You Literally Bet Your Life: Thoughts on Pascal's Wager

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You Literally Bet Your Life: Thoughts on Pascal's Wager

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Two Attitudes. Two Questions. Two Considerations

Two Attitudes

I have noticed two common attitudes towards religion who try to avoid thinking about it.

The first is the attitude of indifferentism. Indifferentism is basically the attitude that all religions are pretty similar and the differences between them are minor quibbles that don't matter as long as we are all "nice" to each other. (Never mind the fact that what qualifies as being "nice" differs from religion to religion).

The second is the attitude of skepticism. Skepticism also looks at all the religions and sees the differences. The attitude of the skeptic is to look at all the differences and say, "we can't know which one, if any, is true so it doesn't matter if we just opt out of choosing."

These two attitudes—two sides of the same coin—make a universal conclusion out of the differences. Either they are insignificant or insurmountable and therefore religion doesn't matter. Accept or reject religion as you like.

Two Questions

I think these two attitudes can be addressed by two questions. For the Indifferent, the question is:

How do you know they're all equally valid?

For the skeptic, the question is:

How do you know they're all equally unimportant?

Two Considerations

The fact that there are different religions and that they say different things is not a matter of indifference. If there is a right way and a wrong way to do things, then one cannot reasonably say that it doesn't matter what way is chosen. Indifference is a positive laxness that does not think that the differences mean anything. Therefore one is as good as another. But just because the indifferent person sees the differences as unimportant doesn't mean that the differences are unimportant. In the world of law, thinking differences are unimportant and ignoring them can get a person in trouble if the person enforcing the law discovers you chose the wrong understanding of what is right.

This also applies to following God—if God has made known how He wants His followers to follow Him, choosing any old way to act is acting wrongly. Consider the rebellion of Korah in Numbers 16, or the rebelling of Aaron and Miriam (Numbers 12). This was not a matter of indifference to God.

Dr. Peter Kreeft has used this example. Imagine a mountain with many roads going upwards. How do you know they all reach the top? The wrong path will not get you to the desired destination. So if one path is the path God has made (John 14:6) and the others are manmade, then the indifferent attitude that holds that one path is as good as another is a dangerous one indeed.

The skeptic takes an attitude of negative laxness. It too looks at the differences in the claims but, unlike the indifferent, the skeptic sees the contradictions and concludes that we can't know if any of them are true so we can safely ignore all of them. But when you think about it, does that attitude really make sense?

If you should go to a foreign country and are not sure what the traffic laws are, it would be foolish to head out on the road while thinking it doesn't matter if you choose to follow none of them. You would soon be before a judge. You couldn't plead "I didn't know so I thought it wasn't important!" The judge would ask why you didn't bother to at least try to seek out the rules.

Conclusion

Now you may ask me, "with all the competing views, how can I begin to find the right path?" (Now if you ask me personally, I'll try to save you some time and say, "It's the Catholic Church." But since I presume you meant, "How do I search for the right path…?" read on). The answer is, you need to seek out what is true—which means discerning what is true as opposed to what pleases you or what you want to be true.

A lot of people stop at "What gives me pleasure" and never asks whether what feels good is actually good. People get caught up in destructive relationships, alcohol, drugs, etc. They can't see beyond the pleasure and thus can't see that they are not searching for what is truth. Self delusion and fear of losing what is safe can often lead to never beginning the search.

The truth can be described as, to say of what is, that it is; and to say of what is not, that it is not is to speak the truth. So that's the first step. Looking for what is true by seeing if it is what it claims to be. When a claim is made whether about atheism, pantheism, paganism, monotheistic faiths and Christian denominations, the question "Is it true?" must be asked concerning the claims by the group and the claims made about the group (remember, people often speak falsely about what they don't know).

A search may take a long time. God calls a person on His time, not at your convenience. (And yes, I absolutely believe God exists and loves you personally regardless of whether or not you know Him yet). But the fact that a person has not yet encountered God doesn't give him or her the right to quit searching and just say, "Close enough, I'll just settle for this."

