If all people can only remember that!!!

Cadmus

For some reason Pascal went to some trouble to reason on the existence of God. He couldn’t prove He exists, Him being beyond the writ of subpoena, and a negative being unprovable, he had to settle for likelihood.

Acting on that likelihood is an act of faith. Joshua makes an excellent point about the effects of faith and the twist it can take when wrong.

On the other thread is a discussion of what happens when things go wrong. There we have a lutheran church that harbored a man who murdered children. I cannot understand the reasoning that led them to think he was a Christian or worthy of the companionship and support of Christians. One has to choose a church that is consistent with your understanding of Scripture, Reason and Tradition.

Im sorry for your situation but can only hope you find faith.

As I’ve mentioned in more recent threads, what I find most interesting about faith isn’t whether or not the beliefs in question are founded, but what effect faith has on the believer. Specifically, the incentives created by the notions of eternal salvation or damnation, incentives to which believers are subject but nonbelievers are not. Belief in such things may not be rational in itself, but once you’ve made that leap of, well, faith and chosen to believe in them, your most rational course of action is to live in such a way that maximizes your chance of eternal salvation, regardless of the real-world consequences to you or anyone else. After all, what’s this measly little finite existence of ours next to eternity?

Where things get hairy, of course, is when maximizing your chances of salvation requires things of you that would otherwise be quite insane. If, for example, science and common sense both say X, but the Bible/Qur’an/whatever (or at least your understanding thereof) says Y, and you believe your good standing in eternity rides on your acceptance of what the Bible/Qur’an/whatever says above all else, then Y becomes, not the right answer, but the only logical one to adopt, because your aforementioned stnading in the afterlife is your overriding incentive.

Also as I mentioned in those other threads, this becomes an even bigger problem when Y involves antisocial behavior or outright violence. Yet the secular West has yet to figure out how to overcome the overriding incentives of eternal salvation or damnation, much less come up with satisfactory secular substitutes for them. Unless and until it does – and whatever the over/under is on how long it may take, I wouldn’t bet a red cent on the under – faith and religion aren’t going anywhere, in the West or anywhere else.

Hillel was born in Babylonia. At age forty, he went to live in Jerusalem. There he became the spiritual leader (Nasi) of the Jews from about 30 B.C.E to 10 C.E.

Many of Hillel’s decisions concerning Jewish Law (Halacha) were recorded in the Mishnah and Talmud. Interpretations of Jewish Law (Halacha) handed down by Hillel’s school (Beit Hillel) tended to be more liberal than those of the Shammai school (Beit Shammai).

When asked by a non-Jew to relate all the Torah had to say while standing on one foot, Hillel replied, “Do not unto your neighbor what you would not have him do until you; this is the whole Law; the rest is commentary.”

You misunderstand Pascal’s Wager. He did not conclude that God existed, but rather that you have nothing to lose pretending that God exists. I disagree with that (I think you do have your freedom to lose by letting a Church choose your morality for you) and also would posit that if God did exist he would expect true faith & love, not hollow praise from a pretender going through the motions “just to be on the safe side.”

Further, one thing that Pascal did not factor is is “If you’re going to believe in a God for safety’s sake, which one?” His work doesn’t help me choose between Christianity and Hinduism.

Lacking faith, I chose honesty. It so happens that I live by a morality very similar to Christian morality in many respects (it’s good stuff), but I arrived by by means of my own reason. If God exists I hope I get points for using the tools I’m given, rather than punished for being born without the ability to believe without questioning.

This is the explanation for the cult of Che Guevara.

Check out Arnold Kling’s writings regarding the appeal of Marxism vs capitalism to the adolescent some time.

It is time you Christians got right with God and returned to your Jewish roots.

If it was good enough for Jesus….

Life is a yoke?