Dinesh D'Souza on belief, life after death, and Pascal's wager

Dr. Paul Kengor, co-author of The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan's Top Hand and executive director of The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College, interviews Dinesh D'Souza, best-selling author of What's So Great About Christianity?, about his new book, Life After Death: The Evidence. A snippet:

Kengor: What are the practical benefits to belief? To the contrary, how about unbelief? On the latter, you write, “unbelief is neither intellectually plausible nor practically beneficial.” Explain that.

D'Souza: If there is no life after death, then we are like passengers on the Titanic. We can rearrange the deck chairs and turn up the music a little bit, but ultimately we are doomed. As the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre said, the only honest response to this situation is despair. By contrast, if there is life after death, then there are enormous practical benefits, not just in the life to come, but also in this life. If there is an afterlife, then we are in a better position to face death. We have to face death in any case, but now we can face it in the expectation that it is not a final defeat, that it is merely the gateway to another form of existence. If there is life after death, in the form that the great religions posit, then there is cosmic justice: good will be rewarded and evil punished. This means that we have reason to hope for ultimate justice, and we also have a basis for teaching morality to our children. Life after death also means that we can have significance and purpose to our lives, because they are part of this larger cosmic drama. The evidence shows that people who believe in life after death are happier and also more generous with their fellow man than those who do not.

Kengor: Is it dumb to not believe? Here’s what I mean by that: Is unbelief a wager that, in a sense, is an eternal loser in the end? You can only lose, right?

D'Souza: The Muslim thinker Al-Ghazali, who is the original source for Pascal's famous wager, told of an associate of the prophet Muhammad who was engaged in a debate with an unbeliever over the question of whether heaven exists. The unbeliever finally said, "You've made some good points, but I'm not convinced." Finally, Muhammad's associate said to him, "Ultimately it's a practical question. If you are right, then none of us is the worse for it. But if we are right, then we shall escape and you will suffer." William James, the Harvard psychologist, put it in a more modern way. He said that both belief and unbelief carry a certain kind of risk. Belief carries the risk of metaphysical error: you die and it turns out that you were wrong after all. Unbelief carries a different kind of risk: the risk of eternal separation from God. Now, James, I think, would agree that the second type of risk is much more serious.

Read the entire interview.

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• Pascal for Today | Peter Kreeft
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• Professor Dawkins and the Origins of Religion | Fr. Thomas Crean, O.P. | From God Is No Delusion: A Refutation of Richard Dawkins
• Atheism and the Purely "Human" Ethic | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• Is Religion Evil? Secularism's Pride and Irrational Prejudice | Carl E. Olson
• C.S. Lewis’s Case for Christianity | An Interview with Richard Purtill
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• The Mythological Conflict Between Christianity and Science | An interview with Dr. Stephen Barr
• The Source of Certitude | Fr. Thomas Dubay, S.M.