Nigel Warburton—

If you toss a coin it can come up heads or tails. There is a 50/50 change of either, unless the coin has a bias. So it doesn’t really matter which side you bet on as it is just as likely each time you toss the coin that heads will come up as tails. If you aren’t sure whether or not God exists, what should you do? It is like tossing a coin. Should you gamble on God not existing, and live your life as you please? Or would it be more rational to act as if God does exist, even if the odds on this being true are very long? Blaise Pascal (1623-62), who did believe in God, thought hard about this question.

Pascal was a devout Catholic. But unlike many Christians today, he had an extremely bleak view of humanity. He was a pessimist. Everywhere he saw evidence of the Fall, the imperfections we have which he thought were due to Adam and Eve betraying God’s trust by eating the apple from the Tree of Knowledge. Like Augustine (see Chapter 6), he believed that human beings are driven by sexual desire, are unreliable and easily bored. Everyone is wretched. Everyone is torn between anxiety and despair. We should realize how insignificant we all are. The short time that we are on earth is, in relation to the eternity both before and after our lives, almost meaningless. We each occupy a tiny space in the infinite space of the universe. Yet, at the same time, Pascal believed that humanity has some potential if we don’t lose sight of God. We are somewhere between beasts and angels, but probably quite a lot closer to the beasts in most cases and for most of the time.

Pascal’s best-known book, his Pensées (‘Thoughts’), was pieced together from fragments of his writing and published in 1670 after his early death at the age of 39. It is written in a series of beautifully crafted short paragraphs. No one is completely sure how he intended the parts to fit together, but the main point of the book is clear: it is a defence of his version of Christianity. Pascal hadn’t finished the book when he died. The order of the parts is based on how he had arranged pieces of paper into bundles tied with string. Each bundle forms a section in the published book.

Excerpted from Chapter 12: “Place Your Bets: Blaise Pascal”  in A Little History of Philosophy, by Nigel Warburton. Copyright © 2011 by Nigel Warburton.

If the Jews had all been converted by Christ we should only have suspect witnesses left.  And if they had been wiped out we should have had none at all.

The Jews reject him [Jesus], but not all of them: the holy ones accept him and not the carnal ones, and far from telling against his glory this is the crowning touch to it.  Their reason for doing so, and the only one to be found in all their writings, in the Talmud and the rabbis, is merely that Christ did not subdue the nations by force of arms.  “Gird thy sword, O most mighty” [Psalm 45:3].  Is that all they have to say?  “Christ was slain,” they say, “he was defeated and did not subdue the heathen by force.  He did not give us their spoils.  He offers us no riches.”  Is that all they have to say?  This is what makes me love him.  I would not want the man they envisage.  It is clear that it is only sin that prevented them from accepting him, and by their rejection they have become unimpeachable witnesses, and, what is more, in doing so they have fulfilled the prophecies.

I’ve been attempting to learn Spanish off and on the past couple of years with varied success.  One of the things I’ve done is to participate in a Spanish lunch group at work.  A colleague with a passion for the language generously teaches from a beginner book on Mondays, and we slowly make our way through the material.  The other day we were discussing upcoming curriculum, and it was decided that we would wait to learn future and past tenses of verbs.  ”We live in the present,” our instructor explained, so it’s most useful to learn that tense extensively before moving on to others.

That statement struck me.  We live in the present.  While there is a lot of practical truth to what he said, I thought back to experiences getting to know native Spanish speakers.  After a few factual exchanges of “I live in the United States” and “I am twenty-six,” conversations almost always turned toward the past.  Where were you born?  Where have you traveled?  What did you study in school?  Our past experiences are such a key component to who we are that they naturally creep into conversations about the present.  Furthermore, when you get to know someone on a deeper level, the language almost always turns toward the future.  What are your dreams?  Where do you want to be in ten years?  We live in the present, but the past and future are perhaps even bigger parts of who we are.  This is true, of course, not only when speaking in foreign languages, but any time two people are getting to know each other.

These thoughts reminded me of one of my favorite quotes from Blaise Pascal in his book, Pensées:

We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us, and do not think of the only one that does; so vain that we dream of times that are not and blindly flee the only one that is. The fact is that the present usually hurts. We thrust it out of sight because it distresses us, and if we find it enjoyable, we are sorry to see it slip away. We try to give it the support of the future, and think how we are going to arrange things over which we have no control for a time we can never be sure of reaching.

Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus, we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so.

While Pascal takes it to the extreme, he has a point; the past forms us into who we are today and our futures pull us toward what we will become.  It’s a double-edged sword, and we must live on the blade, in the present.  It’s difficult, but the truth is that the present is the only thing we can change.  I challenge you to take note of your conversations and thoughts the next couple of days and see just how much “we live in the present.”

I don’t know if Tournier ever read Hudson’s translation of this anecdote, but it seems not to be translationese English.  The ideas seem expressed well.  But was Hudson translating for a specific person, for you, for me, for somebody very much like us?

Here’s the full paragraph:

To become a person, to discover the world of persons, to acquire the sense of the person, to be more interested in people as persons than their ideas, their party labels, their personage, means a complete revolution, changing the climate of our lives.  Once adopted, it is an attitude which rapidly impregnates the whole of our lives.  While at the Weissenstein conference I had occasion to congratulate one of my colleagues who had made an extremely good job of interpreting a talk I had given earlier in the day.  ‘And do you know why?’ he asked me.  ‘It had been mentioned to me that one of our Scandinavian friends was finding it very troublesome following the speeches in foreign languages.  So I interpreted for him; I never took my eyes off him, watching his face all the time to see if he had understood.  And I found that through giving more attention to his person than to the ideas I was translating, I actually found it easier to express the ideas.

Let me just go on to add this.  I don’t know much about Edwin Hudson (and do notice that Paul Tournier gives us nothing about this personal interpreter he mentions in the story).  Nonetheless, I do know that Hudson acted as Tournier’s interpreter/ translator for an interview allowed to one Alex Mitchell.  Mitchell writes up the interview that gets published in the September 1981 edition of ThirdWay.

What’s fascinating about this very personal interview is how Tournier, a widower by this time, is giving his late wife agency.  He speaks of Nelly Bouvier, who had passed away seven years earlier, saying:

It was my wife who helped me gain this sense of the personal.  It came slowly because men [like us] are [more commonly] afraid of showing their emotions and feelings than women.  And while I was quite prepared to teach my wife I didn’t [quickly] realise I had something to learn from her.  The most important thing for me has been our meditation together [through the years].  That was really where it started, really listening to each other.  I was too fond [at first] of explaining things to her instead of listening.

We readers of Mitchell’s published interview of Hudson’s English translation of Tournier’s Swiss French must imagine.  We must picture Hudson listening intently to Tournier while “never taking his eyes off Mitchell, watching his face all the time to see if he had understood.”  And when in the interview Tournier spoke of Bouvier, they may have all realized in that moment all that they had learned from her.

Tournier at one point in the interview absolutely resists answering a question on behalf of women.  However Hudson interprets that into English for Mitchell, the latter making sure Tournier’s reply gets punctuated with an exclamation point:

Women must discover that [for themselves without my help], not men!

And in response to the question about Tournier’s reaction to Marabel Morgan’s popular evangelical Christian interpretation of the New Testament as saying women should “voluntarily submit” to their husbands, there’s this response (Tournier speaking, Hudson listening and translating looking at Mitchell, Mitchell recording for his readers, for us):

I would not have liked my wife to act like that!

Tournier goes on to give his understanding of “Genesis 3:16 where God tells the woman, ‘your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.’”  Tournier goes on to explain why, in French, it is women more than men who had been reading his newest book, The Gift of Feeling.  Tournier has challenged the masculinist rationalism of Descartes and puts him together with other men (“Pascal, Kierkegaard, and even Marx”) who more clearly demonstrated how “there is masculine and feminine in every human being.”

To hear Tournier speaking more on these subjects in this interview, you may find it via google books here.  The photo of Tournier included is as if Hudson is keeping his eyes on us, watching our faces all the time to see if we have understood.

Paul Tournier and Nelly Bouvier. Who learns from whom the personal lessons of listening, of translating?

About a minute into this video, you see a little image of the earth drawn to scale, which is dwarfed by the immensity of the solar flare.   It shows the vastness, the beauty and the wonder of the universe.   But I won’t say the power and size of the solar flare makes me feel insignificant as a human being, because we on our little blue marble of a planet have consciousness and intelligence, which the solar flare does not.   As the 17th century Catholic philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote—

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.  The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him.  A vapor, a drop of water suffices to kill him.  But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this.

