06/19/2021 – Saturday Apologetics Series: Arguments for the Existence of God – Pascal’s Wager
Once again, taken from : “Pocket Handbook of Christian Apologetics” by Peter Kreeft and Ronald K Tacelli – pgs 27 through 29:
“…. As originally proposed by Pascal, the Wager assumes that logical reasoning by itself cannot decide for or against the existence of God; there seem to be good reasons on both sides. (*1 – see below – Jimmy’s note of disagreement) Now since reason cannot decide for sure, and since the question is of such importance that we must decide somehow, then we must ‘wager’ if we cannot prove. And so we are asked: Where are you going to place your bet?
If you place it with God, you lose nothing, even if it turns out that God does not exist. But if you place it against God, and you are wrong, and God does exist, you lose everything: God, eternity, heaven, infinite gain…..
The wager can seem offensively venal and purely selfish. But it can be reformulated to appeal to a higher moral motive: If there is a God of infinite goodness, and he justly deserves my allegiance and faith, I risk doing the greatest injustice by not acknowledging him.
The Wager cannot – or should not – coerce belief. But it can be an incentive for us to search for God, to study and restudy the arguments that seek to show that there is Something — or Someone — who is the ultimate explanation of the universe and my life. It could at least motivate “The Prayer of the Sceptic”: “God, I don’t know whether you exist or not, but if you do, please show me who you are.”
Pascal says that are three kinds of people: those who have sought God and found Him, those who are seeking and have not yet found, and those who neither seek nor find. The first are reasonable and happy, the second are reasonable and unhappy, the third are both unreasonable and unhappy. If the Wager stimulates us at least to seek, then it will at least stimulate us to be reasonable. And if the promise Jesus makes is true, all who seek will find (Matthew 7: 8-8) and thus, will be happy.
*1 – Jimmy note from 2nd paragraph above :
I disagree with this. There is not a balanced scale here between there being no God vs. there being a God. I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist! The evidence for God is so overwhelming. I recall the dvd series of a couple decades ago or so titled: “Does God Exist? Building the Scientific Case” by Stephen Meyer of the Discovery Institute. I learned so much science from that two dvd set seminar! Funny, I think I still have it packed away in a moving box. I looked it up on Amazon, selling for $3.99 used. What a steal! It has Dr. Meyer listed as an actor! Not! Take a look at his bio and summary contributions in the link below
https://www.discovery.org/p/meyer/
I would like to get back to this soon. And of course we will be also be covering: “The Divinity of Christ”; “The Bible: Myth or History”; and, “The Resurrection”, to name just a few of our topical explorational dives. Three centuries ago, we would be putting today’s post at the back end, if at all, for there were so few atheists out there relative to our post-modern day pagan world of today. So much for evolving as a species… Prayer is always a prerequisite, but we would expect a walk through stepwise for an atheist. (pagan to Deism to Christianity)
Always connected by His grace. Grab onto His Integrated Truth and don’t let go!
Soli Deo Gloria!