Religion and Play

Nietzsche's occasional entertaining of an image of a dice-throwing deity is not an advocacy of the Probabilism of Pascal, Mill, Peirce, and Dewey.  Rather, it is an attempt to advance the notion of the divinity of Play, in a culture dominated by a God of punishment and/or forgiveness., i. e. a God conceived sub specie gravitas.  The extent and depth of that 'spirit of gravity', as Nietzsche sometimes characterizes it, is also expressed by the groundless vehemence of Einstein's insistence that 'God does not play dice with the universe'.  Scientific Probability is, thus, no different than the Necessity that Einstein cherishes in one respect--they both suppress the playfulness of Chance, i. e. what Nietzsche appreciates, thereby allying themselves with the Religion to which they are often opposed.