On Saturday, my father was explaining to me Pascal's Wager. This wager produces a grid of belief in God or no belief in God, and existence of God and no God. The result of this wager is that it is better to believe in God, because then the trade-off is between an afterlife in heaven or no net cost other than the time spent worshiping God; whereas, if one does not believe in God, the trade-off is between not spending time worshiping if God does not exist and eternity in Hell if God does exist. This wager made me start thinking about different ways of conceptualizing God. For Pascal’s wager to work out this way, there needs to be a severe punishment for not believing in God, and this conceptualization of God appears fairly judgemental or demanding. This contrasts to other conceptualizations of God as a forgiving figure, or of God as a non-judgemental figure.
After looking at these different possible forms of God, I tried to identify some of the strengths and weaknesses of each. A punishing God provides the strongest incentive for one to act according to a set of rules or morals, because it sets such a large difference between the good and bad outcomes; however, it also has the potential to introduce a degree of fear into one’s beliefs, and one could end up believing more out of fear of a bad outcome than out of a true belief. A benevolent or non-judgemental God will not have the same motive of fear, which could allow one to act in a way that more closely follows one’s beliefs; however, without a strong incentive for acting according to set morals or rules, there is more possibility for people to act immorally, because there is less cost associated with that action. While Pascal’s Wager only generates its solution for a single conceptualization of God, there are multiple other ways to conceptualize God, and they all have their own sets of strengths and weaknesses. My conclusion was that the best conceptualization of God is a personal choice one must make based on one’s own strengths or desires.
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