Last month I was on vacation with good friends. After dinner we were sitting around the table engaged in great conversation. As can happen, the conversation turned to religion.

Do you believe in God?

I had downed a couple glasses of wine so my answer than really wasn’t as concise as I wanted it to be. I said something about being spiritual and believing in a higher power— to be honest I don’t really remember.

But it did get me thinking. What should my answer to that question be? I didn’t grow up in a religious family, but I’m not an atheist. I don’t attend church on a regular basis but my children do attend Catholic school. I know I want to believe. As I often do I turned to the great thinkers for advice, this time getting a perspective on the question of religion.

This is how I came across a Blaise Pascal, a French philosopher that I was familiar with but hadn’t read in great detail. Pascal is famous for the concept of Pascal’s Wager. The purpose of Pascal’s Wager was to give French citizens who had left the Catholic Church (known as libertins) a reason to return to the church. Pascal wrote that the idea of belief is a matter of decision. You can choose to believe or not to believe. Pascal accepted that it is not possible to give good rational ground for religious belief, but he did try to give rational grounds for wanting to have such beliefs. These consist of weighing the possible profit and loss of making a bet on the existence of God. Pascal argues that betting that God does not exist risks losing a great deal (infinite happiness in Heaven), while only gaining a little (a finite sense of independence in the world)— but betting that God exists risks little while gaining a great deal. Thus, according to Pascal, it is more rational to believe in god.

I smiled when I read about Pascal’s wager because it reminded me of my answer whenever people ask me if I believe in Bigfoot. My standard answer is that I’d rather believe in Bigfoot than not believe in Bigfoot. In essence, I’d rather live in a world where somewhere in the Pacific Northwest there is an 8 foot tall hairy ape man that likes to howl at night and knock on trees. This doesn’t mean that I’m going to team up with Matt Moneymaker and start trekking through the deep woods of the Cascades, I just like the idea of Bigfoot existing.

I realize that the idea of a higher power and ascending to Heaven in the afterlife is a serious subject and I’m not trying to poke fun at the concept by bringing up Sasquatch. I have no objection to the practicing of religion in all it’s forms. The idea that there is a higher power is very comforting, as is the concept that there’s an afterlife.

We live in what can be an overly rational and skeptical world. When it comes to religion, and subjects like Bigfoot, I can understand why people are skeptical. It’s human nature to believe in things, to believe in a higher purpose and Pascal offers a practical way to believe in the existence of god— don’t believe in God because you have some proof of it, but rather because of the positive impact it can have on your life.

According to Jordan Peterson you should live your life as though god exists, focusing on how you act, not on how you think. This idea is a big reason for the rise of Peterson through his biblical lecture series where he focuses on the foundational aspects that biblical stories have provided society. Peterson won’t say that he believes scientifically in something like the creation narrative in Genesis, but instead focuses on how the creation narrative itself helped form the foundation of modern society and is fundamental to our belief in the intrinsic dignity and equality of humans.

My intent isn’t to debate faith and science in this space. For centuries writers and philosophers way more eloquent and learned than me have spent their entire careers studying these subjects. This past few days, while dealing with a stressful week at work, I started listening to an excellent podcast called, Stoicism on Fire. In one particular episode the podcast author discussed the idea of the Stoic “Cosmic” viewpoint. The broader idea of the cosmic viewpoint is rooted in the idea of “taking arms” against the sea of troubles we call life and abandoning our limited perspective on things, instead viewing events from above. Hence, the cosmic view point. The Stoics accepted the cosmos as a holistic organism where events have a purpose that is larger than our human centered views typically allow.

From the podcast author, Chris Fisher:

“Once we understand the nature of the cosmos and our place in it we understand external events are neither good nor bad in a moral sense because they are beyond our control. The only events that have moral implications are what we can control, our judgements. Only our thoughts about external events.”

This is why I appreciate Stoicism as a practical philosophy. The essence of life is that there are a lot of things that are going to happen, both good and bad. Out of the events that impact our lives, the vast majority of them are out of our control, but what we can control is how we react to those events.

So what is my answer the next time the question comes up?

I’ll probably say that I don’t really know and bring up Pascal. I’ll respond that I don’t really know if a higher power exists but it’s important to approach the world as though it does, in a practical sense, because in the end I feel approaching the world this way is a net positive for society. In the end it’s about living a virtuous life, a life that is net positive to mankind. From a stoic point of view it’s social duty in accordance with nature. As human beings our natural human impulse should confirm to reasoning and lead us to virtue, which according to the Stoics is the only good.

From Marcus Aurelius in Meditations 2.1:

"When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own - not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions."

Ultimately, we live in a vast world full of a wide variety of personalities, many good, many bad. In this modern world it seems like confrontation and discontent is everywhere and persistent. We have to achieve balance in a complicated world. Life and be tough, our backs will often be against the wall. That’s why it’s so critical to accept and love your fellow humans. Start realizing that the person on social media you vehemently disagree about politics with is in most cases a good person dealing with the same day-to-day struggles that you deal with. I know this isn’t easy and we all struggle with this inclination. Sometimes it’s extremely difficult to avoid conflict. Sometimes you have to take conflict head on. In the end though, it’s critical to learn to appreciate everyone, from all walks of life, even if you disagree with their personal choices and how they live their life.