All our dignity then, consists in thought.  By it we must elevate ourselves, and not by space and time which we cannot fill.  Let us endeavor then, to think well; this is the principle of morality

]]> http://nhanfiction.com/2013/03/01/quote-find-no-96/ Fri, 01 Mar 2013 15:00:05 +0000 Nhan-Fiction http://nhanfiction.com/2013/03/01/quote-find-no-96/

“In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.”
- Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal

________________________________________________________________

Image: Madame Scherzo

http://www.trekearth.com

“No one can see God’s face”  (Exodus 33:20)

What do they mean that no one can see God’s face? They mean that we cannot see God as he is. We are not capable of this. We inevitably project our own fallenness onto God. So just getting people to believe in the existence of God or the existence of the supernatural does no good. People can believe in the supernatural but still have lives that are moral or spiritual disasters. James put it like this: “You believe that there is one God, Good! Even the demons believe that- and shudder” (James 2:19).  Do these demons believe that the one God is good and just and fair and loving? Do these demons believe the same things about this God that Jesus believed about his Father? No, not at all.

God seems to present himself to us in such a way that people who want to dismiss God will be able to dismiss him. He seems to leave space for them. People who do not want there to be a God will find a way to believe that there is no God.  Blaise Pascal said  that there is enough light for those who want to see and enough darkness for those of a different persuasion.

From the book “Faith and Doubt” by John Ortberg

Pascal’s Wager Summarized

• Believe in God

1. Correct: Win heaven
2. Incorrect: Lose nothing

• Don’t Believe In God

1. Correct: Good for you
2. Incorrect: ETERNAL TORTURE

• Bottom line; might as well believe in God

Here is, for me, where the true INSANITY of religion lies.

Most religious people on this planet adhere to religions that profess a version of a “hell” destination that essentially tortures people forever that don’t believe in that religion’s particular god.

I used to believe in a particular god and after a long process that I detailed in my brief book, I no longer believe that my old god, or any other gods exist. Here are the critical details that almost every religious person that I know fails to comprehend.

• I’m not picking sides in a debate, or choosing a political party, or switching my allegiances from one brand to another.
• I’M NOT CHOOSING TO DISBELIEVE.
• I just don’t believe.

Whenever I hear a story about alien abduction, my brain automatically thinks that the story is not true. I’m not choosing to disbelieve the person making the claim, my disbelief simply occurs in my brain and my disbelief won’t change unless something causes my disbelief to change. Perhaps I’ll meet someone making an abduction claim and they’ll convince me. Perhaps I’ll be abducted myself, or hallucinate that I’m abducted, and my brain might reconsider other abduction stories and all of a sudden recognize them as true. (Not holding my breath.)

Currently, my brain simply doesn’t think about the god that I used to believe in, or any other ideas of gods that exist in my neurological database, and find any of them to be real. At the moment, faced with eternal punishment, I’m literally unable to make myself believe in a god in the exact same way that I’m unable to make myself believe in alien abduction. The disbelief in either case is literally out of my control even though I understand that I could be wrong on either matter.

The insanity in most religion lies in the fact that this state of disbelief is grounds for a punishment that is worse than any horror ever conceived of, or perpetrated by, any human in the history of mankind. Take the agony of burning another human at the stake, something that we humans used to do quite regularly, and extend that torture forever. If you are a Christian, or a Muslim, or a Mormon, and you are doing your religion correctly, you should fully expect my fate to be a permanent, unyielding, agony far worse than a relatively peaceful and brief stake-burning.

People often ask me, “if you don’t believe in god, what do you believe in?” I think my best answer just might be this: I BELIEVE THAT PUNISHING SOMEONE FOR NOT BELIEVING SOMETHING IS NOT ONLY INSANE, BUT THE EPITOME OF WICKEDNESS. This concept, whether you like it or not, is the foundation of religion.

• The good news: I don’t happen to think that most people really believe this nonsense.
• The bad news: people behave like they do believe it and are too indoctrinated to address this problem.

