Pascal’s Wager for Those Who Believe in a Personal and Loving God

I have mixed feelings about Pascal’s Wager and wouldn’t use it in an apologetic argument unless I were involved in a discussion with a man or woman interested in the intellectual aspects of belief. A brief summary of the Wager is as follows:

Pascal’s Wager (or Pascal’s Gambit) is a suggestion posed by the French philosopher Blaise Pascal that even though the existence of God cannot be determined through reason, a person should “wager” as though God exists, because so living has potentially everything to gain, and certainly nothing to lose.

This proposal is based less upon a pure leap of faith and more upon the consequences that Pascal saw in the uncertainty of human reason. Quite properly in my opinion, some atheists — including Richard Dawkins as mentioned but not explained in the Wikipedia article — have claimed that sort of an argument can work in different directions than the one Pascal seems to have intended in his notes towards a general apologetics. Since they were just notes and since Pascal gave signs of being one of the most extraordinarily and profoundly intelligent thinkers in history, we should be cautious in assuming we know how, or even whether, he would have used his Wager in that book if he’d lived to write it.

In any case, the various aspects of the certainty and uncertainty of human knowledge need to be explored and those of good faith, if only faith in human moral integrity, need to explore matters from their perspective.

Yet, there’s a way in which Pascal’s wager can be extended in a direction quite uncomfortable for those who have a belief in a personal and loving God, as taught by orthodox Jews or Catholics or others with firm and specific theistic beliefs.

If you do believe in God as described by some orthodox form of Judaism or as described by some form of Christianity with strong beliefs, then it would seem your best bet would be to give yourself fully and entirely to Him. Don’t just bet what matters little. Don’t just push your pile of chips into the pot. Climb up on the table and sit in that pot with those chips. Put yourself fully and totally in play.

I Wish I’d Said That…

Actually, I have said some things very similar to some of Pope Benedict’s gentle but firm admonitions on his visit to the United States. Let me provide a couple of quotes. A Catholic news-site, Catholic World News, quotes Pope Benedict in his talk to the American Catholic bishops:

America’s brand of secularism poses a particular problem: it allows for professing belief in God, and respects the public role of religion and the Churches, but at the same time it can subtly reduce religious belief to a lowest common denominator. Faith becomes a passive acceptance that certain things “out there” are true, but without practical relevance for everyday life. The result is a growing separation of faith from life.

and also:

Is it consistent to profess our beliefs in church on Sunday, and then during the week to promote business practices or medical procedures contrary to those beliefs? Is it consistent for practicing Catholics to ignore or exploit the poor and the marginalized, to promote sexual behavior contrary to Catholic moral teaching, or to adopt positions that contradict the right to life of every human being from conception to natural death? Any tendency to treat religion as a private matter must be resisted.

I’ve made similar statements, but I’ve gone far beyond Pope Benedict in arguing that a lot of the problem comes from inadequate Catholic responses to modern empirical knowledge and sheer Catholic ignorance about the simple fact that a human theological system, even when built to explain revealed truths, includes a lot of human speculation and also includes — implicitly or explicitly — a lot of the content of empirical knowledge during the time when that system was first built. Far too many Catholics, scholars and priests and laymen, are lazy even when hardworking. That is, they want to just coast on fundamental matters and not have to think hard about those fundamental matters. They want to believe that God created a world which was fully understood in all important ways by men who lived centuries ago. God’s story ended a long time ago and we only have to finish off by celebrating the Sacraments for a few centuries longer. Such thinkers learn by way of textbooks the thoughts of St. Augustine and those of St. Thomas Aquinas. Such a way of reading profoundly creative thinkers distorts their thoughts so that even the word ‘the’ in those works becomes a lie. As a specific example, it has a way of converting complex human speculations, such as Augustine’s understanding of man’s sinful state, into ‘revealed truths’, such as the doctrine of ‘original sin’.

