SoldierofChrist
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And if these arguments still don't convince you, just read this one:
Pascal's Wager
Suppose you, the reader, still feel that all of these arguments are inconclusive. There is another, different kind of argument left. It has come to be known as Pascal's Wager. We mention it here and adapt it for our purposes, not because it is a proof for the existence of God, but because it can help us in our search for God in the absence of such proof.
As originally proposed by Pascal, the Wager assumes that logical reasoning by itself cannot decide for or against the existence of God; there seem to be good reasons on both sides. Now since reason cannot decide for sure, and since the question is of such importance that we must decide somehow, then we must "wager" if we cannot prove. And so we are asked: Where are you going to place your bet?
If you place it with God, you lose nothing, even if it turns out that God does not exist. But if you place it against God, and you are wrong and God does exist, you lose everything: God, eternity, heaven, infinite gain. "Let us assess the two cases: if you win, you win everything, if you lose, you lose nothing."
Consider the following diagram:

The vertical lines represent correct beliefs, the diagonals represent incorrect beliefs. Let us compare the diagonals. Suppose God does not exist and I believe in him. In that case, what awaits me after death is not eternal life but, most likely, eternal nonexistence. But now take the other diagonal: God, my Creator and the source of all good, does exist; but I do not believe in him. He offers me his love and his life, and I reject it. There are answers to my greatest questions, there is fulfillment of my deepest desires; but I decide to spurn it all. In that case, I lose (or at least seriously risk losing) everything.
The Wager can seem offensively venal and purely selfish. But it can be reformulated to appeal to a higher moral motive: If there is a God of infinite goodness, and he justly deserves my allegiance and faith, I risk doing the greatest injustice by not acknowledging him.
The Wager cannot—or should not—coerce belief. But it can be an incentive for us to search for God, to study and restudy the arguments that seek to show that there is Something—or Someone—who is the ultimate explanation of the universe and of my life. It could at lease motivate "The Prayer of the Skeptic": "God, I don't know whether you exist or not, but if you do, please show me who you are."
Pascal says that there are three kinds of people: those who have sought God and found him, those who are seeking and have not yet found, and those who neither seek nor find. The first are reasonable and happy, the second are reasonable and unhappy, the third are both unreasonable and unhappy. If the Wager stimulates us at least to seek, then it will at least stimulate us to be reasonable. And if the promise Jesus makes is true, all who seek will find (Mt 7:7-8), and thus will be happy.
Questions for Discussion
Why might someone think that the whole question of this chapter, whether God's existence can be proved, is trivial, unimportant, distracting or wrongheaded? How might such a person's argument(s) be answered?Could there be an argument for God's existence that does not fit into either of the two categories here, cosmological (external) or psychological (internal)?How psychologically forceful and how psychologically impotent is a valid argument for God's existence to an atheist? What does the answer to that question depend on? (There are many answers to this question; mention as many as you can. Which do you think is the most important one?)How can anything be "outside" the universe if "the universe" = "everything in space and time and matter?" What is meant by "outside" here? Can you give any analogy or parallel situation where a term is used like this?Why are there more than twenty arguments for and only one against God (the problem of evil)? (See chap. 6.)What commonsense meaning of cause do these cosmological arguments use (especially 2)? What alternative meanings of cause have some philosophers preferred? How do they change or invalidate the cosmological argument(s)? How could these alternatives be refuted? (Hume's is the most famous.)Does the answer to question 2 after argument 2 prove that God is creating the world right now?Would alternative theories of time change or invalidate any of the cosmological arguments?Does the simple answer to question 1 after argument 4 refute subjectivism? If not, where is the error in it? If so, why are there so many subjectivists?Why is the design argument the most popular?What is the relation between intelligibility and intelligence? Are intelligibility, design and order interchangeable concepts?Isn't there a tiny chance that the universe just happened by chance? A quintillion monkeys typing for a quintillion years will eventually produce Hamlet by chance. Couldn't this book have been caused by an explosion in a print factory?Regarding argument 10, how do we know the universe is not conscious or aware?Does the answer to question 3 of argument 6 prove God is a person?Sartre wrote: "There can be no eternal truth because there is no eternal Consciousness to think it." What is the implied premise of his argument and of proof 11?Does argument 12 presuppose "innate ideas"? If not, how and when did the idea of God get into our minds?Why is it that you can tell a lot about a philosopher's metaphysics by knowing whether or not he or she accepts the ontological argument? What do Anselm, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz and Hegel have in common? What doctrine of Thomistic metaphysics enables Thomas to criticize Anselm's argument?Can you refute the modal and possible worlds versions of the ontological argument?Can an atheist believe in real moral obligation (argument 14)? If so, how? Do most atheists believe in real moral obligation?Is the argument from conscience any stronger if you admit objective moral laws?How would you formulate the relationship between religion and morality? Between God and morality?Does everyone have the desire mentioned in premise 2 of argument 16? If so, must atheists suppress and ignore it?Would nominalists be able to escape argument 16? (C.f., question 1.)Can you formulate argument 17 logically?Why is religious experience any more of an argument for the real existence of God than any common delusion, illusion, fantasy or dream for its object? Are we arguing here from idea to reality, as in the ontological argument?Why is the common consent argument hardly ever used today, whereas it was very popular in the past?Is Pascal's Wager dishonest? Why or why not? Read Pascal's version of it in the Pensees; what do you find there that is significant that is not included here?Do you know of, or can you imagine, any other argument for God's existence?Which of these twenty arguments do you find the most powerful?How would an atheist answer each one of these twenty arguments? (Remember, there are only three ways of answering any argument.)