This kind of argument appeals to the person who claims that we cannot know whether or not God does exist. Blaise Pascal presumed that we do have the choice to make for ourselves, whether we will believe in God or not. He argued that if we believe in God and we’re right, then we reap the benefits (including, presumably, everlasting life). If we believe in God and we’re wrong, then we have sacrificed finite goods. However, if we don’t believe in God and we’re right, then it seems our only gain is some set of finite goods available in the season of this lifetime, but if we don’t believe in God and we’re wrong then we have incurred the loss of an infinite good (namely, knowing God for ever in eternity). This outline of options is supposed to obviate why reason dictates that one ought to believe in God even if reason cannot establish with certainty by demonstration that God does exist.

As Philosopher Alan Hájek explains it, in his article on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

1. Either God exists or God does not exist, and you can either wager for God or wager against God. The utilities of the relevant possible outcomes are as follows, where f₁, f₂, andf₃ are numbers whose values are not specified beyond the requirement that they be finite:
   

   	God exists	God does not exist
   Wager for God	∞	f1
   Wager against God	f2	f3

2. Rationality requires the probability that you assign to God existing to be positive, and not infinitesimal.
3. Rationality requires you to perform the act of maximum expected utility (when there is one).
4. Conclusion 1. Rationality requires you to wager for God.
5. Conclusion 2. You should wager for God.

This argument has met with innumerable, if somewhat facile and naive, objections from New Atheists. For instance, some New Atheists have proposed that we should adopt a principle of indifference and allot Christian Theism no higher probability than an alternative like Islamic Theism. Some have gone further and suggested that we should adopt the same probability for some deities which are not semantically equivalent to ‘God’ in the generic sense, but are gods in a classical polytheistic sense, such as Thor or Zeus. Thus, eventually, one has shown that there are so many different deities, belief in any one of whom would mutually exclude belief in any other, that one cannot demonstrate by such wager-style reasoning that one ought to believe in (the Christian) God. Some, like Dan Barker, have also proposed that, possibly, God will only give everlasting life to those who had the intellectual honesty and courage to be Atheists because they recognize that there is no evidence that God exists. Thus, Dan Barker’s answer to Pascal’s wager is to propose an Atheistic parody which argues that we have no more reason to suspect that belief in God will bring with it the benefits it promises than we have for suspecting that disbelief in God will bring with it those same benefits.

Moreover, some people have argued that we need not make a choice either way until we know for sure, to which Pascal himself answers: “Yes; but you must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked. Which will you choose then?” In other words Pascal highlights the impossibility of not living according to one or the other of these two practical assumptions, that either God exists or he does not (i.e., the agnostic is ‘practically’ an atheist). Some have objected that Pascal presumed that we actually have the ability to choose to believe in God, whereas that choice is not possible for all of us because either it must be made possible by his Grace, or perhaps because some of us simply can’t by any means convince ourselves that God exists anymore than I can now convince myself that I am not writing (or you reading). In response to these Pascal would say that we ought at least to strive to believe (even if we can’t), for he explains:

Thus our first interest and our first duty is to enlighten ourselves on this subject, whereon depends all our conduct. Therefore among those who do not believe, I make a vast difference between those who strive with all their power to inform themselves and those who live without troubling or thinking about it.

I can have only compassion for those who sincerely bewail their doubt, who regard it as the greatest of misfortunes, and who, sparing no effort to escape it, make of this inquiry their principal and most serious occupation.
~Pensées, section 194

What is interesting is that recently there has been a resurgence of arguments whose basic form is Pascalian. For example, the excellent Atheist philosopher Jordan Howard Sobel, in his masterful tome on arguments for and against Theism called Logic and Theism: Arguments for and Against Beliefs in God has, according to William Lane Craig’s review, argued ”for the viability of at least some Pascalian wagers in favor of Theistic belief.” Moreover, David Jean Robert has recently developed and finally published what he calls a “A Prudential Argument  for Faith in the Christian God” which represents a wager-style argument for belief in the Christian God. Philosopher George N. Schlesinger has proposed an impressive new version of Pascal’s wager calling it a ‘Central Theistic argument.’ Peter Kreeft has also defended Pascal’s wager, and though Kyle Deming hasn’t defended it he has expressed that there is something about it which he feels makes it a good argument.

