The Theory of Evolution: Do Science and Religion Really Have Anything to Fight Over?


by Henry Piper (all rights reserved)

The Theory of Evolution
            In distinguishing the respective fields of science, religion and philosophy we have noted that science is about understanding the physical causes of physical events in the material world using the physical senses; it employs the “scientific method,” which produces reliable results, based on observation and experimentation, the reliability of whose results is based on their verification and repeatability.
            There can be no reasonable dispute that the scientific theory of Evolution, as a general theory of life on earth, has proven to be substantially and even overwhelmingly reliable and accurate in its account of life and how species change and develop over time.  This theory itself, like all scientific theories, continues to “evolve” as additional observations are made and additional technologies developed, enabling more precision in dating methods, for example; and the science of genetics has revolutionized evolutionary science, without however affecting its basic outline.  In short, Evolution, as a general explanation of life on earth, is about as “true” as a scientific theory can get.  But let’s not omit to remember the limitations of science which we have discussed above: the very fact that Evolution continues to progress reminds us that no scientific “truth” is absolutely and necessarily true in the way that 2+3=5 is true, for example.  Although there is overwhelming factual evidence that supports it, and no meaningful factual evidence that questions its basic conclusions, as a scientific theory it is fallible and thus can never be perfect and will forever be subject to revision and adjustment.    
            However, since Evolution first gained acceptance in the scientific community, over a century ago, many religious groups have felt it to be a challenge to their faith.  Notably, it is fair to say that most religious groups do not feel that way: most religious people who are interested in science have considered the overwhelming evidence supporting Evolution, along with the rationality of its explanations, and accepted it on the basis of the facts and the reasoning.  But in recent decades in The United States, the attacks on Evolution by some religious groups have become fierce and have gained substantial political exposure.  More recently, moreover, some scientists have themselves become fierce in their defense of Evolution theory and, not content to defend Evolution on its own terms, have ventured further to declare overtly that science establishes that God is not needed in the universe at all or, more extreme yet, that science establishes positively that God does not exist.
            But does religion have any place in the purely scientific study of material nature?  And does Evolution really threaten or demean religion, and is science competent to consider the existence of God?  I believe it is clear that the answer to these questions is no, and it is the purpose of this essay to explain why.  Thus in what follows I shall first consider why certain arguments against Evolution made by some religious groups are needless and unfounded; then I shall do the same for the scientists, as I shall explain why science is not competent to engage in matters of religion and moreover that science can never definitively prove the negative―that God does not exist―no matter how much it might ultimately tell us about the physical world.  We shall see, I hope, that both sides are making the same general mistake, which might be called a “category mistake”: both sides are foisting the categories of their own area of expertise onto an entirely different field to which their categories and methods have no application.  Thus, seizing upon the vagaries and gaps of physical facts, the religious Evolution opponents are blurring the distinction between religion and science, sometimes claiming that scientists are engaging in religion, on the basis of the fact that scientists’ conclusions are not absolute; for their part, some scientists claim, on the basis of science’s having exploded superstitions and myths of the past which we can now attribute to scientific ignorance, that all belief in supernatural or spiritual reality will be exploded as well. 
            I mean to explain that both these points of view are simply wrong: they cannot reasonably be supported by the available facts and good reasoning, and both points of view betray fundamental misunderstandings of the respective subjects and methodologies of science, religion and philosophy.  In brief, I shall try to explain how science and religion occupy separate realms of human experience and endeavor—in brief, though overly-simplistic terms, the realms of the physical and the spiritual, respectively.  Both science and religion have brought great benefits to humanity, and both have also at times caused severe harm; but both deserve the respect of being understood on their own terms, and in the case of both prudence insists that we learn to exercise a reasonable degree of skepticism.  Moreover, it is frequently the case that, where religionists claim to be doing science and where scientists intrude upon religion, they are both in fact engaging in philosophy, and both sides would have a great deal to offer, in philosophical terms, to each other and to the world at large, if they would be willing to recognize the philosophical nature of what they are doing.
We all, presumably, would like to live in a world where we can confidently seek, accrue and rely upon scientific knowledge of the physical world, while at the same time pursuing a spiritual path if we so choose, which might afford us a kind of personal and communal truth that science is powerless to provide.  Consider, for example, that in matters of mental health science might reasonably prescribe chemical medication; however, we might be well-advised also to consider spiritual meditation, which has been scientifically proven to be medically beneficial.

