In this episode Trent sits down with philosopher Liz Jackson to discuss Pascal’s wager and how one could make a “prudential argument” for the existence of God.
Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Welcome, everyone to the Council of Trent podcast. I’m your host Catholic Answers’ apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. I am with Dr. Liz Jackson, Professor of Philosophy?
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Yes. Assistant Professor of Philosophy.
Trent Horn:
Professor of Philosophy at Ryerson University in Toronto. Now I knew, I figured it’s philosophy, because you have a specialty in Epistemology, how we know what we know, right?
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Yep. Exactly. So, my dissertation actually kind of focused on belief and rational belief; but then, I’m also really interested in knowledge, and most people think rational belief is a part of knowledge. So, all of that stuff I’m really interested in, and then kind of applying that to Philosophy of Religion, as well.
Trent Horn:
Well, I’m super excited, because we are here also recording live at the Capturing Christianity Conference. So, you’re a speaker at the conference, I’m one of the speakers; and it’s just fun to meet other people, especially professors who are interested in providing sound reasons for Christian belief. Because there’s not a lot of them out there; but it’s nice to meet them.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s actually kind of interesting. Within philosophy as a whole, I think it’s less than 20% that are theists. But then, when you look at the philosophers of religion, I think like 70+% are theists. So, there’s different proposed explanations for the data. Some people say, “Oh, it’s because once you’re an expert on it, you realize that God exists.”
Trent Horn:
Right.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
But other people say, “Well, you are already a theist, and that’s what got you more interested in philosophy, religion.}” So, people debate about that.
Trent Horn:
Right. Yeah. So what we’re going to talk about today is, I wanted to talk about an “argument” for the existence of God. I’ll put our argument in quotation marks, because it’s not so much an argument, but it’s one people have heard a lot, and that would be Pascal’s wager.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Yep.
Trent Horn:
And so, it’s more of a pragmatic justification for belief in God that a lot of people get wrong.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Yeah. Yeah.
Trent Horn:
They don’t understand. So I want you to talk about it, because the idea here is, should your atheist friend bet on believing in God… And a lot of people think that the wager based on the French mathematician, Blaise Pascal, Blaise Pascal, they think the wager goes like this: “Well, if you believe in God, and let’s say you believe in God, and there is a God, you go to heaven. And if you’re wrong, you won’t know otherwise. But if you don’t believe in God, and you’re wrong, you won’t know.” You just argue, “If you don’t believe in God, and it turns out there is no God, you won’t know. But if you don’t believe in God, and it turns out there is a God, you’ll be burning for all eternity. So if you do your probability calculus, you should bet on God for heaven to avoid hell.” Is how a lot of people think of the wager, that this is about the most probabilistic way to escape hell, is to believe in God. But that’s not really the wager, is it?
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Yeah. At least that’s not the way that I-
Trent Horn:
It’s not the way Pascal puts it.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, there’s two ways you can look at the wager, right? So one is a more historical lens. You can kind of try to understand Pascal in context. I think that’s a super important and valuable project. And another project that might overlap, but is slightly different, is, “What’s the most plausible version of this argument we can make, whether or not that was what Pascal said?”
Trent Horn:
Okay.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
And so, I’m interested in both of those. One thing to note about Pascal, historically, is that Pascal really thought he had given arguments to really make it so that there’s only two live possibilities: either Christianity is true, or atheism is true. And those are about roughly 50/50. And so, if you’re in that situation, that’s where Pascal brings a wager in. So a lot of people, oh yeah, go ahead.
Trent Horn:
So this is important. A lot of people think, “Oh, I should just go to my atheist friend, and give him Pascal’s wager, and that’s the end of the day.” But it’s more like the cherry on the sundae. It’s like, “Look, I gave you all these arguments, and let’s say, you’re not a hardened atheist, but you’re someone who’s just sitting on the fence, like, ‘Ah, I really, really don’t know. It could be Christianity. It could be atheism. I’m right on the fence.'” You’re saying, at least the way Pascal would’ve envisioned it, the wager is good for someone who is sitting right on the fence.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Yeah. Absolutely. So I don’t think Pascal took his audience to be someone who’s 99.99% sure atheism is true, and basically thinks all religions are garbage or something.
Trent Horn:
Right, right, right.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
So that was not his audience. I think it’s interesting to think about ways we could get stronger versions of the wager for people that assign Christianity lower probabilities. And so I’m interested in that project as well; but I definitely think putting Pascal in context is super important.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Another thing to note about Pascal, is that a lot of people will bring up this Many-Gods Objection. Which religion should we pick? Right?
Trent Horn:
Right. Well, people will say, “Okay, believe in God. And it’s a safer bet than not believing in God.” And a lot of atheists, I see a lot of atheist videos online that critique Pascal’s wager saying, “Okay, which God do I believe in? If I pick the wrong one, he might be really mad I worship the wrong God, and so the wager doesn’t even work.”
