The Big Bang

I am tempted to spend my last 500 words nostalgically reminiscing about my first, last and only semester writing a column. Maybe it’s because I haven’t been writing for the newspaper for very long or maybe it’s because, as some have suggested, I have a big black hole where my soul used to be.

But I’m not going to do that.

Part of me is also tantalized by the thought of using this article to defend myself, but admittedly, most of my articles are filled with some combination of satire, sarcasm, unnecessary pop culture references and ludicrous premises (read: jackassery). So that’s not going to happen either.

Nope. Instead, I’m going to opine one last time.

When I stop to think about it within the roulette game that we call life, death and religion, atheism is kind of the sucker’s bet. Don’t get me wrong. I have no problem with atheism. It is completely your right to choose the theology of having no theology.

Instead my commentary comes from a paradox. Despite its claim as the belief of intellectuals — which is rooted in facts, reason and science — the choice to be an atheist doesn’t seem to be a very logical one. 

Fact: We can never empirically prove or disprove the existence of a god, an afterlife or the possibility of some eternal punishment. It is just something we all have to find out for ourselves when we shuffle off this mortal coil.

With this foundation established, economically, atheism has the lowest expected payoff of any system of belief.

Compare the rewards of atheism to its archrival of Christianity. If the atheist is correct, he has the complete satisfaction of being right.

However, he would never know he was right just as the Christian would never know he was wrong because they are both incoherently dead. Oppositely, however, if the Christian is accurate in his beliefs, he is in paradise. The atheist, in the meantime, is suffering in hell.

Thus, as there is no benefit from being right and extreme disincentive for being wrong, it can be extrapolated that the expected payoff for atheism is negative.

By the same analysis, Christianity’s expected payoff would be positive. Economically, the rational individual would always select Christianity because it strictly dominates atheism in regards to incentives.

Therein lies the conundrum. From a simple, lucid analysis the religion of rationalism seems somewhat irrational. Then again, every religion has its fair share of oddities, impossibilities and absurdities.

But hey, that’s why it’s called faith, right?

­­— smech@indiana.edu