Religion v. Evolution
            For decades now, the politics of Evolution and religion have largely taken the form of whether Evolution should be taught in the public schools, and whether or not “creationism” or “creation science” should also be taught.  Creationism took various forms, but it was consistent in explicitly invoking religious themes, especially Christian, Biblical ones, and thus has been uniformly disallowed by courts as violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits the government (through for example the public schools) from “establishing” (through a school curriculum, for example) any religious viewpoint.
            More recently, in response to these setbacks in the courts, religious opponents of Evolution have rallied behind an idea known as “Intelligent Design” (“ID”).  In order to protect it against court challenges to religious doctrine, ID puts itself forth as a “scientific” theory and typically avoids use of religious language or references (though many of its proponents readily admit that it envisions a Christian God as the “intelligent designer”).  One issue to consider is whether it qualifies as “science,” or rather whether it is not simply religious creationism in a new guise.  But first we should examine its philosophical foundations, which are substantial.  

The Argument for the Existence of God from Design
            Over the centuries, many proofs for the existence of God have been put forward, and one of the most venerable is the argument from design.  In essence, it asks us to examine the natural world and to observe the extraordinary degree of harmony and order often manifest there, especially in the intricacy of life forms.  From there the argument asks, could such harmony and order have come about by random, blind natural causes?  No, the argument asserts, the movements and patterns and complex inter-workings of natural phenomena and living organisms manifest a conscious, intentional purpose, or design.  Thus some entity, invisible to us, must have set the universe in motion and governs its movements to create the harmony and order we are all witness to.  Further, many things in nature, especially living things, seem clearly to be motivated to achieve a specified goal or end, as an acorn seems peculiarly and ingeniously “designed” to become an oak tree, even though these things clearly are incapable of formulating such a goal for themselves. 
            Thus, in short, there must be some force in the universe, with intelligence, will and power comprehending and exceeding all of nature itself―a supernatural power―responsible for all this, and this is the very definition of God, thus God must exist.  To be sure, although we can discern the various goals and purposes in many natural things, and the physical mechanisms that cause them, we are presumably incapable at least at present to discern whatever overall purpose the universe may have; therefore, God may well be utterly transcendent and unknowable to us, and therefore there may be strict limits to what we can know of God.  Still, the existence of God, according to the argument, must be evident to us, for there clearly seems to be an intelligent mover in the universe even if we cannot clearly discern His purposes and ways.
            A famous example of the design argument asks us to consider a watch, washed up on the beach, say, discovered by a girl shipwrecked and orphaned as an infant and brought up on a desert island by wolves.  This girl has never seen another human being or artifact and for all she knows none exist.  But on examining the watch, notably the complexity of its works, gears, wheels and springs intricately interconnected to produce a steady, uniform, circular motion, she cannot fail to infer, upon rational reflection (which nature has outfitted her to engage in, though she lacks all formal instruction) that the watch was constructed on the basis of some design and must have some purpose, though she would have no way to know who that designer is or what that purpose might be.  But suddenly, upon reflection, she could well be expected to be able to conclude, “I am not alone!”, that is, there must be some other like me who can think.
             The argument suggests, of course, that the watch is like the intricate design of nature, and any of us, looking at the unspeakably complex and wonderful intricacies of the uniform motions of the earth and planets and stars, galaxies and the universe itself, must inescapably conclude that there is something behind it all, even if that something exceeds our powers of comprehension and observation.

The Contribution of Intelligent Design: “Irreducible Complexity”
            The proponents of ID take the argument from design to a new level with the addition of a fundamental addition known as “irreducible complexity.”  This idea is clearly an interesting one, and may well substantially advance the philosophical value of the argument, though whether it thereby qualifies as “science” is another matter.
            In brief, ID observes that certain living structures involve an interrelation of distinct parts.  In such structures, each part serves a very narrow and specific purpose in the context of the whole of which it is a part.  ID claims that there are numerous cases of this sort in nature when such individual parts, which are complex in themselves, would be extremely unlikely to evolve individually, along the lines of Evolution theory, unless they were previously conceived as playing their unique role in the greater structure of which they eventually form a part—there would simply be no reason for them to develop.  Though in principle anything that is possible could theoretically develop randomly given sufficient time, ID asserts that the mathematical probabilities are such as to make it functionally impossible that such complex structures, and their formation into the living, functioning wholes of which they are a part, could form with the natural randomness proposed by Evolution theory.   

