Atheist's Wager

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The Atheist's Wager is an atheistic response to Blaise Pascal's Wager regarding the existence of God. While Pascal suggested that it is better to take the chance of believing in a god that might not exist rather than to risk losing infinite happiness by disbelieving in a god that does, the Atheist's Wager suggests that:

You should live your life and try to make the world a better place for your being in it, whether or not you believe in god. If there is no god, you have lost nothing and will be remembered fondly by those you left behind. If there is a benevolent god, he will judge you on your merits and not just on whether or not you believed in him.^[1]

The premise for the wager is often expressed in terms of an alleged quote from Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius:

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.

However, there is no indication that he ever wrote the quote attributed to him. In his Meditations, Marcus expresses the view that life would not be worth living if there were no gods, although he doesn't doubt their existence.^[2] He also writes repeatedly that being remembered after death is not to be valued, as it will make no difference to the deceased whether they're remembered or not and everyone who remembers them will themselves be dead in a very short amount of time.^[3]

Explanation

The Wager states that if you were to analyze your options in regard to how to live your life, you would come out with the following possibilities:^[1]

• You may live a good life and believe in a god, and a benevolent god exists, in which case you go to heaven: your gain is infinite.
• You may live a good life without believing in a god, and a benevolent god exists, in which case you go to heaven: your gain is infinite.
• You may live a good life and believe in a god, but no benevolent god exists, in which case you leave a positive legacy to the world; your gain is finite.
• You may live a good life without believing in a god, and no benevolent god exists, in which case you leave a positive legacy to the world; your gain is finite.
• You may live an evil life and believe in a god, and a benevolent god exists, in which case you go to hell: your loss is infinite.
• You may live an evil life without believing in a god, and a benevolent god exists, in which case you go to hell: your loss is infinite.
• You may live an evil life and believe in a god, but no benevolent god exists, in which case you leave a negative legacy to the world; your loss is finite.
• You may live an evil life without believing in a god, and no benevolent god exists, in which case you leave a negative legacy to the world; your loss is finite.

The following table shows the values assigned to each possible outcome:

Given these values, the option to live a good life (L) clearly dominates the option of living an evil life (¬L), regardless of belief in a god (B or ¬B).

The apparent false dichotomy

Being a variation of Pascal's Wager, the Atheist's Wager seemingly suffers from the logical fallacy of the false dichotomy, relying on the assumption that the only possibilities are:

1. a benevolent god exists and punishes or rewards according to one's actions, or
2. a benevolent god does not exist.

The Atheist's Wager equates a "benevolent god" to a god that punishes or rewards according to actions, implicitly assuming that a god that acts otherwise (such as the god of Pascal's wager, which rewards faith instead) is not a benevolent god.

This premise allows the second proposition to not only cover the possibility of the absence of any god, but also all possible gods that are not "benevolent"/punish and reward according to one's actions, thus covering all possibilities and making the dichotomy legitimate.

Notes

This article relies largely or entirely upon a single source. Please help improve this article by introducing citations to additional sources. Discussion about the problems with the sole source used may be found on the talk page. (January 2011)

References

• Martin, Michael (1990). Atheism: A Philosophical Justification. Temple University Press. pp. 232–238.