Arnobius the Elder was a major figure in the Pagan church in North Africa in 4th century A.D. Arnobius was a devout Pagan for most of his life, and he enjoyed teasing the local Christians for their lack of physical pleasures — mostly sexual ones — enjoyed in life.
Then, Arnobius has a shocking revelation, one related to probability. Arnobius argued that two 2×2 matrices exists:
| Men have souls | Men do not have souls |
| God exists | God does not exist |
Arnobius argues that the probability of an afterlife outweighed the pleasure one would have in the mortal world. I believe this simply isn’t true.
Basic probability tells us there are four possible truths:
* I’ll use the word “men” as Arnobius did.
- Men have souls and God exists
- Men have souls and God does not exist
- Men do not have souls and God exists
- Men do not have souls and God does not exist
With a lack of faith (as this argument is similar to Pascal’s), each of these four possibility have an equal chance — in this case, one fourth. Therefore, let us examine the implications of each:
Men have souls and God exists
In this case, we should all be very concerned about the afterlife — because there will be one. Logically, if men have eternal souls and God exists, then we will have to cope with our decisions in the afterlife — meaning that following a Christian lifestyle is very, very good.
Christianity: 1
Paganism: 0
Men have souls and God does not exist
In this situation, all men would have an afterlife, but there would be no God to judge us — therefore, the afterlife would be equivalent for all men regardless of acts taken in this life.
Christianity: 1
Paganism: 1
Men do not have souls and God exists
If men do not have souls, there is no afterlife. As the frequency of modern-day miracles/lighting bolts falling from the sky are quite low (as they also were in Arnobius’ time), God really has no effect on our lives whatsoever. Therefore, functionally, God does not truly exist.
Christianity: 1
Paganism: 2
Men do not have souls and God does not exist
This is the Pagan argument to begin with — obviously, there is no afterlife or judgement.
Christianity: 1
Paganism: 3
In terms of more recent probability that Arnobius did not have access to, this means that Paganism has a 75% chance of being correct and Christianity has a 25% chance of being correct. Therefore, I argue that physical pleasures in the current world outweigh the chances of infernal damnation in the afterlife.
When estimating the value of a lottery ticket, one assumes the basic formula of:
value = magnitude * probability
For example, a lottery ticket that has a 50% chance of paying out one dollar is worth 50 cents — this is called a “break even” price, because, on average, if you bought a lottery ticket, you’d get exactly what you paid back.
This is where my argument will run into a few problems — one may argue that the magnitude of being damned in hell would be infinity, therefore, regardless of the low probability, the value is infinity as well. Therefore, even a 0.00001% chance of Christianity being correct would outweigh physical pleasures in this life.
However, I’ll argue that having a happy, meaningful, pleasure-filled life ALSO has an infinite magnitude. Certainly, one could argue that the timeframe — eternity — of the torture of the afterlife would make it outweight a limited-time happiness on Earth. Firstly, there is an issue as to if eternal torture would infinitly remain torture in the absence of something to compare that torture to — but I digress.
I personally believe that Arnobius argument is terribly flawed — draw your own opinion, hopefully this article gives you a little more prospective.
(This isn’t to say that we should be terrible people — but we should do what makes us happy.)