As William Lane Craig notes, the answers to the common objection about multiple-deities being possibly extant to Pascal’s wager can be of two kinds:

There are two possible responses to this objection. First, in a decision-theoretic context we are justified in ignoring states which have a remotely small probability of obtaining. Thus, I need not concern myself with the possibility that, say, Zeus or Odin might exist. If the odds of these other deities’ existing are negligible, then I would be justified in setting up a payoff matrix according to which the odds of the existence of the Christian God are taken to be roughly 50/50. The choice is effectively between Christianity and atheism.

Second, we could try to limit the live options to the two at hand or to a tractable number of alternatives. This may have been Pascal’s own strategy. The Wager is a fragment of a larger, unfinished Apology for Christian theism cut short by Pascal’s untimely death. As we look at other fragments of this work, we find that although Pascal disdained philosophical arguments for God’s existence, he embraced enthusiastically Christian evidences, such as the evidence for Christ’s resurrection. It may be that he thought that on the basis of such evidence the live options could be narrowed down to Christian theism or naturalism. If the alternatives can be narrowed down in this way, then Pascal’s Wager goes through successfully.
~Question of the Week #298

I would add to this that somebody who is taking the wager seriously, ought to adopt a sophisticated version of religious pluralism and believe in God before they ever adopt Naturalism. By a sophisticated version of religious pluralism I mean roughly believing in ‘God’ while trying to marry as many different belief systems as possible (even if they’d be reduced to saying that religious linguistic frameworks we call ‘Theologies’ are ultimately in-commensurable). In other words, one tries to affirm as many different belief systems as possible by arguing for a nuanced assent which will not involve mutual exclusion with a maximal number of others. That could place one ideologically shoulder to shoulder with some Theologians like Jacques Dupuis, an influential Catholic priest and adamant advocate of sophisticated religious pluralism.

Also, concerning the principle of indifference being applied when considering something like the polytheistic henotheism of Zeus worship on the one hand, and Christian Theism on the other, it seems ridiculous in point of fact to suggest that these are equally probable. Indeed, by any standard of judging their respective probabilities (personal probability assessments,  philosophical, strictly logical, evidential, sociological, assessments from authority, etc.) Christianity stands a better chance of being true than any single other religious worldview, and plausibly stands a better chance of being true than Naturalism (thus it stands a better chance of being true than not – though, I suppose this may not necessarily follow from being the most probable).

In response to Dan Barker we can point out the very same: that the application of the principle of indifference to his parody simply betrays a poor assessment of the probability that belief in God will yield the benefits of knowing God eternally compared with the probability of disbelieving in God yielding the same benefits.

However, the probability matrices are certainly more complex than Pascal’s matrix of four possibilities if we’re to be exhaustively pedantic, but we can argue successfully that Pascal’s four possibilities are the only relevantly probable possibilities, such that we can justify ‘properly ignoring’ such possibilities for the sake of a wager. Thus we can still run a Pascalian wager-style argument along the very same lines as Pascal has provided.

I myself have also been working on developing and publishing my own pragmatic argument for belief in God’s existence which, though it doesn’t follow the Pascalian wager at all, was still in some sense inspired by Pascal’s style of pragmatic argumentation. Mine will basically argue that an assessment of the value of truth on Atheism, given the concerns of thinkers like Nietzsche and William Clifford, will obviate that one can argue that in almost all logically possible worlds, and certainly in all the nearest possible worlds, one ought to believe that Theism is true on pragmatic grounds alone.

All this to say that I think pragmatic arguments for belief in God’s existence are experiencing a revitalization which has dovetailed on the resurrection of Natural Theology in general (though, obviously, Pascal’s wager and arguments like it are not part of Natural Theology).

Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que

je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.

-Blaise Pascal

Translation:

I have made this [letter] longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter.

It is false piety to preserve peace at the expense of truth; it is false zeal to preserve truth at the expense of charity.

(More thoughts from Blaise Pascal)

Happy Valentine’s Day!

(Blaise Pascal Quote, SB Photoshop Artwork, 2.14.13)

To show my love to you, my readers, I’ve compiled a set of gift ideas as unique as each person on your list. If your beloved lives miles away, you have enough time to send them one of these personal selections. And if you’re just a last minute shopper (I’ve worked in retail, so I know you’re out there!), you’re still in the clear.

Finally, don’t forget to treat yourself this year. Self love is underrated.

Below, my fourteen favorite options:

1. Love Moschino Heart Box Clutch Bag, $195 at Neiman Marcus. Something for even the blackest of hearts.
   

   Love Moschino heart clutch. Image via Neiman Marcus.

