Pascal’s Wager

President Nelson invited us to choose to believe rather than to choose to doubt. It takes just as much imagination and willingness to accept that there is no higher power shaping our lives as it would to imagine an all loving, all powerful God does in fact exist and helps us each and every day. Whatever kind of framework or logic that we might use to determine that there can't possibly be a God is ultimately flawed because the chain of logic relies on and is produced by the human brain which is prone to bias and to being overwhelmed by emotion. It takes just as much of a leap of faith to assert that there is no God then that there is, because there will always be a gap. We always have to acknowledge that although we've been chipping away at our ignorance for centuries now, there is still so very, very much that we don't know. The philosopher Pascal had a famous thought experiment called Pascal's Wager. He reasoned that either God exists, or He doesn't, and that if we choose to believe in Him and He does not exist, then we haven't really lost out much. The same goes for us choosing not to believe in Him and He doesn't exist. But if God does exist and we choose to believe in Him and act in the way He would want us to act, then eternal happiness awaits us. And if He exists and we choose not to believe in Him, then we risk eternal damnation. So, Pascal reasoned, with such high stakes, whether you really believe or not, it's better to act like you believe and maybe eventually you really will believe. If we can acknowledge that our doubts are no more real and potentially much less real than our beliefs, it makes it easier to choose to believe. And if we can just start with the desire to believe, the choice to believe, then that desire can grow inside us until we no longer just want to believe, but do in reality believe. And if desire leads to belief, then belief eventually leads to certainty and knowledge.