Fun with Math

I read this concept in a book that I had to read for school, and have been meaning to share it with you all for about a week. Pascal was a mathematician from the 1600s that discovered that it was a wise and correct decision to become a Christian. He believed his theory so much that he disgarded his math and science background and became a theologian for the rest of his days. Pascal used what is called probability theory to justify his choice to become a Christian and theologian.

For those of you who don't know/don't care about probability theory, let me try to explain it to you. Suppose you have a choice between two envelopes (A and B). In envelope A, there is 10 dollars and in envelope B there is 100 dollars. Your job is to choose an envelope and then a coin will be flipped. The two sides of the coin represents the two evelopes, heads for A and tails for B. If you chose the envelope that the coin represents, you get to keep the money. Understand so far? Now there are four outcomes to this little game. 1. The coin lands on heads and you chose envelope A. 2. The coin lands on heads and you chose envelope B. 3. The coin lands on tails and you chose envelope A. 4. The coin lands on tails and you chose envelope B.

Probability theory calculates the expected money that you could get. That is, since there is 10 dollars in envelope A and the chances of the coin landing on heads is 50%, the expected amount of money for this choice is 5 dollars. Likewise, since there is 100 dollars in envelope B and the same chances, the expected amount of money for this choice is 50 dollars. Since the expected value of envelope B is much greater than envelope A, the correct choice in this game is envelope B. Now most of you probably used your intuition to choose envelope B and didn't even think about the expected values, but that is the mathematical explanation of your intuition.

So lets take our little game and use it with Christianity. So we have two separate conditions: either you are a believer or a non-believer, and either Jesus saves us from hell and believers go to heaven, or heaven and hell don't exist. Once again, there are four outcomes. 1. You are a believer and you go to heaven. 2. You are a believer and heaven doesn't exist, so nothing happens. 3. You are not a believer and you go to hell. 4. You are not a believer and hell doesn't exist, so nothing happens. Pascal assigned a numerical value of infinity to heaven because heaven is eternal bliss with Jesus and he assigned a numerical value of negative infinity to hell because it is eternal damnation. So in his probability theory he assumed the chances of there being a God and Jesus coming down to save us was 50-50. It looked something like this:

Believers:

God exists (50%) and you go to heaven: 50% of infinity=infinity.
God doesn't exist (50%) and nothing happens: 50% of 0=0.

So the expected value of being a believer is infinity + 0, which is infinity.

Non-Believers:

God exists (50%) and you go to hell: 50% of negative infinity=negative infinity.
God doesn't exist (50%) and nothing happens: 50% of 0= 0.

So the expected value of being a non-believer is negative infinity + 0, which is negative infinity.

We don't know the exact probability that God exists, but by using the properties of infinity and zero, you can see that those percentages do not matter. Say there is a 20% chance that God exists, 20% of infinity is still infinity! Say there is a 0.00001% chance that God exists....still infinity. The only way this does not make since is if there is a 0% chance that God does not exist. In math, you cannot do 0 x infinity, its gibberish. Since nobody on this earth can prove that there is a 0% chance that God exists, I'm siding with my old friend Pascal on this one and living my life for Jesus.

I hope this made a little bit of sense to you because I found it to be very profound and interesting.