Does ID Qualify as Science?
            ID is clearly a direct outgrowth from the traditional philosophical argument from design, but adds significantly to it conceptually as well as potentially adding a dimension of mathematical rigor.  From a scientific point of view, however, it is problematic.
            First, it is unspeakably difficult, indeed at present surely impossible, to fix reliably what the mathematical probabilities of certain natural phenomena may be.  ID often purports to accomplish such probability equations, but the overwhelming body of scientists, when applying reliable methods of observation and mathematical analysis, uniformly reject such ID claims on a purely mathematical or scientific basis: we are far from being able to ascertain how improbable certain complex structures might in fact be.  In short, though there is no disagreement that countless living structures are extremely complex, we can hardly conclude that such complexity is “irreducible,” that is, incapable of being “reduced” to the natural, physical causes of science.
            Moreover, the “explanation” that ID offers for life on earth is overtly non-scientific, for this “explanation” is of course an “intelligent designer” (obviously God and often a recognizably Christian God to boot) who by definition is inexplicable.  In other words, the “explanation” is effectively that “there is no explanation.”  But science, by definition, is about discerning natural, physical causes, and thus it is simply not science to resort to a supernatural non-explanation.
            Science has proven time and again, through the ages, that natural phenomena that are highly improbable and deeply mysterious can nonetheless ultimately be accounted for by the natural, physical causes which it is the job of science to investigate.  Unlike ID, science is committed to finding such causes for everything, and is never content to surrender, so to speak, to inexplicability: for the scientist, there must be an explanation, although admittedly this is arguably itself an article of faith, since we do not have all the explanations yet.  And scientists may be wrong: there may not be a scientific explanation for everything; but ID simply does not, and can not, give us sufficient reason to conclude that.

Various Versions of ID
            It is important to note that there are different versions of ID.  The “Young Earth” IDers assert that the Bible is literally true as to the dating of life, based on the six days of creation in Genesis and the various genealogies which appear throughout the Bible.  Apart from being overtly based on religion, however, the Young Earth view is utterly at odds with extremely reliable scientific dating methods. 
            A less radical version of ID is known as the “Old Earth” view because it agrees that scientific theory may well be correct that the age of the universe is much older than the literal interpretation of the Bible espoused by the Young Earthers would insist; however, many proponents of this version of ID insist that “the intelligent designer” is the exclusive force at work in the creation and development of life on earth, and thus that Evolution theory (and for example its conclusion that humans are descended from apes) is wrong.  The problem with this view, again, is that the physical evidence in support of Evolution, including for example our descent from apes, is overwhelming, so we might ask, even if there is a God who is responsible for life, why would He make it so convincing that certain natural forces are at work in the evolution of the species?  That God is intentionally misleading or deceiving us would seem an unlikely charge to make against a perfect, all-loving God, even on theological terms.

ID as a Philosophical Theory
            The least radical version of ID is one that applies the Old Earth view of the time before life to the time since the beginning of life as well.  It asserts that, while the complex structures of living things could not have evolved without the motivation of an intelligent design, nonetheless the overwhelming evidence supporting Evolution theory cannot be ignored either; therefore, this version of ID concludes, Evolution is basically correct as a scientific theory, but Evolution itself is the work of the intelligent designer―Evolution is true, but it is God’s own invention.
            This is a reasonable, philosophical point of view.  It is not theological because it makes no religious assumptions and is based strictly on rational argument while paying due regard to the empirical, scientific evidence and reasoning; but it is philosophical and not scientific because it goes beyond purely empirical verification to engage in rational speculation—i.e. philosophy—about matters beyond the purely physical domain of science.  As we have seen, it adds to the traditional philosophical argument from design the additional, specific consideration of complexity, making the claim, as we have seen, that certain natural complexity is “irreducible,” that is, not capable of being explained by purely physical, evolutionary means alone. 
            This philosophical view of ID is rejected by many if not all IDers, however, first because it affords inadequate deference to God, and second, because IDers want to claim scientific legitimacy for their ideas, and not just philosophical, in order to justify its inclusion in public school curricula alongside of, if not in place of, Evolution. 
            So we can conclude of ID that it could have an invaluable contribution to make to philosophy and theology, but as science it is not credible.  However, as we shall see shortly, substantially the same can be said of certain of ID’s opponents on the scientific side, whom we can refer to as the “atheistic evolutionists”—those scientists who, not content to stick to the proper domain of science, venture to assert the non-existence of God, which, as we shall see, they are in no reasonable position to do. 
            Before getting to that, however, one more philosophical note about ID is in order, which will provide a transition to the philosophical contribution that scientists might make as long as they don’t insist on exceeding the bounds of science itself.   