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Yeah. And that’s another reason I think the Historical Project has value, because the whole point, you have to read the wager in context again. And Pascal had argued to the point where the only two live options were Christianity and atheism. So I think for someone in that situation, where they really are just taking one religion seriously, the Many-Gods objection just doesn’t crop up. Right?
Trent Horn:
Right.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
So we can ask a further question, which is, “What about someone who’s undecided between religions? What if they’re taking several different religions seriously, or lots of different religions really seriously?” And some of my work, I do sort of try to address that question, because I don’t think everyone’s in a situation where they think either this one religion is true or atheism is true.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Yeah.
Trent Horn:
Well, let’s talk then about the Modern Project, of taking… Because this is what we do a lot with arguments in any field, but especially in the philosophy of religion. You might have an argument how Clark might have done the cosmological argument, or even atheists will take David Hume and say, “This is what Hume said, but it’s kind of rough around the edges. Let’s make it even better.” So how would you, what would your Modern Project, or view of the wager be, in contrast to Pascal?
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Yeah. So in our project, we actually don’t start with arguments for Christianity. I think you can do that. I think that’s cool. I’m not opposed to that. But in the project, sort of the version of the wager that I propose, what we start off with, is we say, “Look. It seems like there’s some kind of asymmetry between theism and atheism. It seems like theism, belief in God, has these benefits that disbelief in God, or atheism doesn’t have.”
Trent Horn:
By asymmetry, do you mean there is a different in the benefits between being theist or being an atheist?
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Or something like that. There’s something… And we like to put it in a… I think yes, but I want to say it in this way.
Trent Horn:
Sure.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
When you initially introduced the wager, you were focusing a lot about someone that sort of comes into the wager because of a fear of hell.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
And I like to think about it more like this: someone who says, “Look. I don’t believe that God exists. I don’t even think it’s very probable that God exists. But, what if there was a God? What if there was an all-powerful, all-loving being that created everything, and wants to have a relationship with me? Seems like someone that’s worth pursuing; that seems like a really important thing.”
Trent Horn:
Right.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
“And so, I’m going to take a risk, and maybe give up some of the goods, like sleeping in on Sunday, or maybe the 10% extra money that I’m going to tithe or whatever. I’m going to give up some of these goods, in order to pursue that relationship with God, because of how good that would be.”
Trent Horn:
Right.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
So that’s a benefit in a way, but it’s focusing on the benefit of this relationship with God, rather than… I think a lot of people like say, “Oh, isn’t Pascal’s wager just selfish?” But I think when you put it in that light, you can kind of see-
Trent Horn:
Well, it’s about self-interest.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Yes.
Trent Horn:
There’s nothing wrong with self-interest, that’s how we live life. We do think, we always act in ways that are in our interests. And one of the things that is in our interest is to grow in virtue, to care for others within the human community. So, is one way to look at your modern understanding of the wager, is that even if an atheist thinks there is a low probability that God exists, even a very low probability; because there is such a high amount of utility involved in believing in God, that just makes it worthwhile, because it’s approaching essentially infinite utility. Maybe not in this life, but it’s so highly valuable, it’s worth pursuing, even if the probability is quite low.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Yeah. I think that’s a big part of sort of the intuition that we push. And then I think the other element of it, kind of going back to this question about, “What do we say about the Many-Gods, and the fact that there are various religions?” Since our wager doesn’t involve these arguments for Christianity, we actually try to give you a mechanism that you can use to choose between various religions.
Trent Horn:
Okay.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
And one of the most important factors that’s going to come into play is probability. So if you’re saying, “Do I want a 90% chance at some infinite good, or a 10% chance of infinite good?” Clearly, you should take the 90% chance. And the same way, if you think Christianity gives you a 70% chance at some good, and then Islam gives 10% chance at that good, then you should go for Christianity.
Trent Horn:
Okay.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
So, we say, “Look. Wager in the religion that’s most likely to be true.” And that’s as far as we go with Pascal’s wager; but then you can kind of build onto that, and give an argument that raises the probability.
Trent Horn:
I think this is helpful, because sometimes atheists will say, “Well, I don’t even have any idea. All of these…” They’ll pick up a book. I remember, I think there was someone; I want to say his name actually was Michael Jordan. Someone look this up for me if I was wrong. But it was something called the Encyclopedia of Gods.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Oh.
Trent Horn:
And so, I want to say, I think it was written not by the basketball player.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Trent Horn:
Or the actor. I’m going to look it up. I think it was written by… I think that was the guy’s name. It’s why it sticks in my head. And it’s like 4,000 deities. It’s like, “Oh, well, what are the odds we’re going to get this deity right?” But that seems silly to me. That’d be like saying, if I went to a murder trial, and I’m saying, “Well, why should I think the prosecution got the right guy? The odds of them, it’s one in a 6 billion chance.” It’s like, “Well, no, no, no. It’s not.”
