What if you're wrong?

By Adam Rutherford

January 11, 2008

The essence of science is doubt, as my old tutor Steve Jones is fond of saying. Scientists continuously look for what is wrong with their work, and this beautiful system of constant challenge results in a continuum, a process, where being wrong is an essential part of gaining knowledge. I like the phrase biologist John Moore used: "science as a way of knowing".

"What if you're wrong?" is a question I was asked over Christmas by a Christian friend. The answer is quite simple: it really depends on what you choose to believe. I'm not a bad man. Surely a God of love will forgive the scepticism that he granted me and let me through the pearly gates? Any being who would send a good person to eternal damnation just because he has no faith doesn't deserve respect, let alone worship. Is this arrogant? No, it's simply logical. I'd love to be wrong. Heaven is surely a better option than nothingness. But there isn't enough doubt about reality for me consider the divine as an option. Many of you will be familiar with Pascal's Wager, a religious contingency plan from the French philosopher scientist, which can be simplified thus: if you believe in God the gains are infinite if he exists and the losses are none if he doesn't; similarly, if you are an atheist and he doesn't exist you've lost nothing. But if he does exist, you're screwed for all eternity. So you might as well believe. It's a cowardly approach to both positions and the wager is flawed. You might as well believe, just in case? No, thanks, I'll take my chances. If I'm wrong, isn't God going to be a bit narked that I only did it just in case?

Unlike science, religion is not a continuum of knowledge acquisition, and doubt is in many ways the opposite of faith. Nietzsche would have you think that Christianity regards doubt as sin, but it certainly is present: as Saint Mick said even Jesus Christ had his moment of doubt and pain. But religious doubt is always directed, its purpose primarily being a means of returning to a more mature and rigid faith. Fundamentalists believe that the Bible is the absolute and infallible word of God, even though they cherry pick which bits of the Bible they chose to follow. Even liberal Christians, those atheists in disguise, may have moments of doubt, but are not compelled to resolve these niggles in the same way a scientist would of his data.

As an atheist who is not willing to write off the faithful as deluded, I'm trying to understand what faith is and what it means to those who have it. I'd like the good faithful of Cif (Comment is Free) to help out with a thought experiment by trying to answer the same question: "What if you're wrong?" Now, due to the annoying scientific untestability of God, the only way I can see you buying into my scheme is if he actually revealed himself only to erase his own existence. "My experiment has gone on long enough, and you really ballsed everything up. Atheists were wrong, but from this moment are now right: I no longer exist." The god of the Bible is capricious and fallible, so I rather like this hypothetical absolute and ultimate U-turn. It sounds like something the God of the Onion might say. Aside from enduring insufferably smug gloating from both sides, the day-to-day lives of the millions of unbelievers will not be changed one jot. We will continue to live by morals that are guided by intrinsic and extrinsic factors, some inherent and some learnt. Many of the latter are derived from historical religious teaching. Former bishop Richard Harries was gracious enough to declare recently that atheists can be moral, and indeed researchers like Marc Hauser and Chris Frith are beginning to unearth a neurological basis for morality. The more scientists like these reveal about the biological nature of complex and uniquely human behaviours like morality, which the religious believe are rooted in their dogma, the less God is required.

But what would it mean to the millions whose actions are guided by faith, and whose lives are given up for the glory of God and the promise of life eternal? Would you go on as before, or would it mark the end of times? I ask this sincerely, not to mock or tease. Here's what Carl Sagan says on the matter: "You can get into a habit of thought in which you enjoy making fun of all those other people who don't see things as clearly as you do. We have to guard carefully against it." I couldn't agree more.

[It’s a good question – What if you are wrong? What difference would it make to your life if you found out that either God existed or that he didn’t? If you knew with 100% confidence that the opposite of what you believed was in fact true…. What would you do?]