Intelligence and Design, or Randomness and Chaos?
            Though it seemed reasonable to the ancients that lightning could only be explained by the caprice of a Zeus, since no known, scientific explanation seemed even remotely likely, we now perhaps chuckle at their perceived naiveté; so the ID movement should perhaps reflect that the history of science has in substantial part been a process of “explaining the inexplicable.”  But quite apart from the current scientific shortcomings of ID, it also faces certain philosophical questions as well, which it inherits from the argument from design. 
             As for the “design” that the universe appears to manifest, it does seem obvious as we gaze at the heavens or at the intricacies of the veins in a leaf—not to speak of the human brain—that the universe displays an extraordinary (and for the design argument and ID, an unaccountable or “irreducible”) degree of order.  But the miniscule snapshot of which our perception consists may be profoundly misleading, for in the context of cosmic time, the little bit of order we perceive may be but a brief, passing accident in what is otherwise a great whirl of random physical events.  Indeed, living things, which seem obviously to contribute order to the universe, to the contrary may be effectively engaged in breaking up ordered systems, serving ultimately, in the cosmic scope of things, to perpetuate chaos and randomness.  In other words, life on earth may represent but a brief and fleeting ordering which is in fact a simple accident within a far greater universe of disorder.  One obvious way we humans could contribute to disorder is by blowing up the earth and ending all life on earth, which we seem well able, and perhaps even inclined, to do.
            As for the “intelligence” of the grand “design,” this may simply be a function of our own narrow and self-centered perspective, combined perhaps with wishful thinking.  Frankly, I for one am strongly inclined to think there’s more to it than that, and that there is some meaning in all of this, but mine is a very particular, limited and narrow perspective indeed.  Philosophy is a vital endeavor that gives me the ability to extend my otherwise radically subjective perspective toward more objective boundaries, but in any event it seems unreasonable to conclude that the order and intelligence that we may be inclined to take for granted is really what it appears to be.  Again, science has made a mockery of the ideas of many very smart and reflective people before, and there is every reason to believe that it will continue to do so.
            Having said that, we must reiterate that, as long as the ID proponents are true to the facts of science and the laws of reason and mathematics, they have a valuable philosophical contribution to make, and, to be sure, their ultimate conclusion may be right: God may exist and work through the wonders of nature we experience every day.  Sound philosophical reasoning gives us many reasons to respect the idea of a grand designer, in principle; it only loses our respect when it calls itself science and then proceeds nonsensically to ignore the factual record, which is what science is all about and which confirms the scientific reliability of Evolution.
            However, ID may also be wrong, and there are good reasons against it as well; there may be no God, indeed the world may be entirely material and science may at some future time explain absolutely everything that is according to experimentally verifiable, physical laws.  Who knows?  The proponents of ID do not, I suggest.  But neither do the scientists, notwithstanding claims to the contrary that some of them have, in recent years, felt moved to advance.

How Far Can Science Go?
            We have already noted that, as a scientific theory, Evolution is universally accepted because of the overwhelming evidence that supports it.  This means that scientists are in agreement, based on the verification afforded by repeated observations over time (which all of us can observe for ourselves if we are so inclined), as to the natural process by which species have progressed through genetic mutation and natural selection, which means that as genetic changes in individuals and species occur, those changes in species and individuals are likely to continue through succeeding generations to the extent that they help individuals and species survive.  Recently, evolutionary theory has focused increasingly not on species and individuals, in fact, but on individual genes, the likelihood of the survival of which through successive generations is tied to the success of the individuals and species of which they are a part.  In any event, though Evolution theory develops all the time, with much discussion and debate as new theories within the overall theory are advanced and new experimental and fossil discoveries are made, Evolution theory itself forms the basis of all modern biology.
            Some biologists, however, a well-known contemporary example being Richard Dawkins, have gone beyond exploring and explaining Evolution (which Dawkins, for one, does very well, in my view) to claim that Evolution has done away with the need for God, and moreover that God does not exist.  These of course are two different things: one can believe that life does not need God and still believe that God exists, or that God has played a role in some aspects of life while generally overseeing the evolutionary process, or that God designed Evolution and got it started but is now content to let it play out naturally, etc.  Again we must say, “Who knows?”   Anything is of course possible (as scientists today, especially quantum physicists, seem continually to assert).  To assert positively that God does not exist, however, is simply, I suggest, not reasonable, and we should by now already have a sense of why this is so.
            Recall that science is the study of the material world using the physical senses, along with reason, logic and mathematics; notably it is not concerned with the “supernatural,” because it is the mission of science to observe the physical causes of material phenomena, things that can be physically observed, and since by definition the “supernatural” (including God), if it exists, is invisible, science has no choice but to proceed as if it did not exist.  But this is merely a methodological assumption that science makes, one that can be neither proven nor disproven.  So to assert positively that God does not exist is to treat an assumed, unproven proposition as a conclusive truth, which is not logically valid. 