Dr. Liz Jackson:
I like that.
Trent Horn:
It’s not equally in a murder trial. It’s not equally probable every human being that exists. Much like every deity that is out there, there are different levels of evidences.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Absolutely.
Trent Horn:
For the… There really are.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Yep.
Trent Horn:
And I’m sorry, when… It’s interesting. I was here at the conference; so tomorrow I’m going to, tomorrow from this recording, I’m going to be debating Ben Watkins, from Real Atheology. And it’s interesting. When I spoke with them, they were saying, “We’ve engaged Muslim apologetics.” And they’ve said, “It’s just embarrassing to try to engage Muslim apologetics, because it has not been tested anywhere near to the level Christian apologetics have.”
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Yeah.
Trent Horn:
Especially since the time of David Hume, for the past 200 years, defenses of Christianity… Well, I would say for even for 2,000 years, some Greek critics, Muslim critics. But especially in the Modern Project, it has been systematically analyzed, tested. You need a robust Christian theism to survive in academia today, things like that. But other religions have not accomplished that same project.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Yeah.
Trent Horn:
Without, I would say, abandoning just the Western view of logic in general, to have something that’s just completely esoteric, that’s beyond criticism, because it doesn’t care about criticism. I don’t know if that… I was rambling there a little, if that makes sense to you.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
No. I think that’s really good. So I think… So epistemologists call it the principal of indifference, in what you’re talking about, where we just give each religion equal probability. But you apply that when you don’t have evidence about which one is the most likely, you know what I mean?
Trent Horn:
Right.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
So I totally agree. And yeah, I think there’s a very valuable project, which is looking at the evidence for various religions. And I would agree with your assessment. I think there’s quite a bit of pretty compelling evidence for Christianity, and I think you can take… What’s cool about the wager, is you can take the wager, and you can combine it with that evidence; but it takes a little bit of a pressure off of that evidence too. You don’t have to prove that Christianity is 99% likely or something. If you can prove that it’s more probable than the other religions, then you throw Pascal’s wager in, and you should commit to Christianity.
Trent Horn:
And what’s interesting there is, it doesn’t even have to rise above 50%, the preponderance of evidence to belief. It just has to be more probable than any other belief system. Because here’s what’s interesting. People might say, “Oh well, I’m only going to believe in something if I get even…” Some people might say, “At first, it seems right. It’s irrational to believe something that has less than a 51% probability of being true.” You would think, “Okay, I’m only going to believe in things that are more likely true than false.” But that doesn’t… And you’re the epistemologist, you correct me if I’m wrong. But in some cases, all of the live options we have might be less than 50% probability.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
I love it. I love it. I love it. Yeah.
Trent Horn:
And so then, by that logic, “Well I guess I can’t believe anything.”
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Yeah.
Trent Horn:
Well, that would be silly. And this will probably come up in the debate that I’ll have with Ben, because I’ve been looking at Paul Draper’s arguments for the intrinsic probability of theism; that he says it’s less than atheism. But I would say the intrinsic probability, whether something is true, and then the negation of it; the probability it’s true, it’s going to be intrinsic, it’s going to be less than the negation. It’ll go back to the murder trial example; the probability that Jones killed Smith versus anything else killed Smith.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Trent Horn:
Is going to be less, but that’s true for any proposed explanation. So I think that if all of the different explanations could be less than even 50%, when you compare them, and for me, especially, Christianity, it has the miracle claims and the historical evidence you just don’t find in any other major religion. So as an epistemologist, you would say that we have to look at all the evidence before we make these decisions.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Yeah. There’s actually a famous case. So, epistemologists debate about, “What’s the threshold for belief? Is it 50? Is it one? Is it 75? Is there no threshold?”
Trent Horn:
Right.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
But there’s a famous case, and it fits perfectly with what you’re saying. You’re at a horse race, and there’s three horses. Horse #1 is 46% likely to win. Horse #2 is 30 something. And horse #3 is like 30 or 20 something. Make it add up to 100.
Trent Horn:
- Right. Yeah.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
And it’s like, “Look.”
Trent Horn:
So, we have 46, 30 and 24.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Yeah, there you go. Perfect. And so it’s like, Look. Let’s say you believe that the 46% chance, let’s say that’s horse A, you believe horse A is going to win. It’s not at all clear that that’s irrational. It’s the most likely of your live options.
Trent Horn:
Most people would say that that is the most rational horse to pick in the race.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Yeah.
Trent Horn:
It’s more rational than saying, “None of them will win.”
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Right. Right. One of them is clearly going to win. And so, I think, I find this case pretty compelling. And you might have situations where you shouldn’t believe the most likely of the live options. You don’t have to commit to a general principle.
