The Atheist's Death: A Bad Bargain?
Originally appeared on BMJ.com
31 May 2003
Department of Philosophy
Brown University
vignette; but one point conspicuously demands
scrutiny.
Barraclough contrasts two death beds. He recounts an
atheist whose mind was 'tortured' as he died, thus
presenting a 'disturbing' scene. A faithful monk's death,
however, is recalled as 'serene and peaceful'.
Which death is the better death?
A variant of Pascal's famous wager would seem to
favor faith. Suppose you're about to confront extinction.
If you have faith, you die peacefully -- even if your faith is
false. If you lack faith, you die painfully -- even if your
belief is true. What, then, is there to be gained by
confronting death as an atheist?
But beware. The question only seems rhetorical if we
gainsay a crucial factor: the value of believing the Truth.
If the truth is priceless (or even sufficiently valuable),
then the contented monk has gotten the worse of the
bargain should his faith be a false one.
If this seems a silly bit of accounting, consider this. A
fair number of mathematicians suffer long, painful
bouts of perplexity. For what? To grasp truths few
others -- perhaps _no_ others -- can hope to
understand, never mind validate or celebrate. Now if
such discomfort is a fair price for a dollop of calculus,
then why _isn't_ an agonized death a good bargain for
grasping the truth of the cosmos?
Perhaps this explains the sign which graced the door to
Plato's Academy: 'Let no one enter here', it read, 'who is
ignorant of mathematics'.
Timothy Chambers
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