A Simple Logical Mistake
            In effect, what scientists who reject God are engaging in, when they speak of God, is not science but philosophy; moreover, they are making a fairly elementary logical mistake when they claim that God does not exist, as theirs is essentially an argument from ignorance, which claims, “because we don’t see it therefore it does not exist.”  This is particularly evident in the case of an argument about God, since God, if He exists, presumably can not be seen!  They add the twist that all is explained by science (the converse of the ID theory of irreducible complexity), therefore God would be superfluous, yet they are a very far way indeed, as they would be the first to admit, that they have explained everything, and moreover, finally, even if they could explain everything this would do nothing to exclude the possibility that it’s all the work of an all-powerful (and invisible) God.
            In other words, when scientists meddle in religion, they are claiming to use scientific observation and reason to draw a conclusion about what is in essence non-scientific.  Now, there is no reason why a scientist should not do philosophy, but scientists, like their counterparts who attack Evolution science with ID, want to claim scientific legitimacy rather than admit to doing philosophy.  This is important to the IDers, as we have seen, because they want ID to stand alongside Evolution theory in school curricula; as for the scientists, they want to preserve the special claim to universality that empirical verifiability affords them.
            To scientists, the assertion of the non-existence of God, ironically, may well be a religious argument, an “article of faith”; but since such scientists tend to reject faith as mere “superstition” or “delusion,” they would of course not be quick to admit that they are guilty of it.  However, though they don’t want to dabble in religion, and the subject of God cannot be a matter for science, the atheists still might take a philosophical stand against God, as follows. 
           
A Philosophical Argument Against God: The Problem of Evil
            Probably the most ancient and famous of philosophical arguments against the existence of God is the problem of evil.  It rests on the traditional Western conception of God as omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent—all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good or all-loving.  The argument asserts that God could not have all three of these characteristics since there clearly seems to be evil in the world, and it would seem that God can only reasonably exist alongside evil if He is either not all good, or lacking the power to stop it, or lacking the knowledge of it.  But if God lacks any of these qualities, of course, God would not be God.  Therefore God does not exist.
            An ancient response to this argument is the doctrine known as Manicheanism, which remains widely popular today even if its adherents are unaware of the fact that it contradicts the idea that God is omnipotent.  The specifics of Manicheanism are elaborate, but all we need to note here is that this doctrine asserts that there are two great forces in the universe, those of good and of evil.  Thus God is not the only power in the universe, rather there is also a power of evil, and all of history represents a cosmic struggle between these two great forces; thus when evil happens it is because evil has won a victory over God, so to speak.  But again, this cannot be consistent with the traditional, Western notion of God, since it proposes that God’s power can be overcome, that God is not omnipotent and the world not “all good.”

How Might We Reasonably Account For the Presence of Evil, Human and Natural?
            This is not the place to set forth the detailed response to the problem of evil that it demands, but let me offer a few general remarks.  One part of that response is the doctrine of free-will, as advanced by St. Augustine, which argues that human evil is an inevitable result of a loving God’s grant of freedom to humankind.  Augustine’s constitutes a strong response to the problem of evil, which I consider in detail in another chapter (“The meaning of Freedom: Augustine’s Two Wills”).
            This leaves the problem of “natural evils”: why, the atheist might ask, does God permit good people to suffer natural tragedy?  This issue is also beyond the scope of this chapter, but I offer the following.  Something on which both believers and scientists can agree, presumably, is that we human beings are not entitled to life, much less a life free of pain and death: life is a mysterious gift, either of nature or of God, that we have done nothing to deserve.  Thus, we can see that if God does exist, the realities of pain and death do not deprive us of anything to which we can reasonably claim entitlement.  Moreover, all mature adults can agree, surely, that it is frequently through the experience of pain and disappointment that we grow and improve as human beings, and it is the awareness of the inevitability of our deaths that motivates us to make something of our lives—if we knew we’d never die, why would we do today what we could always do (perhaps even do better) tomorrow, indeed it would seem that all personal accountability would substantially vanish.  In short, apart from the unfathomable mystery that the transcendent being of God must remain to us, there may be some very good reasons for the trials of life, even those that seem, from our human point of view, to be most cruel.   
           
