Philosophy This is a question for reasoning, not for experiment.
The papers of the French mathematician Blaise Pascal held a bet. They were published in 1670, a few years after his death. You cannot prove God exists, Pascal wrote, but you have to live one way or the other. If you bet on God and are right, you gain everything; if you are wrong, you lose little. So bet on God. For three and a half centuries people have argued about Pascal’s wager.
The founder of this site asks himself a different version of the question. Not only “what if I’m wrong about God?”, but “what if all of us are wrong about one thing: that we were meant to fight over God at all?” People of faith and people without it can both ask it. Each tradition, and the humanist one too, already has words for the answer.
“We raise by grades (of mercy) whom We will, and over every lord of knowledge there is one more knowing.”
Qur'an 12:76 · Pickthall (1930)
This line comes in the story of Joseph (peace be upon him), at the moment he outwits his brothers for their own good. Muslim scholars have quoted it for centuries as a check on pride. It is why many end a legal opinion with the words Allahu a’lam, “God knows best”. Paul puts it in his own words: “For now we see in a mirror, dimly” (1 Corinthians 13:12, WEB).
What psychology shows about being wrong
Psychologists have spent decades studying how people handle the possibility that they are mistaken. The results are humbling for everyone, religious or not. People tend to notice evidence that supports what they already think and to overlook evidence against it, a pattern called confirmation bias, first studied in a famous 1960 experiment by Peter Wason at University College London.
In 1999 David Dunning and Justin Kruger at Cornell University found that people who did worst on tests of logic and grammar tended to overestimate their scores the most. The finding has been debated since, but the broad lesson holds: we are often least aware of the limits of what we know exactly where those limits are.
There is better news. Researchers have begun to measure intellectual humility: recognising that your beliefs might be wrong, and being willing to learn. A 2017 study led by Mark Leary at Duke University found that people higher in intellectual humility were better at judging the strength of arguments and less likely to judge people for changing their minds. Later studies have found that intellectual humility goes with less hostility towards people who disagree, on religion and on politics.
Intellectual humility is not the same as having no beliefs. People can be deeply committed and still humble about how much they know. That combination, conviction with humility, is what each faith tradition below says it wants, and what many thoughtful non-religious people want too.
Pascal’s wager, and the replies
The wager. Pascal argued that reason cannot settle whether God exists, but that the stakes are infinite. If there is even a small chance of an infinite reward, betting on God is the rational choice. He advised people who could not believe to live as if they did, and belief might follow.
Seeking matters. Many believers add that what God asks for is not a calculation but sincere seeking, which anyone can begin.
Which God? The “many gods” objection asks: if every faith offers an infinite reward, which one do you bet on? For a site about three faiths, this is the objection that matters most.
Belief isn’t a switch. You can’t simply decide to believe something, and a God worth believing in might not reward belief chosen as a bet. William James and others argued this.
Honest doubt. A sceptic may say: if I am wrong, I would hope that a just and merciful God values honest doubt above pretended belief. T. H. Huxley coined “agnostic” for a person who does not claim to know what cannot be known.
Where it stands
Philosophers still debate the wager. The Qur’an’s own logic is different from a bet: it asks people to look at the signs and reflect (41:53). Pascal belongs to Christian philosophy, and we present him that way.
Places we love, and fight over
Every faith knows the feeling Jacob (peace be upon him) had at Bethel: “How full of awe is this place! this is none other than the house of God” (Genesis 28:17, JPS 1917). And every faith has fought over holy ground. In Jerusalem, the Temple Mount and al-Aqsa sit on one hill, a short walk from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, whose door has been opened each morning for centuries by Muslim keyholders. In Hebron, Genesis says Isaac and Ishmael (peace be upon them) buried their father Abraham together (Genesis 25:9).
Each scripture says God is greater than any place: “heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee” (1 Kings 8:27); true worshippers will worship “in spirit and truth” (John 4:23); “wherever you turn, there is the Face of God” (Qur’an 2:115). If we are wrong about anything, perhaps it is about how much of God we thought we could own.
What each faith says
Judaism
“It hath been told thee, O man, what is good, And what the LORD doth require of thee: Only to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.”
Micah 6:8 · JPS 1917
The Talmud preserves the losing side of arguments next to the winning side. When the schools of Hillel and Shammai disagreed for three years, a heavenly voice declared: “These and these are the words of the living God”, and the law follows Hillel, the Talmud explains, because his school was kind and humble and taught their opponents’ view before their own (Eruvin 13b).
Jewish tradition calls dishonouring God’s Name chillul Hashem, and treats it as one of the worst wrongs. One way to dishonour the Name is to act cruelly in it. The prophet Micah sums up what God asks in three short phrases, the last of which is to “walk humbly”.
Christianity
“For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, even as I was also fully known.”
1 Corinthians 13:12 · WEB
Christian tradition has a long line of teachers who stressed how little we know of God. The fourteenth-century English book The Cloud of Unknowing says God can be reached by love, but never fully by thought. In 1440 Nicholas of Cusa wrote On Learned Ignorance: the wisest person is the one who knows the limits of their knowing.
Paul writes that even faith, hope and knowledge are partial now, and that love is the greatest of them (1 Corinthians 13). Jesus warned those who were sure of their righteousness, in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, that the one who humbled himself went home right with God (Luke 18:9–14).