How can an ordinary laymen, or even the ordinary priest, live his life in the secular aspects of his life when he can’t make sense of that longer part of his life in terms of his Christian beliefs? If the Catholic Church and her separated sisters have no anthropological or moral teachings that make sense of our evolutionary heritage or our various genetic or cultural constraints, what is that ordinary layman or non-scholarly priest to do when he has to make sense of the pain of the good son who claims he feels like a woman? What sense can Satan-mongers make of all that is known of the relationship between specific brain structures and addictions or even the plausible possibility that obsessions — including those to kill or rape — might involve brain-seizures? What is there in the talk from the pulpits or in those CCD books or those books by or about ancient saints that can make sense of a claim that a microscopic hunk of cells should be treated with the respect to a human being?

If we can’t express our beliefs in the language we speak during our hours outside of churches and prayer-group meetings, then the domain of those beliefs will begin to seem more like dreams or fairy-tales than reality.

Easter Sunday: March 23, 2008

The Easter celebrations continue on Sunday, though the Masses aren’t nearly as elaborate as the Easter Vigil Mass held after sunset on Holy Saturday. For the most part, Easter Sunday Masses are very similar to Masses on any other Sunday but for the larger attendance and the greater number of new dresses and pretty hats. In the Roman Catholic Church, it’s a requirement that the priest lead the congregation in a renewal of baptismal promises but some priests use that form rather than the Profession of Faith on other Sundays as well.

Most of us are with family or will be soon. We struggle to pay attention to the Mass but our stomachs and heads anticipate ham and deviled eggs and far too much chocolate.

It’s a wonderful day and hard to understand why the baptized don’t all come to church, hard to understand why so many have never sought to be baptized. And then while we bask in the glow of our anticipated Easter feasts followed by our entry into Heaven, many years from now we hope, we who are Catholics find ourselves crossing our heads, our lips, and our hearts and the deacon begins to read from the Gospel of St. John:

Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. So, she ran, and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Peter then came out with the other disciple, and they went toward the tomb. They both ran, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first; and stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb; he saw the linen cloths lying, and the napkin, which had been on his head, not lying with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not know the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. [John 20:1-9]

As we hear those words for the umpteenth time, we can ask ourselves if we’ve ever really listened. Have we sunk into complacency?

Mary Magdelene saw the empty tomb and thought someone had stolen away the Lord’s body. The other disciple, almost certainly St. John, admitted that he and Peter had not even thought of Jesus rising from the dead until they saw the empty tomb. In fact, some of the translations leave matters unclear: did they believe when they saw the empty tomb or did that merely start the thinking process that led to the realization that the Lord Jesus Christ had risen from the dead?

We should enjoy the celebrations of Easter, in church and at the dinner-table and on the front porch watching the children play.

The Lord Jesus Christ has risen.

Yet again, we should ask ourselves if our faith has come by our good luck. Some of us were raised by devout Christian parents and some had friends who had spoken the Good News to us, lovingly and aggressively or lovingly and gently. They had loved us and the Lord enough to try to bring us to Him.

When we have a few quiet moments, we should ask ourselves if we’ve done our part. The pews are noticeably empty of young adults. Have we done our part to impart a love of God to our children and the young adults in our families? The pews rarely have strangers in them and most of those strangers seem to be already practicing Christians judging by their awareness of liturgical practices. Have we ever brought a friend or acquaintance to church with us? Have we ever spoken to a lost soul about God’s love?

What have we done to pass on the Gospel, the Good News, we celebrate so joyfully on Easter Sunday?

So you also, when you have done all that is commanded you, say, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.” [Luke 17:10]

Have we even done so well as those unworthy servants? I know I’ve not done so well as those unworthy servants.

Easter Vigil: March 22, 2008

[As is my custom, I use the RSV rather than the translation used in the missal used for the Roman Catholic Mass in the U.S.]