Just remember that it is never right to say "It doesn't matter which one I pick or even if I pick none of them." If you honestly seek the truth and pray to God to lead you to Him, you will eventually meet Him.

Two Attitudes. Two Questions. Two Considerations

Two Attitudes

I have noticed two common attitudes towards religion who try to avoid thinking about it.

The first is the attitude of indifferentism. Indifferentism is basically the attitude that all religions are pretty similar and the differences between them are minor quibbles that don't matter as long as we are all "nice" to each other. (Never mind the fact that what qualifies as being "nice" differs from religion to religion).

The second is the attitude of skepticism. Skepticism also looks at all the religions and sees the differences. The attitude of the skeptic is to look at all the differences and say, "we can't know which one, if any, is true so it doesn't matter if we just opt out of choosing."

These two attitudes—two sides of the same coin—make a universal conclusion out of the differences. Either they are insignificant or insurmountable and therefore religion doesn't matter. Accept or reject religion as you like.

Two Questions

I think these two attitudes can be addressed by two questions. For the Indifferent, the question is:

How do you know they're all equally valid?

For the skeptic, the question is:

How do you know they're all equally unimportant?

Two Considerations

The fact that there are different religions and that they say different things is not a matter of indifference. If there is a right way and a wrong way to do things, then one cannot reasonably say that it doesn't matter what way is chosen. Indifference is a positive laxness that does not think that the differences mean anything. Therefore one is as good as another. But just because the indifferent person sees the differences as unimportant doesn't mean that the differences are unimportant. In the world of law, thinking differences are unimportant and ignoring them can get a person in trouble if the person enforcing the law discovers you chose the wrong understanding of what is right.

This also applies to following God—if God has made known how He wants His followers to follow Him, choosing any old way to act is acting wrongly. Consider the rebellion of Korah in Numbers 16, or the rebelling of Aaron and Miriam (Numbers 12). This was not a matter of indifference to God.

Dr. Peter Kreeft has used this example. Imagine a mountain with many roads going upwards. How do you know they all reach the top? The wrong path will not get you to the desired destination. So if one path is the path God has made (John 14:6) and the others are manmade, then the indifferent attitude that holds that one path is as good as another is a dangerous one indeed.

The skeptic takes an attitude of negative laxness. It too looks at the differences in the claims but, unlike the indifferent, the skeptic sees the contradictions and concludes that we can't know if any of them are true so we can safely ignore all of them. But when you think about it, does that attitude really make sense?

If you should go to a foreign country and are not sure what the traffic laws are, it would be foolish to head out on the road while thinking it doesn't matter if you choose to follow none of them. You would soon be before a judge. You couldn't plead "I didn't know so I thought it wasn't important!" The judge would ask why you didn't bother to at least try to seek out the rules.

Conclusion

Now you may ask me, "with all the competing views, how can I begin to find the right path?" (Now if you ask me personally, I'll try to save you some time and say, "It's the Catholic Church." But since I presume you meant, "How do I search for the right path…?" read on). The answer is, you need to seek out what is true—which means discerning what is true as opposed to what pleases you or what you want to be true.

A lot of people stop at "What gives me pleasure" and never asks whether what feels good is actually good. People get caught up in destructive relationships, alcohol, drugs, etc. They can't see beyond the pleasure and thus can't see that they are not searching for what is truth. Self delusion and fear of losing what is safe can often lead to never beginning the search.

The truth can be described as, to say of what is, that it is; and to say of what is not, that it is not is to speak the truth. So that's the first step. Looking for what is true by seeing if it is what it claims to be. When a claim is made whether about atheism, pantheism, paganism, monotheistic faiths and Christian denominations, the question "Is it true?" must be asked concerning the claims by the group and the claims made about the group (remember, people often speak falsely about what they don't know).

A search may take a long time. God calls a person on His time, not at your convenience. (And yes, I absolutely believe God exists and loves you personally regardless of whether or not you know Him yet). But the fact that a person has not yet encountered God doesn't give him or her the right to quit searching and just say, "Close enough, I'll just settle for this."

Just remember that it is never right to say "It doesn't matter which one I pick or even if I pick none of them." If you honestly seek the truth and pray to God to lead you to Him, you will eventually meet Him.