Islam
“So vie one with another in good works. Unto Allah ye will all return, and He will then inform you of that wherein ye differ.”
Qur'an 5:48 · Pickthall (1930)
Al-Ghazali, one of Islam’s greatest scholars, wrote that around 1095 he fell into doubt so deep that he questioned even his own senses and reason, for about two months, until, he says, a light that God cast into his heart restored him (Deliverance from Error). Abraham (peace be upon him) asked God to show him how He gives life to the dead, “only so that my heart may be at rest” (Qur’an 2:260). Doubt and seeking are part of the story of faith, not outside it.
The Qur’an also says “There is no compulsion in religion. The right direction is henceforth distinct from error. And he who rejecteth false deities and believeth in Allah hath grasped a firm handhold which will never break. Allah is Hearer, Knower.” (2:256, Pickthall), and that God will one day settle the questions people differ over: “So vie one with another in good works. Unto Allah ye will all return, and He will then inform you of that wherein ye differ.” (5:48, Pickthall). It even protects places of worship of other faiths, “Those who have been driven from their homes unjustly only because they said: Our Lord is Allah - For had it not been for Allah's repelling some men by means of others, cloisters and churches and oratories and mosques, wherein the name of Allah is oft mentioned, would assuredly have been pulled down. Verily Allah helpeth one who helpeth Him. Lo! Allah is Strong, Almighty -.” (22:40, Pickthall).
Without religion
“Roughly speaking, the word humanist has come to mean someone who … makes their ethical decisions based on reason, empathy, and a concern for human beings and other sentient animals”
Humanists UK, ‘What is humanism?’ · original English
Non-religious people have their own version of this question. Agnostics make not-knowing a principle: T. H. Huxley coined the word in 1869, and Charles Darwin wrote in 1879 that ‘agnostic’ best described his state of mind. The physicist Richard Feynman told the BBC in 1981 that he could live with doubt and not knowing, and found it more interesting than answers that might be wrong.
Many humanists say plainly that they could be wrong about God. What matters to them is that, either way, nobody is harmed over it. Their usual reply to Pascal is the sceptic’s on this page: a good God, if there is one, would surely value honest doubt over a calculated bet. And if there is no one to answer to, the way we treat each other is all the more ours to get right.
Same and different
Each of the three faiths teaches that God is greater than human understanding, that pride is dangerous, and that people will answer to God for how they treated each other. All three keep stories of doubt inside their own scripture and tradition. They differ in what they think is at stake if we are wrong: questions of salvation, covenant and judgement are answered differently in each, and we do not blur them. Thoughtful non-religious people share the humility, and add the possibility that there is no one to answer to, which makes how we treat each other now matter even more.
A moment to reflect
- What is one belief you hold that you would find hardest to give up? What would it take?
- Is it possible to be completely committed to your faith, or your lack of it, and still humble? What does that look like?
- If you met your Creator, or found there was none, what would you want to have done with your life?
- Which place would you protect for someone of another faith?
Watch
Pascal’s wager and its main objections, explained fairly.
A short philosophy lesson on the wager and the “many gods” problem.
Philosophers of different views on what, if anything, makes belief in God reasonable.
A UK interfaith youth worker on why talking about religion is so hard, and how to do it well.
Do it together
In pairs, each person argues for the other’s view on a question about God for three minutes, as well as they can. Then the other person says how fair it was. Swap.
Visit a place of worship that is not your own during Inter Faith Week (November) or a Visit My Mosque day. Ask your hosts what the place means to them.
For one week, when someone in the family says something they are not sure about, practise saying “I might be wrong” or “God knows best”. Talk about how it felt at the end of the week.
At the Jewish New Year, many Jews walk to a river or the sea for tashlikh, ‘casting off’. They throw crumbs into the water as a sign of letting go of wrongs. Walk to water together and each name, privately, one thing you were sure of and got wrong.
Quaker meetings for worship begin in shared silence; anyone may stand and speak if moved to. Visitors of any faith or none are welcome. Go together, then talk about what it is like to sit with not-knowing in company.
Go deeper
- Pascal’s Wager (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) · article
- Eruvin 13b, ‘These and these’ (Sefaria) · scripture
- Qur'an 5:48 (Quran.com) · scripture
- 1 Corinthians 13 (Bible Gateway, WEB) · scripture
- Intellectual humility research (Templeton) · article
- Quakers in Britain · article
- Understanding Humanism: resources for schools (Humanists UK) · article
Check yourself
Three quick questions. No score, nothing saved.
1. What does Pascal's wager advise?
2. Which question do critics put to the wager?
3. Qur'an 12:76 says that above every possessor of knowledge is…
Sources (6)
- Pascal’s wager and the many-gods, voluntarism and moral objections: Hájek, Pascal’s Wager, SEP, 2022
- Wason 1960 confirmation bias experiment: Wason, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 12(3), 1960
- Dunning and Kruger 1999: Kruger and Dunning, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77(6), 1999
- Intellectual humility and judging arguments (Leary et al.): Leary et al., Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 43(6), 2017
- Huxley coined ‘agnostic’ in 1869: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Agnosticism
- Al-Ghazali’s crisis of doubt, about two months: SEP, al-Ghazali
