think that belief in a deviant deity correlates with the kind of positive benefits associated
with theistic belief. But this absence of evidence to think that belief in a deviant deity is
associated with positive benefit, conjoined with the obvious opportunity costs arising
from such a belief, is itself reason to think that F2 > F8. Indeed, no matter how we might
expand the matrix to accommodate the exotica of possible divinity, we would have
reason to believe that F2 exceeds any this-world outcome associated with the exotica.^9
So, given that F2 > F5 and that F2 > F8, even if the 2 x 2 matrix is abandoned in favor of
an expanded one, a Pascalian beachhead is established:
- For any person S making a forced decision under uncertainty, if one of the alternatives,
α, available to S has an outcome as good as the best outcomes of the other available
alternatives, β and γ, and never an outcome worse than the worst outcomes of β and γ,
and, excluding the best outcomes and worse outcomes, has only outcomes better than the
outcomes of β and γ, S should choose α. And, - Theistic belief has an outcome better than the other available alternatives if
naturalism obtains. Therefore,
C. One should believe in God.
Premise (9) is a cousin of the weak dominance principle. If there's at least one state in
which a particular alternative has an outcome better than that of the others and, moreover,
that alternative has no outcome worse than the worst outcomes of the other alternatives,
then that alternative weakly dominates.
This version of the wager, I contend, is the strongest member of the Pascalian family. It is
valid and is not obviously unsound: one can reasonably accept both premises. With this
wager in hand, we might do no better than to invoke James: “Pascal's argument, instead
of being powerless, then seems a regular clincher, and is the last stroke needed to make
our faithcomplete” (1956, 11).
end p.179
The Will to Believe
The argument presented by William James (1842–1910) in his 1896 essay “The Will to
Believe” is too often interpreted as just a version of Pascal's wager.^10 It is more than that.
Unlike the wager, the focus of James's argument extends far beyond the issue of the
rationality of theistic belief to include various philosophical issues (for instance, whether
to embrace determinism or indeterminism), and even matters of practical life. James's
argument, in its attack on what we might call the agnostic imperative (suspend belief
whenever the evidence is insufficient), makes the general epistemological point that “a
rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of
truth if those kinds of truth were really there, would be an irrational rule” (1956, 28). If
James is correct, then the agnostic imperative, which we might understand more fully as
for all persons S and propositions p, it is permissible for S to believe that p only if S has
evidence that p is more likely than not, is false.
The foil of James's essay, and a prominent early proponent of what we're calling the
agnostic imperative, is W. K. Clifford (1845–1879). Clifford argued: