"Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere."
This is one of my favourite quotes, mainly because however long you decide to look at it and think about it, you won’t be able to make heads or tails of it in any shape or form. It is dripping with a kind of irrational, nonsensical, quasi-scientific meta-physicism to which you can react only with a heartfelt ‘bwuh?’. Plus, it’s awesome.
It’s a quote from Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician, physicist and philosopher, who is otherwise best known for his Wager, which states that “even though the existence of God cannot be determined through reason, a person should wager as though God exists, because living life accordingly has everything to gain, and nothing to lose.” In other words, it’s best to just assume God exists because of all the perks it offers; eternal life, redemption, all that.
And it is this Wager, proposed, I assume, as an argument in favour of religious belief, that is in my opinion the very crux of that which it is attemtping to advertise. To pawn off religious belief as the toss of a coin, as a decision to be made consciously simply because it offers a better deal seems to be exactly the wrong reason to believe something as life altering and profound as the existence of a benevolent (or any) god.
Belief in anything can never be a choice. Only the desire to believe can be.
Richard Dawkins, biological theorist and posterboy/spokesperson for atheism has proposed his own version of this wager, the ‘anti-wager’, which states the following: "Suppose we grant that there is indeed some small chance that God exists. Nevertheless, it could be said that you will lead a better, fuller life if you bet on his not existing, than if you bet on his existing and therefore squander your precious time on worshipping him, sacrificing to him, fighting and dying for him, etc."
This anti-wager of course makes the same mistake, suggesting that (religious) belief is a conscious choice. But then, maybe that was his point. I choose to believe it is.
This is one of my favourite quotes, mainly because however long you decide to look at it and think about it, you won’t be able to make heads or tails of it in any shape or form. It is dripping with a kind of irrational, nonsensical, quasi-scientific meta-physicism to which you can react only with a heartfelt ‘bwuh?’. Plus, it’s awesome.
It’s a quote from Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician, physicist and philosopher, who is otherwise best known for his Wager, which states that “even though the existence of God cannot be determined through reason, a person should wager as though God exists, because living life accordingly has everything to gain, and nothing to lose.” In other words, it’s best to just assume God exists because of all the perks it offers; eternal life, redemption, all that.
And it is this Wager, proposed, I assume, as an argument in favour of religious belief, that is in my opinion the very crux of that which it is attemtping to advertise. To pawn off religious belief as the toss of a coin, as a decision to be made consciously simply because it offers a better deal seems to be exactly the wrong reason to believe something as life altering and profound as the existence of a benevolent (or any) god.
Belief in anything can never be a choice. Only the desire to believe can be.
Richard Dawkins, biological theorist and posterboy/spokesperson for atheism has proposed his own version of this wager, the ‘anti-wager’, which states the following: "Suppose we grant that there is indeed some small chance that God exists. Nevertheless, it could be said that you will lead a better, fuller life if you bet on his not existing, than if you bet on his existing and therefore squander your precious time on worshipping him, sacrificing to him, fighting and dying for him, etc."
This anti-wager of course makes the same mistake, suggesting that (religious) belief is a conscious choice. But then, maybe that was his point. I choose to believe it is.
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