quasicurus
2006-05-16, 15:52
Excerpt from Andre Comte-Sponville’s The Little Book of Philosophy (English translation):
If I do not believe in God it is also, perhaps especially, because I would rather that He did exist. This is something of an inversion of Pascal’s wager. It is not important that an idea be advantageous to us − thought is not a business or a lottery − but that it should be plausible. And yet God seems to be less plausible than he is advantageous: He accords so closely to our keenest desires that we have to wonder whether we did not create Him to that end.
What do we desire more than anything? Not to die, to be reunited with loved ones we have lost, to be loved… And what does Christianity tell us? That we will not die, or not really, that we will be raised up again; secondly, that we will be reunited with the loved ones we have lost; lastly we are now and will for ever be loved by an infinite love… What more could we ask? Nothing, obviously: that’s what makes religion improbable! By what miracle would reality, so atypically, accord so perfectly with our desires? This does not prove that God does not exist − since He, by definition, could make such a miracle possible − but it does make one wonder whether God isn’t too good to be true, whether we are not simply deluding ourselves, whether religion is not simply an illusion, in the Freudian sense of the word: not necessarily an error (it is possible, after all, that God exists), but “a belief derived from human wishes”. Though this does not refute the existence of God, it makes the possibility of His existence more tenuous. “We shall tell ourselves that it would be very nice if there is a God who created the world and was a benevolent Providence, and if there were a moral order in the universe and an after-life; but it is a very striking fact that all this is exactly as we are bound to wish it to be”. To believe in God is to believe in Santa Claus to a power of a thousand, or rather to the power of infinity. It is to provide ourselves with a surrogate Father who will console us for the failings or the loss of our actual fathers, He will be true Justice, true Love, true Power, and He will accept us and love us for what we are, he will fulfill us, He will save us… I can well understand why we might wish for such a thing. But why should we believe in it? “Faith saves,” said Nietzsche, “therefore it lies.” Let us simply admit that God is a little too convenient for us not to find Him suspect.
Suppose I say to you: “I’m looking to buy a three-bedroom flat in Paris behind the Jardin du Luxembourg with a magnificent view of the park… I don’t want to spend more than €10,000; but I’m confident, I believe!” Obviously you’d think: “He’s deluding himself; he’s confusing what he wants with what he can get…” Obviously, you’d be right (though that, strictly speaking, proves nothing: who knows whether I’ll come across some crazy person who’ll sell it to me?). And yet when I tell you that God exists, that we will be resurrected, etc., you don’t find that a little more unbelievable than a three-bedroom flat with a view of the Jardin du Luxembourg for less than ten grand? Either you have a very poor opinion of God, or a very high one of a real estate!
The position of the atheist is reinforced by the fact that, as often as not, he would like to be wrong. This does not prove that he is right, but it leaves him less open to the suspicion that, like others, he believes simply to console or reassure himself…
If I do not believe in God it is also, perhaps especially, because I would rather that He did exist. This is something of an inversion of Pascal’s wager. It is not important that an idea be advantageous to us − thought is not a business or a lottery − but that it should be plausible. And yet God seems to be less plausible than he is advantageous: He accords so closely to our keenest desires that we have to wonder whether we did not create Him to that end.
What do we desire more than anything? Not to die, to be reunited with loved ones we have lost, to be loved… And what does Christianity tell us? That we will not die, or not really, that we will be raised up again; secondly, that we will be reunited with the loved ones we have lost; lastly we are now and will for ever be loved by an infinite love… What more could we ask? Nothing, obviously: that’s what makes religion improbable! By what miracle would reality, so atypically, accord so perfectly with our desires? This does not prove that God does not exist − since He, by definition, could make such a miracle possible − but it does make one wonder whether God isn’t too good to be true, whether we are not simply deluding ourselves, whether religion is not simply an illusion, in the Freudian sense of the word: not necessarily an error (it is possible, after all, that God exists), but “a belief derived from human wishes”. Though this does not refute the existence of God, it makes the possibility of His existence more tenuous. “We shall tell ourselves that it would be very nice if there is a God who created the world and was a benevolent Providence, and if there were a moral order in the universe and an after-life; but it is a very striking fact that all this is exactly as we are bound to wish it to be”. To believe in God is to believe in Santa Claus to a power of a thousand, or rather to the power of infinity. It is to provide ourselves with a surrogate Father who will console us for the failings or the loss of our actual fathers, He will be true Justice, true Love, true Power, and He will accept us and love us for what we are, he will fulfill us, He will save us… I can well understand why we might wish for such a thing. But why should we believe in it? “Faith saves,” said Nietzsche, “therefore it lies.” Let us simply admit that God is a little too convenient for us not to find Him suspect.
Suppose I say to you: “I’m looking to buy a three-bedroom flat in Paris behind the Jardin du Luxembourg with a magnificent view of the park… I don’t want to spend more than €10,000; but I’m confident, I believe!” Obviously you’d think: “He’s deluding himself; he’s confusing what he wants with what he can get…” Obviously, you’d be right (though that, strictly speaking, proves nothing: who knows whether I’ll come across some crazy person who’ll sell it to me?). And yet when I tell you that God exists, that we will be resurrected, etc., you don’t find that a little more unbelievable than a three-bedroom flat with a view of the Jardin du Luxembourg for less than ten grand? Either you have a very poor opinion of God, or a very high one of a real estate!
The position of the atheist is reinforced by the fact that, as often as not, he would like to be wrong. This does not prove that he is right, but it leaves him less open to the suspicion that, like others, he believes simply to console or reassure himself…