Thoughts on Catholicism and Human Law

I would like to expand on something I wrote a few days ago concerning the concept of legitimate and illegitimate law. I hope in this day and age (unfortunately, you never know) most people would recognize that governments can and do create unjust laws (whether actual laws, judicial rulings and executive orders) which are made binding through force—not just in totalitarian nations, but right here in the US as well.

Realizing that even in the Western Nations (which are always held up as the paragon of freedom compared to the rest of the world, fair or not) the governments can and do create unjust laws is important. It shows that no state government is impeccable in creating laws (human laws, to distinguish from Divine Law and Natural Law)—even if our own party of preference is in command.

I think that with this understanding in mind, the Catholic perspective should be explored. A lot of accusations have been made about us, and we need to have a basic understanding on how the Church views the authority of the state and the human law it creates.

We're not anarchists. We don't hold that the adage, the government that governs best governs least. Nor do we hold that government is a necessary evil. When it works as it ought, government justly holds authority and must be heeded. On the other hand, Catholicism is not a proponent of Big Government. The authority of the state certainly has limits as to what it can do.

In the Catholic perspective, the purpose of government is ensuring the common good. However, the government is not itself the common good. It can only be a means to this end. The government does not have the authority to redefine what the common good is, and the burdens of the law must not be unequally proportioned—such as favoring your friends and harming your enemies. (See Summa Theologica I II Q 96 a4). Finally, the laws passed cannot exceed the authority of the lawgiver.

This last point is important. While certain views of government exalt the power of the state, when the government decrees something it has no right to decree, the law it passes has no authority—much like if I were to pass a law that all the houses on my block have the obligation to pay me a 20% tax on their gross income. I would have no right to make such a law because I do not have the authority to even make a law. Maybe if I had my own private militia I could get away with it, but the law would have no authority on its own.

A government may decree a thing, but if the thing decreed goes beyond the authority of the government to decree, then the only way that the law can be binding is if the government uses force to carry out the law. There would be no moral  obligation to follow such a law.

When you see these principles, it becomes clear that sometimes the Church must necessarily be in opposition to certain acts of government but is not acting in a partisan manner in doing so.

The Church rejects the claim by a state that it can decide to change the definitions of what is good or evil. Thus when the state creates such legislation, she denies that the law has binding authority. If the law interferes with the ability to do good and avoid evil, then it is not a law at all. It is merely an act of coercion.

Thus the Church will challenge the state that decrees that it can make marriage anything other than between one man and one woman. The Church will challenge the state if it decrees that abortion is a "right." The Church will challenge the state if the state demands that employers violate their religious faith by paying for contraceptives.

When the state decrees such things, these laws lack the morally binding force that valid human law possesses. The government can use force to demand compliance—do it or be sued, locked up or dead.

Now while that threat of coercion may work on individuals within the Church, it doesn't work on the Church as a whole. The Church that recognizes the witness of martyrdom (which is not to be confused with the perversion of the term by those who blow themselves and others up to make a point).

Martyrdom in the Catholic sense says that it is better to suffer evil than to do evil—even to the point of dying rather than doing what God forbids. The Catholic faith, which says, " I would rather suffer as an innocent than to be guilty of doing what God forbids," does not accept the claims of the state to have the right to make good evil or evil good.

The reasons above also explain why the Church—contrary to the hopes of the media—will never permit abortion, woman priests, "gay marriage," contraception, or remarriage when the spouse of a pervious valid marriage is still alive. The Church is not an institution which arbitrarily makes up rules for Catholics to follow and can undo them whenever she likes. When God teaches us what is good or evil, the Catholic Church knows she does not have the authority to change that teaching.

When one understands these things, it becomes clear how the Church can be in opposition to the human laws of a government without being partisan. The Church can accept a government which seeks the true common good and does not seek to elevate itself to the greatest importance and does not seek to make laws it has no right or authority to make.

But it must seek to convert the government that seeks partisan gain for its supporters, that seeks to pass laws it has no right to pass.

This then is why the Catholic Church must sometimes be in opposition to our government.

