“High in the North in a land called Svithjod there is a mountain. It is a hundred miles long and a hundred miles high and once every thousand years a little bird comes to this mountain to sharpen its beak. When the mountain has thus been worn away a single day of eternity will have passed.”
~ Hendrik Willem van Loon
In the 17th century, French philosopher Blaise Pascal made the following argument for believing in a god:
- There is a god or there is not.
- You can choose to believe in a god or not (the wager).
- If there is a god, you will be rewarded eternally in the afterlife for your faith, but be punished eternally if you do not believe.
- If there is no god, you lose a finite amount of your time and maybe some material wealth for believing in a god.
- Ergo: As the rewards and punishments that follow in the case of god existing is infinite, it is better to bet that there is a god, no matter how infinitesimal the odds may be.
Pascal’s wager does not deal with the possibility of whether gods exist or not; that is irrelevant to the wager. He merely suggests that the odds suggest that you should believe. But is this really the case?
To begin with, what Pascal promotes through this wager is not true belief or faith, but a rational choice to believe – something that is not really possible. Believing is not a product of reasoning but more of an alternative. Furthermore, if there really is an omniscient god, would he not easily see the impure motives behind your “faith”?
Secondly, how do we know that the god you believe in is the true god? There have been thousands and thousands of religions throughout history. Who is to say that the deity that you will face in the afterlife will not be Hades, Odin or Yama? If that is the case, then you will have lined up behind the wrong god and you will be punished for your “idol worship”. This argument nullifies the mathematical advantage of infinite rewards that Pascal suggests.
Lastly, one cannot rule out the possibility should a god exist, there is no way of knowing whether that god is benevolent or malevolent. Pascal’s wager only deals with the two possibilities of a benevolent god and the absence of god, but if a malevolent, wrathful god exists, then what is the gain from worshipping him? When you kill an insect, do you judge whether that insect has faith in you then reward or punish it accordingly? It is likely that in this scenario, worshipping such a god will be a waste of time and you will be relatively better off not believing in god.
In 1990, an American philosopher named Michael Martin presented a counter-wager to Pascal’s wager – the so-called atheist’s wager. He argued that if a benevolent god existed, then he should reward good deeds regardless of your faith. If a god does not exist, then your good deeds will leave a good legacy and the world will (hopefully) be a slightly better place to live in after you pass away.
Ergo, the wager we should be making is not whether a god exists or not, but that we should be good.
(If you are interested in this, you should read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, he explains this very elegantly)
In 450 BC, a Greek philosopher named Zeno thought of the following paradox. Let us imagine that Achilles and a tortoise were to have a footrace. Achilles, obvious being faster than the tortoise, allows the tortoise to have a head start of 100 metres. Once the race starts, Achilles will quickly catch up to the tortoise. However, within the time he took to cover the distance, the tortoise would have travelled some distance as well (say 10 metres). When Achilles runs the 10m to catch up again, the tortoise has once again toddled on another metre. Thus, whenever Achilles reaches somewhere the tortoise has been, he still has farther to go. Because there are an infinite number of points Achilles must reach where the tortoise has already been, theoretically the tortoise will be ahead of Achilles for eternity.
According to this thought experiment, motion is paradoxical and theoretically impossible. However, we know for a fact that motion happens. So how can we break Zeno’s paradox?
The main flaw of Zeno’s paradox is that he uses the concept of “eternity”. If we record the story mathematically, the time taken for Achilles to run the footrace is (if it took him 10 seconds to run 100m): 10 + 1 + 0.1 + 0.01 + 0.001… = 11.111… Ergo, the tortoise is only ahead of Achilles for less than 11.2 seconds (rounded). After 11.2 seconds pass, the time passed exceeds the sum of the infinite series and the paradox no longer applies.
Although it is a flawed paradox, the story of Achilles and the tortoise teaches the concept of geometric series – that something finite can be divided an infinite amount of times. For example, 1 = ½ + ¼ + 1/8 + 1/16… ad infinitum. This principle is a crucial part of mathematics and has significant implications in the field of economics. For example, it can be used to calculate the value of money in the future, which is necessary for working out mortgage payments and investment returns. Perhaps it is because of this mathematical principle that it seemingly takes an infinite amount of time to pay off a mortgage.
Zeno’s paradox teaches us that one should not take the concept of infinity for granted.
Faust is a famous German legend telling the tale of a man who sold his soul to the devil in a deal. The legend has been retold in many forms, in both literary and artistic forms, with the most famous versions being Christopher Marlowe’s and Goethe’s. The story goes as follows:
Faust was a very knowledgeable scholar who grew bored and disappointed of earthly knowledge. To seek more knowledge, he summons the devil, Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles proposes a deal to Faust, suggesting that he will serve Faust with his magical powers and with knowledge beyond this world. In exchange, after a certain amount of time has passed he would seize Faust’s soul and send him to damnation for eternity.
After making this pact, Faust proceeds to satisfy his wants by using the devil’s powers. Eventually he seduces a beautiful, innocent girl by the name of Gretchen, but ends up destroying her life instead of living a happy life with her. However, she is saved by her innocence and ascends to heaven.
Faust, with his term now over and about to burn in the eternal inferno of Hell, is saved by God’s grace via his constant striving. It is also said that his salvation is largely brought on by Gretchen, now a symbol of the Eternal Feminine, pleading to God to save Faust.
Although this is the tale that is familiar in modern times, earlier versions of the Faust story end in damnation, with the devil carrying away Faust’s irrevocably corrupt soul. Faust accepts his sins and his punishments, regretting making a pact with the devil and destroying the life of his beloved Gretchen.
Faust serves to remind us that although every person has a right to be happy and satisfy their wants, there are boundaries that must be followed. By satisfying one’s needs and wants by destroying someone’s life and causing harm, one is subject to eternal punishment.
It is fascinating to see that one could go to such length to attain more knowledge. Is ultimate knowledge worth your soul being damned to eternity? Or is it wiser to accept that the only way to gain true knowledge is by continuously learning and thinking rather than finding a shortcut?