Pascal's Wager
Suppose you, the reader, still feel that all of these arguments are inconclusive. There is another, different kind of argument left. It has come to be known as Pascal's Wager. We mention it here and adapt it for our purposes, not because it is a proof for the existence of God, but because it can help us in our search for God in the absence of such proof.
As originally proposed by Pascal, the Wager assumes that logical reasoning by itself cannot decide for or against the existence of God; there seem to be good reasons on both sides. Now since reason cannot decide for sure, and since the question is of such importance that we must decide somehow, then we must "wager" if we cannot prove. And so we are asked: Where are you going to place your bet?
If you place it with God, you lose nothing, even if it turns out that God does not exist. But if you place it against God, and you are wrong and God does exist, you lose everything: God, eternity, heaven, infinite gain. "Let us assess the two cases: if you win, you win everything, if you lose, you lose nothing."
Consider the following diagram:

The vertical lines represent correct beliefs, the diagonals represent incorrect beliefs. Let us compare the diagonals. Suppose God does not exist and I believe in him. In that case, what awaits me after death is not eternal life but, most likely, eternal nonexistence. But now take the other diagonal: God, my Creator and the source of all good, does exist; but I do not believe in him. He offers me his love and his life, and I reject it. There are answers to my greatest questions, there is fulfillment of my deepest desires; but I decide to spurn it all. In that case, I lose (or at least seriously risk losing) everything.
The Wager can seem offensively venal and purely selfish. But it can be reformulated to appeal to a higher moral motive: If there is a God of infinite goodness, and he justly deserves my allegiance and faith, I risk doing the greatest injustice by not acknowledging him.
The Wager cannot—or should not—coerce belief. But it can be an incentive for us to search for God, to study and restudy the arguments that seek to show that there is Something—or Someone—who is the ultimate explanation of the universe and of my life. It could at lease motivate "The Prayer of the Skeptic": "God, I don't know whether you exist or not, but if you do, please show me who you are."
Pascal says that there are three kinds of people: those who have sought God and found him, those who are seeking and have not yet found, and those who neither seek nor find. The first are reasonable and happy, the second are reasonable and unhappy, the third are both unreasonable and unhappy. If the Wager stimulates us at least to seek, then it will at least stimulate us to be reasonable. And if the promise Jesus makes is true, all who seek will find (Mt 7:7-8), and thus will be happy.
Questions for Discussion
Why might someone think that the whole question of this chapter, whether God's existence can be proved, is trivial, unimportant, distracting or wrongheaded? How might such a person's argument(s) be answered?Could there be an argument for God's existence that does not fit into either of the two categories here, cosmological (external) or psychological (internal)?How psychologically forceful and how psychologically impotent is a valid argument for God's existence to an atheist? What does the answer to that question depend on? (There are many answers to this question; mention as many as you can. Which do you think is the most important one?)How can anything be "outside" the universe if "the universe" = "everything in space and time and matter?" What is meant by "outside" here? Can you give any analogy or parallel situation where a term is used like this?Why are there more than twenty arguments for and only one against God (the problem of evil)? (See chap. 6.)What commonsense meaning of cause do these cosmological arguments use (especially 2)? What alternative meanings of cause have some philosophers preferred? How do they change or invalidate the cosmological argument(s)? How could these alternatives be refuted? (Hume's is the most famous.)Does the answer to question 2 after argument 2 prove that God is creating the world right now?Would alternative theories of time change or invalidate any of the cosmological arguments?Does the simple answer to question 1 after argument 4 refute subjectivism? If not, where is the error in it? If so, why are there so many subjectivists?Why is the design argument the most popular?What is the relation between intelligibility and intelligence? Are intelligibility, design and order interchangeable concepts?Isn't there a tiny chance that the universe just happened by chance? A quintillion monkeys typing for a quintillion years will eventually produce Hamlet by chance. Couldn't this book have been caused by an explosion in a print factory?Regarding argument 10, how do we know the universe is not conscious or aware?Does the answer to question 3 of argument 6 prove God is a person?Sartre wrote: "There can be no eternal truth because there is no eternal Consciousness to think it." What is the implied premise of his argument and of proof 11?Does argument 12 presuppose "innate ideas"? If not, how and when did the idea of God get into our minds?Why is it that you can tell a lot about a philosopher's metaphysics by knowing whether or not he or she accepts the ontological argument? What do Anselm, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz and Hegel have in common? What doctrine of Thomistic metaphysics enables Thomas to criticize Anselm's argument?Can you refute the modal and possible worlds versions of the ontological argument?Can an atheist believe in real moral obligation (argument 14)? If so, how? Do most atheists believe in real moral obligation?Is the argument from conscience any stronger if you admit objective moral laws?How would you formulate the relationship between religion and morality? Between God and morality?Does everyone have the desire mentioned in premise 2 of argument 16? If so, must atheists suppress and ignore it?Would nominalists be able to escape argument 16? (C.f., question 1.)Can you formulate argument 17 logically?Why is religious experience any more of an argument for the real existence of God than any common delusion, illusion, fantasy or dream for its object? Are we arguing here from idea to reality, as in the ontological argument?Why is the common consent argument hardly ever used today, whereas it was very popular in the past?Is Pascal's Wager dishonest? Why or why not? Read Pascal's version of it in the Pensees; what do you find there that is significant that is not included here?Do you know of, or can you imagine, any other argument for God's existence?Which of these twenty arguments do you find the most powerful?How would an atheist answer each one of these twenty arguments? (Remember, there are only three ways of answering any argument.)