Trent Horn:
Right. Sure.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
But in that case, that seems perfectly rational.
Trent Horn:
And I think it’s also important when we’re comparing probability, and we’re choosing how to live out our life, and what beliefs are, I think atheism must be considered one of them; not some kind of default position, or some kind of null position. It is one of the options that should be weighed on its merits. Otherwise, it’s unfair to leave it out of the boxing ring.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Yeah. I totally agree. And this goes back to one of my biggest pet peeves about YouTube, where people try to say atheism is a lack of belief. And there’s so many problems with that, but that totally flies in the face of the way that epistemologists think about belief in general, which is that, for every proposition, you can believe it, you can withhold belief on it, or you can disbelieve it. And for theism, that’s you can be a theist, you can be an agnostic, or you can be an atheist. So atheism is disbelief that God exists.
Trent Horn:
Yeah, it is denial. When people say… I don’t know, I’ve heard this old saw so many times. “It’s just a lack of belief. I don’t have a burden of proof.” My rejoinder sometimes when I’m cheeky is, “Well, then it’s boring.”
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Yeah.
Trent Horn:
“Your atheism is boring. And it’s nothing for me to consider in my life, because the things that I’m willing to expend brain power on, are the things that tell me the way the world is. And if your atheism is only, and it’s only a description of your psychological makeup, what you do or don’t believe in, who cares?”
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Yeah.
Trent Horn:
“I want to know the way the world is, and it sounds like your atheism can’t tell me very much about that.” But then if you say, “Well, no, what I’m saying…” What they’re saying really, is they lack belief in God, because they make a claim about the world. There are no good reasons to believe in God. Ah, but now when you say something about the world, you got the burden to proof, my friend.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Which is that there’s no good reasons to believe in God.
Trent Horn:
Right. Exactly. So great. Well, and one last one. I want to see what you think of this.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Yeah.
Trent Horn:
Sometimes when you’re picking the different religions, someone will say, “Oh, what if I picked the wrong one, the wrong hell problem again?” It seems to me that a lot of religions, leaving Islam off the table, if you live an authentically Christian life, that’s essentially what these other belief systems or religions would tell you to do anyways.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Yeah.
Trent Horn:
Altruistic, practicing mercy, virtues, the Beatitudes; that if you were to live an authentically Christian life, that’s really the same thing the other religions would tell you to do anyway. So you’re not really missing out on anything.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Yeah. No, that’s great. So this is a good… This is actually the response I give to this objection that I call the Homer Simpson objection, because Homer goes, “What if every time we’re going to church, we pick the wrong God? And so we’re just, every time we go to church, we just make God madder and madder and madder.”
Trent Horn:
Right. Yeah.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
And I think this is actually a really nice response, which is that, “Look. Religions prescribe many of the same actions: going to religious services, participating in religious community, tithing, helping the poor, demonstrating certain kinds of virtues.” Right? And so I think practicing a religion is at least getting you closer on the path.
Trent Horn:
And of course, I’m not saying religions don’t matter.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Trent Horn:
We’re not talking about indifferentism. The point is, going back to that person on the fence, the person who is on the fence should not be worried about offending God if they attempt to live out what seems to be the most probable explanation of God’s existence, or with the Christian faith.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
And relatedly, is the problematic thought that being an atheist is somehow neutral or something. And it’s like, “No. You have your own gods that you worship. You have your own things that you idolize. Even if it’s not a religion in particular.” I think many atheists are just living for something else. So I don’t see atheism as this neutral, kind of like what we were saying earlier. And then, the religions are the ones taking stances. No, we’re all living for something.
Trent Horn:
Right. Well, where can people learn more about your work, research, and interests on the wager, religious epistemology? Where can people learn more about that?
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Yeah. So I have a website, which is liz-jackson.com. And I guess, sort of two things to highlight there, quickly. I have a page that’s called Research. And if you’re more interested in some academic articles, a bunch of stuff there you can download. And I think most of my work is available for free download there. And then I also have a page called Public Philosophy, where I have a link to my YouTube channel. And I also have a link to a playlist of other YouTube videos that I’ve done on other people’s channels as well. So that’s a little bit more, if maybe you don’t want to dive into an academic article, but maybe listen to some podcasts or YouTube channels. I have some blog posts on there, too. So, Public Philosophy page is where you can kind of find all that, and then find my YouTube channel as well.
Trent Horn:
All right. Well Liz, thank you so much for being on Council of Trent podcast. And I’m excited for your talk at the conference.
Dr. Liz Jackson:
Yeah, me too. Thanks so much for having me.
Trent Horn:
Absolutely. And thank you guys so much for listening. Be sure to go trenthornpodcast.com, to support what we’re doing here. And hope you guys have a blessed day.
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