Conclusion
            If both IDers and atheistic evolutionists would acknowledge that they’re both doing philosophy, we could expect a spirited and fruitful debate, though it would offer neither the conviction enjoyed by the religious believer, nor the empirical verification on which scientists hang their hats.  Given the elusiveness of the subject matter, both sides have no choice but to abandon any prospect of absolute certainty, for the present and perhaps in principle.  If both IDers and atheistic evolutionists would do this, I suggest, we would all be able to leave behind the tremendous confusion and political acrimony the “debate” (or non-debate) between science and religion has become, and we would also gain immeasurably in clarity of thought. 
            We can all observe and agree that all of us, religious or not, scientifically curious or otherwise, have much more in common than not: scientists will acknowledge that all human beings are genetically alike, and religionists will acknowledge that all human beings are created in the image of God.  Moreover, how many scientists can fail to admire deeply people for whom religion was fundamental to their lives and works like Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bishop Desmond Tutu, even Jesus for that matter?  And how many religious people can fail to acknowledge their deep reliance on and enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress and technology?  If we could put aside the ego and acrimony, we would surely find that we have a lot to learn from, and enjoy in, one another.   

Epilogue: Why Faith Might Be the Rational Choice
            Since science can prove neither the existence nor the non-existence of God, and since religion is reserved to the believer, how, on the basis of what all human beings share—namely our physical senses, the one material universe we all live in and observe with those senses, and the universal human faculties of reason and logic—can we decide and choose how to live?
            The French philosopher Blaise Pascal famously asserts, “il faut parier”—that is, “it is necessary to wager,” or one must choose, one must decide on some course of life.  His suggestion seems to be, at its simplest, that all human beings are free and we cannot avoid choosing some principles by which we live as long as we live, even if we choose to let others choose them for us.  Indeed, Pascal goes on to assert that we are already “in the game,” so to speak, however reluctant to acknowledge it we may be: to live as a human being is “to wager.”  (See my chapter, “A Philosophy of Freedom: Sartre’s Atheistic Existentialism,” where I discuss Sartre’s claim that we are “condemned to be free.”)
            If we choose “to wager” on atheistic philosophical materialism, then we are assuming that the motions of the world, and of ourselves, are dictated by physical laws, a view that seems to leave little if any room for the notion that life has some meaning, some ultimate purpose (again see my chapter on Sartre as well as my chapters on Hobbes and Rousseau, Freud and Fromm, Augustine and Socrates).  Of course, the materialist view may be correct, and there may be no God and no point to any of this.  But, in that case, what we believe, and how we live our lives, does not ultimately matter: in the end “we’re all dead” and so are our kids and so presumably human being and the universe itself.  Is there really nothing but the stream of events, is all existence the equivalent of a long row of falling dominoes, is there really no point to it all?
            So may it be.
            But what if that’s not the way it is?  Since, if we’ve learned anything by now, we must acknowledge that we don’t know that there is no greater meaning behind the stream of events unrolling before us, we might well choose to believe, as a matter of faith, that there is some meaning to it all, and then make it our life’s mission to try to figure it out.  Of course, we may be wrong, and we may be wasting our time; but if we’re wrong, and there is no meaning, have we really lost anything?  Can there really be anything of substance to lose if there is no meaning to begin with?  So even if we’re wrong, and our faith in some greater meaning is illusory, we lose nothing, as Pascal argues, because with the elimination of meaning there is nothing to gain or lose.  And we may be right, and we may through faith win some small measure of understanding that would otherwise have been inaccessible to us.  Moreover, I suggest that we would still be winners by looking for some meaning, even if it turns out that there is nothing ultimately to find.  For by seeking a greater meaning and purpose in our lives, we may well discover ourselves, that is, we may find satisfactions and fulfillments the likes of which we could never have anticipated—a life “beyond our wildest dreams.”
            We lack conclusive evidence for either God or no-God, meaning or no-meaning.  But surely choosing meaninglessness would seem to guarantee nothing but meaninglessness.  By contrast, by choosing to believe that there might be meaning in the world, apart from enjoying the virtue of open-mindedness, we might reap rewards that we are utterly incapable of anticipating. 
            So, suggests Pascal, by believing in ourselves and the prospect of a purpose before ourselves, we have nothing to lose, and everything to gain.