The Easter Vigil Mass is celebrated after sunset on Saturday of Holy Week. It begins with a lighting of a fire which is used in turn to light the Easter candle. The Easter candle is carried to the altar at the front of the church in a solemn procession during which the Exsultet is sung, beginning with the verse:

Rejoice, heavenly powers! Sing, choirs of angels!
Exult, all creation around God’s throne!
Jesus Christ, our King, is risen!
Sound the trumpet of salvation!

After the Easter candle is set in a place of honor, the mass moves on to the Liturgy of the Word, the reading and hearing of appropriate chapters or verses from Sacred Scripture. There are seven Old Testament readings followed by a reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans and then Matthew’s account of the Resurrection.

The first Old Testament reading, [Genesis 1:1-2:2], is the account considered by some to be a description of God’s Creation of this world. There’s a reason why this reading is important on this night. The Lord of Creation has been resurrected. If we don’t know what Creation is, we can’t know what that means. If we don’t know what Creation is, we certainly won’t be able to have a rational idea of Heaven. And, in this modern world, where we know the empty reaches of space from documentaries and sci-fi movies, we don’t know where we might find Heaven, the world where Christ waits for those who belong to Him.

Let’s see if a meditative journey can help us to find the world of the resurrected as our Christian ancestors once found it in the heavens that we now know as outer space. Then we’ll have rational terms for discussions and descriptions of Heaven as those earlier Christians did.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. [Genesis 1:1-2]

Stanley Jaki, a Benedictine priest and scholar with wide-ranging knowledge and credentials, has shown in Genesis 1 Through the Ages [Thomas More Press, 1992] that the word translated as ‘created’ in the above verses actually means ‘cleave’ in the sense of separate. For most purposes, we can mentally translate the word ‘create’ in the book of Genesis as ‘shape’ or maybe ‘organize’.

We Christians believe God did create from nothing all that is not Him, but we can’t see or describe that event, even in our imaginations. Science tells us the same though some individual scientists would like to find an equation to describe a creation event — logically impossible since mathematics doesn’t describe existence as such. The so-called Big Bang is not a creation event but rather a transition from some prior state of being.

God shaped this world out of some very strange stuff which He had created as the basic stuff of all Creation. That basic stuff lies on the other side of the Big Bang, though maybe far on the other side. Many other phases might lie in between the rawest levels of Creation and our universe. If God shaped this world out of that stuff, we can have faith that He can shape Heaven — the world of the resurrected out of that same stuff.

In the beginning, God shaped this world from the basic stuff of Creation. God had created the basic stuff of Creation from nothing. God has also shaped a world in which Christ and those who belong to Christ will live with Him for time without end. We know this world of the resurrected exists because the risen Christ has visited this mortal world and given marvelous signs of His perfected body, a body St. Paul called a ‘spiritual body’ in 1 Corinthians 15, a wonderful discussion of these issues. Those who belong with Christ, those who will live with Him for time without end, will have spiritual bodies, much like that of the resurrected Christ. It’s perhaps even more fitting to say that our resurrected bodies will be us in the most complete sense.

Christ is the Lord of Creation. So long as we have faith in Christ and in His God, we can be confident that Christ’s promises will be kept. But we need a vision of the world in which those promises will be kept, else those promises will become no more than feel-good illusions to us and our children. We can gain such a vision if we have the courage and faith to mediate upon Holy Scripture in light of what we modern human beings know about this universe, this phase of Creation.

Friday of Holy Week: March 21, 2008

Good Friday has arrived and we have a chance to celebrate the Lord’s Passion. The Gospel reading [John 18:1 -- 19:42] for this celebration is long, two full chapters of the Gospel of St. John. This reading starts as the Last Supper has ended and Jesus walks to the Kidron valley with His disciples and ends with the Lord being laid in His tomb.

Some Christians have become obsessed with the account of the Passion of Christ which occurs during this reading: His suffering at the hands of the Roman soldiers as they flogged Him and placed a crown of thorns upon His head, as they marched Him off carrying His own cross, and then nailed Him to that cross.