2. ‘Love knows not’ watch by Mr. Jones Watches, $158. This design by Mr. Jones, an independent British watchmaker, has been on my radar for seasons. The letters align once an hour to spell, “Love knows not what time is.” At once, a loving reminder and a secret message shared between partners.
   

   “Love knows not” watch. Photo courtesy of Mr. Jones Watches.

3. The Heart Has Reasons necklace by Bjorg Jewellery. A silver pendant necklace featuring uncut diamond and rock crystal and engraved with the Blaise Pascal quote, “The heart has reasons that reason cannot know.”
   

   Photo courtesy of Bjorg Jewellery.

4. Rechargeable Hand Warmer by Senses, $20 at Fab.com. Cold hands, warm heart? Perhaps. But it’s tough being cold-blooded. Get these for friends to warm them up at a moment’s notice.
   

   Image via Fab.com.

5. Exotic Truffle Heart Collection by Vosges Haut-Chocolat, $45. If love is a battlefield, then Vosges’ purple heart box is the reward. Send these treats to both the victors and survivors.
   

   Image via Vosges Haut-Chocolat.

6. Diana Mini Love Letters camera by Lomography, $109. Capture the moment with a new limited edition Diana Mini. This version has a fiery red flash and is cloaked in fabric printed with romantic phrases.
   

   Image via Lomography.

7. Cupid’s Arrow Bath Gel by Not Soap, Radio, $16. Fate gets an assist in the form of this pheromone-enhanced liquid luxury.
   

   Image via Not Soap, Radio.

8. Moschino ‘Touch Me’ iPad cover, $85 at Net-a-Porter. Easily the most tactile gift on the list, Moschino’s iPad cover is sure to touch your loved one’s heart.
   

   Image via Shopbop.

9. Trespass Sweetly Urged Sweatshirt by Wildfox, $192.94 at ASOS. Communicate your desires succinctly with this clever reference to Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet.
   

   Image via Nelly.com.

10. “Will Work for Love” Tank by Jeremy Brown, $24. In it for the long haul? Show your dedication with this flowy tank (also available in pink).
    

    Image via loveisartkit.com.

11. Riedel Black Tie Bliss Decanter, $225 at Bloomingdale’s. Raise a glass to love with this sleek crystal decanter. Teetotalers can sub cranberry juice for a robust red—I won’t tell!
    

    Image via Bloomingdales.com.

12. Anna Sheffield ‘Not to Be F’ed With’ commitment rings. When you’re happily spoken for, put a ring on it.
    

    Image courtesy of Anna Sheffield.

13. Venus Nipples Chocolate Box by Rococo, available at Liberty London. Remember my post on ‘Amadeus’? Anyone who’s seen the film will appreciate the power of subtly suggestive confections.
    

    Image courtesy of Rococo Chocolates.

14. This Is for You by Rob Ryan, $11.71 at BN.com. A love story in the form of a book-length valentine by British papercutting artist Rob Ryan.
    

    Image via BN.com.

See more of what inspired me this Valentine’s Day in my moodboard.

Just take three minutes, and watch this wonderful video.  Underneath will be the rest of this entry.

I absolutely love this song; catchy, warm, touching.  I bet many of you feel the same way.  But I see something else. This Mr. Rogers dub will be a teaching tool for me.  I am going to utilize this video for two disparate classes.  First, Intro to Communications and second, Western Civilization.  Now you may be saying, “What? I can see Communications, maybe, but Western Civ?  Surely you jest MSJ?”  Nope, I am completely serious.

This video is a wonderful example of the rhythm and musicality of speech.  Our society usually identifies a clear demarcation between speech and song, viewing the two as related but separate categories of communication.  Of course lyrics are a central part of song, but we usually don’t find much other commonality between song and our everyday speech, seeing an air-tight delineation between the two categories. Au contraire!  This video proves that this delineation is overstated.  The speech of Mr. Rogers turns to song when simply put to music. We can see that even in our everyday language usage we have a lyrical, rhythmic delivery that is unconscious and inherent.  Another example, and strangely the complete opposite of the Mr. Rogers video, proves this point just as well.  When language is arrhythmic  it sounds inhuman because it loses its evocative, emotional power.  See this video as example:

