The philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-62) famously argued that one should choose to believe in God, despite one's doubts, because there is everything to gain and nothing to lose by making such a wager. If you choose to believe in God and you are right, your reward in heaven is infinite. By contrast, the atheist loses everything if they are wrong. If it turns out that there is no God, the atheist gains nothing for being right as they will be just as dead as the believer who turns out to be wrong. A major problem with this line of reasoning is that it undermines the very notion of belief, turning religion from something one honestly believes into a wager that one makes. If we are going to believe in God then we are going to have to honestly believe in God and not simply in a lottery ticket, a horse, or a meme stock that we buy in the hope that the universe, in all of its randomness, goes our way.
I would like to suggest an alternative version to Pascal's Wager that maintains some value. Let us step away from the question of whether God exists to offer a heavenly reward and instead ask a different question; does life have any transcendent meaning? Let us also throw in the question, does free will exist? Without free will, we are simply puppets on a string acting out some story. Whether we are central characters in this story or not, we as people, who make choices, cease to matter. To be fair, there are powerful arguments to be made against free will and ultimately against our lives having any meaning. In fact, if I were being truly objective in how I looked at the world, I would have to conclude that most probably free will does not exist and that life is meaningless. I choose to live my life in the belief that my life has meaning and that I have free will, knowing full well that I might be wrong, because, if given a choice, I would rather live my life as if it had meaning and I had free will and be wrong than to not believe in meaning and free will and be right. What is there to gain by not believing in meaning? What is the point of being a Transcendentalist and fashioning my own pretend meaning? I might as well pretend that meaning is real.
Having taken this leap of faith to accept meaning and free will, I might as well accept that there is a supernatural creator of the entire universe who, through some mysterious process that I am incapable of understanding, allows me to have free will and made the world in such a way that it somehow matters how I make use of the free will. It should be understood that, as we are dealing with an ultimate power to provide meaning, we are dealing with a monotheist God and not simply one of many sources of power that can be tapped into. Clearly, belief in God does not necessitate a belief in free will. I have spent too much time reading Calvinist literature to think otherwise. That being said, I do not see how we can avoid an active belief in God without sinking into the radical materialism of Laplace's demon, rejecting free will and any sense of ultimate meaning.
Belief in God would not have to undermine science. We can embrace science as our primary means of understanding the creator of the natural world. Similarly, my study of history has helped me develop a certain Augustinian sensibility to how I understand human affairs. I am skeptical of human claims to virtue particularly those who achieve positions of power. By extension, I do not expect the creations of those in power, such as countries, to fulfill their stated purpose and not collapse due to the inherent flaws of their designers. And yet there are certain ideas and works of the humble that seem to survive the inevitable collapse of civilization to resurface for a new age. (See G. K. Chesterton's Everlasting Man.) I cannot shake the possibility that there is such a thing as providence. Anyway, I cannot bring myself to worship man so I might as well at least keep an open mind about there being something above mankind.
Once I assume the God of monotheism in whom I am trusting to provide me with meaning and free will, there seems little point in trying to pursue meaning outside of him. This leaves me a choice. I can try creating my own religion to serve him or I can join a pre-existing monotheistic religion. The advantage of creating my religion is that it is likely to be more rational and avoid the inevitable objectionable features of a religion that evolved through some historic process. Historic religions on the other hand can provide a living tradition to connect to as well as an actual community to interact with. If this religion makes claims about a historical revelation that cannot be dismissed out of hand, all the better. The fact that some things in this tradition might make me uncomfortable and force me to struggle with them might just be for the best. To quote Shepherd Book from Firefly: "You do not fix faith. It fixes you."
Let us agree that I have not provided an argument for God, meaning, or free will; that was never my intention. I choose to take a leap of faith in sanity and live my life on the assumption that there is a God and that my life has a purpose and that he has created me with free will in order to accomplish that purpose. I might be wrong about this but I prefer to believe these things and be wrong than to reject them and be right. If you could convince me, as I am on my deathbed, that God, meaning, and free will had been illusions all along, I will go into the eternal abyss grateful that at least I had the chance to live my life as if these things were true.
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