Volunteering and Pascal's Wager

Ok, I realize the forthcoming posting is outside the scope of this blog, but I'd like to share my thoughts on it anyway.

What is Pascal's Wager? You could look it up, but I'll quickly summarize it here. Blaise Pascal posited that since believing in God results in either infinite reward or zero harm, and not believing results in either minimal reward or infinite loss, we must believe.

The main problem with the Wager is that belief for the sake of personal gain is not true belief. In order to reap the infinite rewards, you must not believe solely for the sake of those rewards, but for the sake of believing itself. Believing for personal gain is morally reprehensible, un-Christian and is deserving of eternal damnation.

This brings me to the issue of volunteering. In high school, there are always a number of kids who strive to pad their resume as much as possible by doing all the "volunteer" work they can. They want to get into a good school, preferrably on scholarship (read: free), and volunteering a lot will help them attain that goal.

Is this virtuous? Or commendable? I posit that it is neither.

Just like Pascal's Wager, volunteering for personal gain is nothing but a bastardization of the virtuous establishment. Volunteering is a wonderful thing. If I ever become really rich, I plan on giving lots of time and money to worthy causes. But when that volunteering is done for nothing but personal gain, it becomes (seemingly) morally ambiguous.

The truth is, you are still doing good. You are still helping out those poor/unfortunate/sick/whatever people. But you are doing so for the wrong reasons. So is it still worth doing? I say no.

The small virtuousness of the good done is dwarfed by the morally reprehensibleness of the devious underhanded deed completed solely for personal gain.

One thing in life that is rarely, if ever, worth sacrificing is one's morality. Doing a small good deed is not worth undercutting one's entire morality, which is exactly what volunteering for personal gain accomplishes.