Now, onto Western Civilization.  In his ‘chorus’, Mr. Rogers informs us that “It’s good to be curious, about many things.  You can think about things, and make believe; all you have to do is think, and they’ll grow.”  This seems like an innocuous statement. But is it really?  The fact that Mr. Rogers is providing this message to children, and doing so with a vast majority of parental approval, provides an insight into our modern mentalities.  Today, his statement about curiosity is almost banal. Five hundred years ago, Mr. Rogers’ song would have been one of cultural revolution.  He could have found himself in trouble with authorities if he had been telling children that “it’s good to be curious”, since curiosity during much of Western history has been understood not as a virtue, but as a vice.

Pascal

St. Augustine

Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician and philosopher viewed curiosity antithetically from Fred Rogers.  During the mid-17^th century, he wrote that “curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it.”  Pascal was not some Negative Nelly, and though he was an original thinker in many ways, he was not saying anything new with this claim.  He was speaking for a long held belief in Christian Europe that curiosity led to nothing but pain, sin, and ultimately, death.  St. Augustine of Hippo, one of the fathers of Western European Christianity put the matter in a straightforward manner a millennium before Pascal. In his Confessions, the great Bishop of Hippo stated,  “From the same motive (curiosity) men proceed to investigate the workings of nature, which is beyond our ken—things which it does no good to know and which men only want to know for the sake of knowing.”

You would be hard pressed to find a more influential individual than Saint Augustine in Western Civilization between the years 500-1500, and like many of his notions, his take on curiosity became standard throughout the so-called “Middle Ages”.  For those influenced by Pascal and Augustine, curiosity was dangerous since it led to  the weakening of two major pillars of the Western heritage:  Tradition and authority.   Perhaps nothing seems as odd to us 21st century Americans than the belief that the authority of tradition should trump any sort of curiosity. The oddity can turn to disdain when we hear this belief travel down the road to absolute dogma.  In anti-Mr. Rogers-ian tone,  Saint Ignatius of Loyola zealously declared that “To be right in everything, we ought always to hold that the white which I see, is black, if the Hierarchical Church so decides it.”  For Loyola, Mr. Rogers’ little song would have been heretical; dare we say a stake-burning offense?

Mr Rogers: Enlightenment Philosopher

So, why are Loyola and Pascal outliers nowadays, and Mr. Rogers the accepted norm?  There is little doubt that the Enlightenment of the 18^th century changed everything, and Mr. Rogers is a child of that intellectual movement. The Enlightenment was crucial in transforming our modern, Western mentalities in regards to curiosity. Curiosity slowly became a virtue, not a vice.  We could argue all day if this has been a positive or a negative outcome of modernity, but there is no doubt that Enlightenment thinkers have won the day.  Hence, we hear the forerunners of Fred Rogers in the beliefs of many Enlightenment thinkers and personages, such as Joseph Addison, the 18th century English ‘journalist’.  Using more complex language than Mr. Rogers, Addison relayed the same message when he stated that “Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed.”  Today, we expect teachers to live by this credo. In Addison’s time, it still had the ring of revolution.

Mr. Rogers’ chorus is the simplified embodiment of Enlightenment discourse.  By the time of my childhood, curiosity had become a virtue to be extolled and encouraged.  Of course, there are still many out there who believe that Augustine’s and Pascal’s argument is correct, but come on, how are you going to disagree with Mr. Rogers?

Also on my “Why?” page I said I am doing this “Because the world DESERVES to know.”

As well, I said, “I have taken the burden upon myself to grace humanity with a written account of what they SHOULD already know and practice.”

That said I also want to make clear I do not have a monopoly on this knowledge.  In fact, much of what I have to say has at least been hinted at by others.  That is part of the point, people haven’t listened.  Sometimes that is due to the “others” being relegated to ancient history (about which we should, heaven forbid, read), sometimes to limited access (to a venue or an audience).  Sometimes (but rarely) I am just repeating.  Sometimes I am elaborating.  Therefore, on occasion, of which this is one, I will be setting out a series of quotes on a particular subject that spells out, by those far more intelligent than I (at least on that given subject), much that we SHOULD know.   NO, this is not a copout – not a way to just make it easy on me.  It is an acknowledgement that some people are smarter than I.  Although the first quote suggests against appealing to authority for proof of right.  I’ll let you figure it out.  Please enjoy and contemplate.

