The chances of getting to Heaven

Jeffery asked:

“Are we there yet?” The canonical kids road trip question but applied in a Bayesian sense to ask why we are on the horrible side of an infinitely long afterlife in Paradise. Bayes might posit that the afterlife is a fictional delusion.

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

There are philosophers going round who call themselves ‘Bayesians’. I’ve never quite understood what that means. Any formula (including Bayes’ method of calculating probabilities) is just a rule of thumb. We make statements about probability when there’s stuff we don’t know. Sometimes we know enough to be able to narrow down the possibilities to a manageable range — e.g. spinning a coin or throwing dice. At other times, it’s more like a shot in the dark.

There’s a great scene (a great send-up of probability calculations) in the 1998 movie ‘Croupier’ starring Clive Owen as ‘Jack Manfred’. Jack is considering whether to accept money from gangsters for doing an illegal act (I won’t give any spoilers). He goes through this rigmarole of adding and subtracting — he won’t spend the money, so he will still have it if he has to give it back, etc. etc. and comes up with a conclusion that the odds are favourable. The joke, or irony, is that Jack, an experienced croupier, ‘never gambles’, and regards gamblers with contempt. But of course, if he takes the money, he is gambling, and unlike roulette there is no logical or rational way to assess the odds.

My view about the afterlife would not be shared by most English-speaking philosophers. As a matter of logic (I would claim) there is no length of time after which it is no longer possible that I should exist, I mean the actual ‘me’ and not just someone with my memories. This has got nothing to do with traditional beliefs about heaven (or hell). Death is for ever, which means an infinite length of time. But every length of time is finite.

Heaven and hell are made-up stories. So is string theory, or the view that the universe has a sell-by date after which everything that exists will be annihilated. And the same is true of you or me. We don’t know and we don’t know what we don’t know. Anything is possible.

The best argument I know for heaven and hell is just the human belief in justice. It is intrinsically wrong that bad people escape punishment, or that the good suffer without relief. If you believe, really believe in justice then, for you, heaven and hell must exist in some form or other. But, of course, the whole notion of ‘justice’ (pace Socrates) is just another story.

My settled position would be close to the Greek sceptics. Not as a theoretical position but as a way of life. Don’t put your faith in anything. Make the best of what you have now, ‘horrible’ though it may be.

One thought on “The chances of getting to Heaven

  1. Geoffrey,

    Change the definition of eternity from “endless time” to “not of time” and reflect on the implications. It worked wonders for me.

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