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Deconstructed Minute - Pascal's Trans-action
So What If We're Wrong?
Adam Kellogg
March 26, 2024
If you’ve ever pondered the existence of god, you’ve likely come across at least a basic discussion of Pascal’s wager. He goes into great detail about it, but the essence of his argument is here, as he discusses the choice one must make (his assumption, not mine) between believing god is real or believing god isn’t:
Your reason is no more shocked in choosing one rather than the other since you must of necessity choose. This is one point settled. But your happiness? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.
One need only examine their scars to find evidence of the harm of wanton faith in god, but let’s stop here for a second. Pascal’s wager is a go-to tool for Christian apologists, so let’s put a pin in that and look at another rhetorical approach those same apologists employ when discussing one of their least favorite movements: LGBTQIA.
I want to specifically focus on trans rights here, because it does appear to be the battlefront most persistently and viciously attacked by conservatives. The rhetorical baseline I hear pounded from that bully pulpit is that the entire trans movement is based on a lie. “You can’t change your sex; you can’t change your gender,” they claim. “It’s all a lie.”
First, even assuming that’s true, if a person can’t change their sex or their gender, then who is to say which perspective to take on the matter? Should we go with what scientists say or what the Bible says? Because this is what the Bible says:
“God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”—1 Samuel 16:7. . . . That help?
But if you are sitting there thinking that a) someone else’s sex or gender is your business at all, and b) you simply must choose whether to honor a person’s preferred gender identification and pronouns, what if you employed Pascal’s wager to your thinking? What is there to lose, and what is there to gain? I recommend Pascal’s own words to sum up the argument:
But there is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite.
The possibility of allowing a person to be who they understand themselves to be is to allow for a lifetime of happiness. Whatever our phobic tendencies might lead us to believe is at stake, there’s really little else to lose than our shared humanity.
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