We should honor those who stayed with the Lord, watching Him suffer so greatly — especially His Holy Mother. We should also wonder at those who think it to be some sort of educational experience, let alone entertainment, to watch ‘realistic’ reenactments of the sufferings of Jesus along the final journey of His life on earth. We know that watching violent Terminator movies numbs us, perhaps seriously damaging our moral natures and those of our children. Why would we think it would do us any good to watch reenactments of the horrible sufferings of the Lord of Creation? Are those critics right who use the term ‘religious snuff movie’ for Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ? Will viewing those sorts of movies, will dwelling upon gore in our prayer-life, prepare us to follow in Christ’s footsteps? Will that sort of obsession with blood and suffering merely harden us to suffering as it does in the case of violent military or science fiction movies?

We should remain aware of our Lord’s sufferings but not bask in gory thoughts or images. We should instead think of His greater sacrifice: His offering of His glory in Heaven that He might make an act of perfect sacrifice to the Father. We should remember that we approach death and then are gone with no further awareness unless God is to resurrect us but He raises us anew rather than dragging us through of a state of death and decay. In fact, a creature couldn’t experience the time when it is dead. The Son of God continued to exist as part of Him, His human nature, died. Only the Son of God has truly known death. We know only rumors of death.

We should give up our man-centered views of Christ’s work and have the consistency and the courage to say that the world was created so that Christ could be crucified. The center of time in this world comes during a single verse in this long reading:

When Jesus had received the vinegar, he said, “It is finished”; and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. [John 19:30]

In a world of death, the Son could sacrifice Himself to the Father, conquering death and delivering to the Father all who had been given to the Son.

But it’s Friday. The Lord has died and has been put in His tomb. We should join with Mary and the disciples, feeling their fear and loneliness, wondering what is to happen.

Proving the Existence of Zeus

Suppose you had an invisible benefactor. He doesn’t make it easy for you all the time. Rather than leaving you food, he provides what you need to grow your own or forage or hunt for your own. Water has been made available though sometimes it has to be treated to be safe. Materials are provided to allow you to build adequate shelter and to make clothing that’s at least good enough. Hard work is often necessary but a good life is often possible.

Can you describe the invisible benefactor? Not really. All you can do is tell of some of his specific actions. Those actions might imply certain characteristics but don’t provide a true description of the benefactor’s nature, even if he were a creature much like us. They don’t even provide any certainty that this benefactor is an entity with personal characteristics. Moreover, and given the hardships of your life, they don’t even provide any certainty this entity, personal or not, really has your best interests at heart.

Let me move to the real world and various efforts, such as Intelligent Design, to prove God exists in a rational and creaturely way, that is, by proving that God exists through some of His actions as Creator. We can try to make sense of the complex evidence of our environments and we can prove the existence of…Zeus.

C.S. Lewis and the World God Didn’t Create

Hermann Melville once noted that Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Sage of Cambridge, had some good things to say but gave the impression that he would have had some good advice for the Almighty if he’d been present at the moment of Creation. I get that same impression from the writings of C.S. Lewis — especially his fictional writings.

I can almost imagine Lewis saying:

Not bad, Lord, but you need to get rid of those bones in the sands of Africa and forget about this four-dimensional space-time business. Then you could add a few wise wizards who cast spells with literary style and a host of evil scientists scheming to corrupt all of Creation. A much better world it would be.

On the other hand, Lewis wasn’t in rebellion against the most important of Christian truths as was Emerson. Lewis also didn’t seem to be aware that he was in rebellion of a sort against God as Creator.

Before going on, I will say that I have few serious problems with Lewis’ expressions of the revealed truths of Christianity though I don’t consider him to be particularly profound in any aspects of theological or philosophical thought. He was a good popularizer of some difficult ideas, a good teacher. In fact, his appreciation of the goodness of the material world, of sacramentality, and the Sacraments, didn’t really fit well with his pessimistic views of those fields of thought and research, physics and evolutionary biology, which have been so much more fruitful in modern times than the fields that Lewis preferred. I don’t celebrate that, being a novelist and a philosopher and theologian who specializes in studying the created world. I have a foot in each camp, that of Einstein and Darwin and also that of Lewis and Tolkien — more appropriately, that of Melville and Flannery O’Connor. I’ll also say that Lewis was far from unique among Christians in rejecting the modern project of empirical knowledge-gathering and advocating a return to a magical view of reality.

