Game theory and God
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/feb/10/religion-christianity
This article attempts to address what is perhaps the longest unanswered question in human history: is God real? It begins by assuming that God is one of the players who has desires, and us humans are the other player. This assumption is what allows the game theory to be applied to the situation. To set up the game, it is also established that God has two desires; the first is that God wants people to believe in Him and also that He doesn’t want to be visible/revealed to the people. This is supported by the facts that God is angered when disobeyed and acts in ways to punish those unbelievers. Additionally, the only person to have actually seen God was Moses. However, even Moses wasn’t able to completely see God, as he was hidden behind rocks and God only revealed to him His back. This appears to be the clearest support of the idea that God wants to be believed, revealing Himself at all to Moses, and also not wanting to completely reveal Himself to people, evidenced by the fact He only showed Moses His back while he was hidden. The author of the opinion article essentially concludes the article with a non-answer, saying that it could prove God’s actions as reasonable, as well as explain the patterns of the world.
Analyzing it myself, I find a clear dominant strategy for a person. Assuming that God is real and promises eternal riches for those who believe, as well as eternal damnation for those who don’t, it is apparent that the person would choose the strategy of believing in God. However, once we assume that God is not real, the payoffs aren’t as clear. Does believing in God cause a negative impact on the lives of those people? Is it especially bad compared to the potential benefits of correctly choosing to not believe in a god that doesn’t exist? There is a very real potential for choosing to believe/not believe in a god that doesn’t exist to have both positive and negative effects. At that point, there are no outside influences to change the outcome of the person’s life, thus leaving it all on that individual person. Therefore, based on this ambiguity in payoffs, it seems clear that the dominant strategy in this situation would be to believe in God. The payoff of eternal riches and eternal life is obviously better than eternal damnation, as well as a 50/50 chance for a positive payoff.