The Odds on God

Spirituality Column #150
September 22, 2009
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper
Current in Westfield (IN) newspaper

The Odds on God
By Bob Walters

Frenchman Blaise Pascal was a brilliant 17th century scientist, mathematician and philosopher whose fertile mind wandered into, out of, and back into religion during his life from 1623 to 1662.

Pascal’s France was the era of Louis XIV, Cardinal Richilieu, Cyrano de Bergerac, and Rene Descartes. It was a country culturally stretched by Le Roi Soleil, the ecclesial preeminence of the Jesuits and Catholic Church, the early secular gloamings of the humanist philosophers, and religious emanations from the robust Protestant Reformation next door in Germany.

A child prodigy educated by his father, Pascal wrote a treatise on conical mathematics at age 16. At 22, he was schooled in atmospherics by Descartes, known not only for math and physics but also as the father of modern philosophy.

The famous “I think, therefore I am” (Cogito ergo sum) is from Descartes, whose powerful (and novel) rational argument proceeded from finding truth by first defining doubt, and then into assuring us that we exist.

Some take that to infer God must also exist; others that it means God doesn’t need to exist. Try as he might, Descartes could never quite prove – not even to his own satisfaction – whether God exists or not.

“Pascal’s Wager,” another famous bit of unsatisfying theological grist, hedges a person’s bet on God’s existence. To paraphrase, the wager states (tip of the hat to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy):

Even under the assumption that God’s existence is unlikely, the potential benefits of believing are so vast as to make betting on God’s existence rational.

My Christian spiritual mentors wrinkle their noses at that one. A fair summation of their response is: “To bet blindly on God to avoid condemnation or attain salvation neither creates love nor proves faith. God knows the difference.”

A couple weeks ago Indianapolis hosted a convention of secularists, and news coverage (at least what I saw of it) seemed fair enough. Secularists just can’t make sense of why or how there could be a God, but nonetheless appreciate – and in many cases share – the human need to form communities.

Descartes (a non-believer) and Pascal (a believer), always are prominent bellwethers of naturalist, secularist, humanist, even atheistic argument. “We have nature, why do we need God?” the non-believers seemingly say.

Convention organizers confidently cited a survey revealing that 15 percent of Americans reject God and religion.

Tells me that 85 percent don’t.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) spent most of his life thinking God was an inconvenient truth. For fun, Google “Pascal’s Wager” and “Cogito Ergo Sum.”