Atheism and Theism
Dr. N. Burr Furlong (burr@artifex.org)
Words are those remarkable instruments uniquely available to man, as far as we know. With them, thought and experience can be crystallized and exchanged not only between contemporary minds, but among all generations of human minds. Ideas once encapsulated in these plastic verbal crystals become the inheritance of the ages and can form a part of the fund of human knowledge. We should select and use words, these simultaneous wings and fetters of our thoughts, with great care -- striving for precision where where exactness is appropriate or for vagueness where impressions need be amorphous.In the subject area associated with our ultimate beliefs we are quite literally at our wits end. Although the human brain is a remarkable instrument for for receiving, analyzing and acting on information, it is naive to assume thatit is the final stage in the evolutionary process that created it. We should be very wary of trusting its infant powers to make conclusions about ultimate issues -- especially if these conclusions involve the denial (or acceptance) of existences that obviously go beyond our present capabilities of comprehension.
Faced with issues that our power of reason is not sufficient to resolve, what course of action should we take? When Pascal was confronted by the problem of the existence of God, which reason alone could not prove either pro or con from evidence or philosophy, he proposed the reasoning gambler's approach: Suppose that God either exists or does not exist and suppose that I either believe or deny His existence; what are the outcomes in each case? If I deny God and, in truth, He does not exist or if I affirm God and He does exist, then I shall be satisfied in each case equally, so no criterion for choice is provided. However, if I believe in God and there is no God, I shall be disappointed, but my disappointment will have no eternal consequences; whereas, if I deny God and He does exist, then I have by my pride destroyed a relationship between myself and my Creator which could be of enormous consequence both to my present and eternal existence. Surely only an insane egotist could evaluate the consequences and continue to doubt God.
Whether or not we are satisfied with Pascal's "playing dice with God" approach, we should recognize that the wager illustrates that the consequences of decisions are as important as their logic. Pascal's wager, along with whatever other faults it may be guilty of, tends to emphasize the division of man and God. Those things which are understood and reasonable are man's province and God is all else -- the unknown (yet) or unknowable (if such a category is admitted).