Evolutionary theory of religion; Pascal's Wager

In the last class Simon clarified Augustine and Pascal's writings on the God-shaped vacuum in our hearts that we long to fill. His point was that God is bigger than that and we shouldn't limit God to our understanding. Do non-Christians experience the same longing and what is their view of that? In other words, how does an atheist scientist explain the world-wide phenomenon of people believing in God? From an evolutionary point of view, belief in God, must have a survival advantage. The New York Times recently had a long article describing this view.

This actually gives Christians a wonderful opportunity to interact. Within this non-Christian article, the author writes, "Suppose science produces a convincing account for why I think my wife loves me — should I then stop believing that she does?" In other words, if the evolutionary view of belief in God is correct, that's all the more reason why they need to explore their beliefs. It is as natural as love. We all indeed have a God-shaped vacuum in our hearts; that is the scientific conclusion. The article concludes, "What can be made of atheists, then? If the evolutionary view of religion is true, they have to work hard at being atheists, to resist slipping into intrinsic habits of mind that make it easier to believe than not to believe."

Page 35 & 70 of the text book is on "Science and Religion" and "Creation and Evolution".

We then looked at Pascal's Wager. Basically belief in God is a better strategy than non-belief because the rewards are infinite if we do so.

	God Exists	God does not exist
Believe	Heaven	n/a
Do not believe	Hell	n/a

In game theory terms, this is a “payoff matrix” and the “believe in God” strategy dominates the “do not believe” strategy. It is a valid application of modern game theory within it’s assumptions. So like the ontological arguments, debates are over the assumptions in this logical argument, not the logic itself.