposition to evolution. This is the argument for belief in God put forth by Blaise Pascal in the seventeenth century. His argument is that if you believe in God and he doesn’t exist, you have lost nothing, but if he does exist, you have gained eternal life. If you do not believe in God and he does exist, you risk eternal damnation, but gain nothing if you are right. Therefore, you should believe in God.

I think that is one of the weakest of all possible arguments for the belief in God. It is based on a false dichotomy, assuming only a Christian God who rewards belief and punishes disbelief, or no God. Once you consider the consequences of not believing in Muslim or Hindu Gods, it is a less attractive. There are many other problems with it as well. Nevertheless, I think that the fear of damnation is behind a lot of opposition to evolution. People have been told many times that evolution is evil. If you believe in it, you might be damned to hell. If you don’t believe evolution, even if you are wrong, you lose nothing, so to be on the safe side, reject evolution. People will not even look at the arguments for evolution if their soul is on the line. As a teacher, I do not care if students believe everything I tell them, but it is frustrating when they refuse to even listen. It's bad enough when a student does this, but I even had a colleague teaching a class with me who refused to attend my lectures on evolution, apparently unwilling to even let such words into his brain.

The same problem with Pascal’s Wager for an argument for God applies to it's use against evolution. It is a lot less convincing as soon as you show that there are more than two possibilities and rejecting evolution can have a cost as well. If we expect people to at least be open to looking at the science of evolution, they need to know that it’s OK to study a little science without risking damnation. Believers in theistic evolution should make a stronger case for acceptance of evolution.

One argument for the cost of rejecting reason was made by St. Augustine in “The Literal Meaning of Genesis” from the 4^th century. He argued that if you spout nonsense in the name of religion, then you are hurting the cause of religion.

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. …. Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books.

If more people realized that they are making religion a laughingstock and harming the credibility of belief, perhaps they would see that there is a cost to rejecting evolution as well.

Galileo also viewed the risks of following reason to be less than blind faith in ignorance:

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo there use.

I suppose some would argue the way to overcome Pascal’s Wager is simply to tell people there is no God and they have no soul to lose. If many people hear that, it will just confirm their fears and make them even less open to considering the evidence. Those would be the last words they would hear from you.

I have never had the experience of being afraid of my own thoughts. I was never exposed to that kind of religion. I am glad that I don’t have to be afraid that any new idea I hear might cause eternal torment. It strikes me as a frightening and rigid world. I think we should emphasize the quotes above and similar arguments, a reverse Pascal’s Wager, to help people to step outside of that world.