Thoughts on Catholicism and Human Law

I would like to expand on something I wrote a few days ago concerning the concept of legitimate and illegitimate law. I hope in this day and age (unfortunately, you never know) most people would recognize that governments can and do create unjust laws (whether actual laws, judicial rulings and executive orders) which are made binding through force—not just in totalitarian nations, but right here in the US as well.

Realizing that even in the Western Nations (which are always held up as the paragon of freedom compared to the rest of the world, fair or not) the governments can and do create unjust laws is important. It shows that no state government is impeccable in creating laws (human laws, to distinguish from Divine Law and Natural Law)—even if our own party of preference is in command.

I think that with this understanding in mind, the Catholic perspective should be explored. A lot of accusations have been made about us, and we need to have a basic understanding on how the Church views the authority of the state and the human law it creates.

We're not anarchists. We don't hold that the adage, the government that governs best governs least. Nor do we hold that government is a necessary evil. When it works as it ought, government justly holds authority and must be heeded. On the other hand, Catholicism is not a proponent of Big Government. The authority of the state certainly has limits as to what it can do.

In the Catholic perspective, the purpose of government is ensuring the common good. However, the government is not itself the common good. It can only be a means to this end. The government does not have the authority to redefine what the common good is, and the burdens of the law must not be unequally proportioned—such as favoring your friends and harming your enemies. (See Summa Theologica I II Q 96 a4). Finally, the laws passed cannot exceed the authority of the lawgiver.

This last point is important. While certain views of government exalt the power of the state, when the government decrees something it has no right to decree, the law it passes has no authority—much like if I were to pass a law that all the houses on my block have the obligation to pay me a 20% tax on their gross income. I would have no right to make such a law because I do not have the authority to even make a law. Maybe if I had my own private militia I could get away with it, but the law would have no authority on its own.

A government may decree a thing, but if the thing decreed goes beyond the authority of the government to decree, then the only way that the law can be binding is if the government uses force to carry out the law. There would be no moral  obligation to follow such a law.

When you see these principles, it becomes clear that sometimes the Church must necessarily be in opposition to certain acts of government but is not acting in a partisan manner in doing so.

The Church rejects the claim by a state that it can decide to change the definitions of what is good or evil. Thus when the state creates such legislation, she denies that the law has binding authority. If the law interferes with the ability to do good and avoid evil, then it is not a law at all. It is merely an act of coercion.

Thus the Church will challenge the state that decrees that it can make marriage anything other than between one man and one woman. The Church will challenge the state if it decrees that abortion is a "right." The Church will challenge the state if the state demands that employers violate their religious faith by paying for contraceptives.

When the state decrees such things, these laws lack the morally binding force that valid human law possesses. The government can use force to demand compliance—do it or be sued, locked up or dead.

Now while that threat of coercion may work on individuals within the Church, it doesn't work on the Church as a whole. The Church that recognizes the witness of martyrdom (which is not to be confused with the perversion of the term by those who blow themselves and others up to make a point).

Martyrdom in the Catholic sense says that it is better to suffer evil than to do evil—even to the point of dying rather than doing what God forbids. The Catholic faith, which says, " I would rather suffer as an innocent than to be guilty of doing what God forbids," does not accept the claims of the state to have the right to make good evil or evil good.

The reasons above also explain why the Church—contrary to the hopes of the media—will never permit abortion, woman priests, "gay marriage," contraception, or remarriage when the spouse of a pervious valid marriage is still alive. The Church is not an institution which arbitrarily makes up rules for Catholics to follow and can undo them whenever she likes. When God teaches us what is good or evil, the Catholic Church knows she does not have the authority to change that teaching.

When one understands these things, it becomes clear how the Church can be in opposition to the human laws of a government without being partisan. The Church can accept a government which seeks the true common good and does not seek to elevate itself to the greatest importance and does not seek to make laws it has no right or authority to make.

But it must seek to convert the government that seeks partisan gain for its supporters, that seeks to pass laws it has no right to pass.

This then is why the Catholic Church must sometimes be in opposition to our government.

On Stereotypes

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