Reasonable Doubts

Losing Faith

Picture yourself  sitting in a casino.  Your arms are resting against the green felted table and you are surrounded by hearty gamblers who are excitedly routing you along.  But you aren’t playing poker or roulette.  You are playing dice.  And these particular dice are not the standard numbered ones you might find in Atlantic City.  In place of the familiar numbers are words.  One side of the first die states quite boldly “God exists.”  The opposite side declares with equal tenacity “God does not exist.”   The second die also has words, but they appear in less bolded print.  One side of the cube reads ”I believe,” the other “I do not believe.”  It is a game of dice with serious repercussions.  You don’t stand to win or lose money; you stand to win or lose human immortality.

Such is the image the French philosopher Blaise Pascsal paints for us in his Pensees.  But how does it turn out?  And can we really win or lose immortality from a game of dice? Let’s play the game and find out.

Your hand shakes a bit with the first roll and the dice fall to the ground.  The onlookers scramble to the floor to read the outcome of your roll.  The first die lands on “I believe;” the second “God does not exist.”  You look over to the dealer to find out what it means.  He signals back that you have neither won nor lost your immortality.  If God does not exist there simply is no immortality to win.  So you take another roll.  This time the dice fall on “I Believe,” and “God does exist.”  You look up full of hope and the dealer declares that you have indeed won immortality.  If there is a God he awards immortality to his believers.  You pick up the dice for your next spin.  This time they land on “I do not believe,” and “”God does not exist.”  The dealer signals to you that you have neither won nor lost again.  No God - no immortality.  You take a deep breath and pick up the dice for your final roll.  This time they fall out on “God exists,” and “I do not believe.”  The crowd groans and the dealer cries out that you have lost your immortality.  If there is a God he does not grant  the unbeliever immortality.

It’s an interesting scenario.  One that, according to Pascal, could give one an impetus to believe.  Simply put, it pays to believe.  If you believe and there is a God you stand to earn human immortality.  If you believe but there is no God than you have neither won nor lost anything.  But if you don’t believe, and indeed there is a God, you have lost your immortality.  It’s clever, but can an argument like this work?  Could we actually convince ourselves intellectually to believe in something?  Perhaps a better way to phrase my question is: Is belief an intellectual act?

The greatest medieval Jewish philosopher, Moses Maimonides, seemed to believe that it is.  In his Book of Commandments he listed Belief in God as the very first commandment.  He also listed Belief in the Oneness of God, Love of God, and Fear of God as commandments 2, 3, and 4.  But how can you command someone to believe something,  love something, and fear something?  These do not seem to be things that we can talk ourselves into doing.  Have you ever tried to convince yourself to love someone? It doesn’t work, because love is not the result of an intellectual argument. You can’t convince yourself to do it because it has to come from some other part of you. 

Often it can be difficult to access parts of yourself that don’t stem from logic.  We live in a world that celebrates intellectual achievement over everything else.   But what if there is more to a human being…much more?  What if we were able to uncover the deep intuitive nature of mankind that is the source of love and faith?  Perhaps that should be the pre-requisite to Maimonides’s first four commandments: to get in touch with a part of yourself that reaches beyond your intellect;  And perhaps that is where the loss of faith really begins… with the loss of yourself.