What Is The Atheist's Wager?

In this regular feature Dave and Tom respond to questions from listeners and readers of The Berean Call, here’s this week’s question: Dear Dave and Tom, You have made a reference to Pascal’s Wager suggesting that it is a better gamble to believe in God and live by his rules, be accountable to him, and expect what he says will follow after death than to be an atheist, and have no belief in what follows after death. The idea behind this is that a believer has everything to gain if he or she is right, and nothing to lose if he is wrong. Whereas if the atheist is wrong and the believer in God is right, the atheist is in serious trouble. Although I’m in agreement, I thought you might be interested in the atheist’s wager, which I would like you to comment on: You should live your life, and try to make the world a better place for your being in it, whether or not you believe in God. If there is no God, you have lost nothing, and will be remembered fondly by those you left behind. If there is a benevolent God, he may judge you on your merits coupled with your commitments, and not just on whether or not you believed in him.

Tom:

Seems like they’re making up an idea of God, the very least we could say is, in this wager, this is not the Biblical God.

Dave:

Well Tom, now people often say, Well, if I live a good life. Well, I ask them a simple question; By whose standards? You know, I was driving with a Sikh, quite a long journey in a limousine to go to a conference.

Tom:

This would be a Hindu.

Dave:

Well, it’s a sect of Hinduism. And I’m trying to witness to him, give him the gospel. Well, first of all, he doesn’t think he’s a sinner, he doesn’t need Christ, he’s not a sinner, he’s lived a good life. And I said, Well, you know, the very first commandment is, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, strength, mind, and so forth, and you love your neighbor as yourself. And I think you know in your conscience that that’s what you ought to do. Well, he says, I haven’t done that for one second. So, whose standard are we talking about? Well, if I live a good life—wait a minute, what about—you see, what about your motives? You never lusted, you never were selfish? It only takes one sin to be a sinner, it takes one murder to be a murderer, and it’s God who is going to judge you. You’re going to have to go by His standards, and he’s laid them out. Now, if you want to say, I don’t need to accept Christ, you sent Christ to die for my sins, he’s God who became a man, and this is what you said was the penalty that had to be paid, and—No, I don’t think I need to go by that. You’re like Adam and Eve back in the Garden. Well, God says, Don’t eat of this tree—Ah, I think we can do that. So, first of all you are proving that that you are a rebel. You are not willing to accept what God says, and I would say that that is very, very serious.

Tom:

Mmhmm. And Dave, it’s amazing, all of this goes back to the lie of the serpent, which is Satan, in the Garden of Eden. He began by; Yea, has God said? So, God’s standards? Well, wait a minute, are you sure those are the standards? God’s rules, is it really a rule? Do we really need to conform to this—is that really what God meant? Wow! That’s the way it began, and we’re seeing it now, I mean, I hate to just say in spades, but it’s just in overwhelming ways.

Dave:

Tom, the Bible lays it out pretty clearly. Romans Chapter two—Romans Chapter one says everybody knows God exists. And you know that He has to be a personal being to bring this into existence, and to bring us into existence, no question about that. Romans Chapter 2 says: Everyone knows that God has laws. We’ve got laws for the universe, He must have moral laws as well. In fact it says, His laws are written in the conscience, everyone’s conscience. It says when the Gentiles who have not the law, in other words they didn’t get it on Mount Sinai, do by nature the things that are contained in the law, they are a law unto themselves, they bear witness of the law written in their hearts. And now here’s what it says: Accusing or excusing one another. Now, they are judging one another. How are they doing it? By what they know in their conscience to be right and wrong. So I could just ask this person, Well, can you tell me that you have always lived up to your conscience? Does your conscience tell you that right now that what you are saying in rebellion against God, you are not willing to accept his terms? Are you saying that that does not violate your conscience? I think you’ve got some serious problems.

Tom:

Dave, it’s also interesting that if we could have a person—say alright, there is no God, but you make up a list of rules for yourself, okay, based on what you believe is, you know, has to do with integrity and good morality and so on, make that list up. I guarantee you, they can’t live up to their own list, let alone the standard that God has set.

Dave:

Right, and we mentioned last week, we talked briefly about Michael Vick last week; trained dogs to fight, and finally was arrested for this. There was an outcry from everyone, nobody complained, You’re being too harsh on him, because everyone in their conscience knew that’s not the thing to do. This wasn’t something that society had discussed, and we’d come to some agreement about it. This is in the conscience, and you can’t really escape that, and if you’re going to take your own way, set your own standards, your conscience will tell you, you just don’t do that with God.

Tom:

Yeah, I’m also thinking about the governor of New York, he made a commitment to his wife, broke that commitment, I mean, that’s a matter of conscience even more than, well, society says.

Dave:

Right.