Keep the Imagination Sane

About 15 years ago, I went for a ride with a friend who was searching for antique furniture in regions north of the Quabbin Reservoir. In one of the places we stopped, I found a loft filled with old books that were no longer easy to sell according to the proprietor. I bought a few early editions of works by Nathaniel Hawthorne including two 1870s editions titled the American Notebooks and the English Notebooks. The American Notebooks include various letters, one of particular interest was written while he was at from Brook Farm, the commune established by some of the Transcendentalist preachers and intellectuals with whom Hawthorne was friendly. The letter of interest was dated September 25, 1841. In responding to some news of lectures and demonstrations of ‘magnetic miracles’ (hypnotism or actual use of magnets? — I don’t know), he had this to say:

Keep the imagination sane, — that is one of the truest conditions of communion with heaven.

In the years since Hawthorne walked the soils of New England, there has been a decay that would lead me to also advise: Nurse the imagination back to health. Much of what I try to do in my published nonfiction books, my blog entries, and my unpublished works — novels and nonfiction — revolves around the imagination. I worked hard to bring my own imagination back to life and I urge others to do the same. I try to offer materials that can help to nurture the imagination, by way of advice or motivation or substantive imaginative material.

Along with Nathaniel Hawthorne, I’ll advise all who will listen:

Keep the imagination sane, — that is one of the truest conditions of communion with heaven.

Thoughts and Actions in Human Morality

In Thomistic moral philosophy, an intention isn’t a mental construction or any other sort of mental entity. Our biological stuff, which provides the substance underlying our moral natures, grows and develops in a way not inherently different from the growth of a tree or a deer. As physical creatures, we grow towards a moral state. This moral state may change often over our live-spans but it usually moves in a general direction over long periods of our lives even if it’s not focused to a point. If this isn’t happening in the life of a particular human being, there is a serious problem. To drift in moral growth is to fail to become much of anything.

In our daily moral lives, the best description I can propose for now is: put one foot in front of the other, heading in a generally desirable direction. Don’t look at distant goals. Don’t worry about your motives, conscious or unconscious. In fact, don’t worry about consciousness at all — it has little to do with active moral decisions though it can be useful in reviewing your moral state and adjusting your intentional state.

No, but we have to get over this idea that life can be planned in a conscious way. This much we can plan and work towards:

The development of true moral character.

This still doesn’t provide much in the way of a recipe. And so I’ll give a general description of some of the moral movement in my life, though I didn’t see it in those terms over most of the years of interest.

Fighting the Previous War

Historians have often claimed that when a period of conflict comes after a sustained period of peace, the politicians and generals in charge will usually be well-prepared to fight the previous war. They’ll be thinking in terms of strategies proper for the previous war. They’ll have soldiers trained and equipped for the previous war. They’ll have buildings which would have been adequate for the needs of the previous war.

The pilgrim Church on Earth is passing from a period when she lived in a state of peace with the powers of the world. Now, we Christians are engaged in a serious spiritual war and not winning, not Protestants and not Catholics. We’re losing a spiritual war and failing in our duty to protect ourselves and our children. We most certainly are failing to win over more children for God or to win back any of the vast number who’ve left Christianity in the past generation.

It’s hard to even speak of Christian truth with most modern men, because they respect neither pagan nature nor the God of Jesus Christ. The very idea that good and justice can be defined in objective terms has gone by the wayside. Objective truth, beginning with moral truth, had to be eliminated that we might live in peace in mass societies with those who hold ideas and live in ways our grandparents thought to be repulsive and perhaps downright evil.