Let us start with the topic of Intelligence.

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.   -Leonardo da Vinci

[Editor’s note:  I will have future comments with reference to education.  This is the sighting shot]

It takes a lot of things to prove you are smart, but only one thing to prove you are ignorant.   -Don Herold

You have to be smart. The easy days are over.   -Robert Kiyosaki

[Editor’s note: a lessen I hope my cadets get]

The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.   -Niccolo Machiavelli

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.   -Confucius

Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.   -Albert Einstein

{Editor’s note:  another thought for my cadets (Think Ahead, Do Ahead!)]

Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.   -Blaise Pascal

There is nobody so irritating as somebody with less intelligence and more sense than we have.   -Don Herold

We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect.   -John Kenneth Galbraith

There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.   -George Orwell

[Editor’s note: If you have to think about this too long…]

Success in almost any field depends more on energy and drive than it does on intelligence. This explains why we have so many stupid leaders.   -Sloan Wilson

I won’t insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said.   -William F. Buckley, Jr.

[Editor’s note:  always did like this guy]

If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?   -Scott Adams

[might be my favorite – well, except for the 1^st]

>>> The day is at a close, the night is drawing in and my cigar awaits – ’til next time…

Just a few days ago, I was listening to a song from the 1990s titled “The River of Dreams”. It was written and sung by American composer Billy Joel. Billy Joel’s song is a reflection of the heart cry of every human being. Listen to these lyrics:

In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
From the mountains of faith
To the river so deep

I must be lookin’ for something
Something sacred I lost
But the river is wide
And it’s too hard to cross

I’ve been searching for something
Taken out of my soul
Something I’d never lose
Something somebody stole

I don’t know why I go walking at night
But now I’m tired and I don’t want to walk anymore
I hope it doesn’t take the rest of my life
Until I find what it is I’ve been looking for

Billy Joel’s song expresses a desire that many people have testified to. Many people go through life feeling as though something in their life is missing — that something that should be there is gone. Like Joel, these people go through life searching for what is missing in their life. Have you ever felt this way — as though there is something missing in your life? Have you ever felt as though there were a hole in your soul? The French philosopher Blaise Pascal said that “There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.”

The thing that Billy Joel said he was missing in his life, and the thing that many people feel as though they are missing in their lives is a relationship with God. Long ago, in the Garden of Eden, this relationship with God was broken because of the sin of Adam and Eve, the first humans. Adam and Eve had the privilege and blessing of a direct, wonderful, peaceful relationship with God. Everything they ever needed or wanted was supplied, and they lived a life of perfect bliss. However, when they were tempted by Satan, they decided to disobey God, and because of their disobedience, their relationship with God was severed.

Because of Adam and Eve’s sin, all of us, their descendants, are born into this world with a figurative hole in our hearts. That hole is representative of the relationship that we should have with God. However, because all of us are born sinners, we are born in a state of enmity with God. There is a dividing wall between us and God because God is holy and we are sinful. Thus, we go throughout our lives searching for the unity with God that we so desire.

Billy Joel writes in his song, “I’m tired and I don’t want to walk anymore. I hope it doesn’t take the rest of my life until I find what it is I’ve been looking for.” My friend, you don’t have to keep on searching for what you have lost. You don’t have to spend the rest of your life searching for a real relationship with God. You can have one today.

November 23, 1654.

On that historical November day, Pascal was riding his carriage when the horses bolted, throwing him into the roadway.

That night, Pascal had a vision. His room was filled with flooding light. He saw Jesus, and scribbled his ecstatic joy on a parchment which he sewed inside his coat pocket as a memorial for the rest of his life.

He was 31 years old at that time. Until his death, which came rather early at still the young age of 39, he pledged his God-given talents to Christianity. He became an apologist for the fast changing times. He was the rational voice of the Truth in the skeptical Age of Reason. He was the bridge transferring the ancient doctrine to the world of the new and radical modernity. He understood the paradox fully: that only reason can persuade reason of its own inadequacy. Which might be why he kept his parchment hidden inside his coat pocket. He wrote so beautifully, his religious emotions so raw in every word he wrote:

“God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars…Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy…’This is life eternal that they might know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.’ Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ…May I not fall from him forever…I will not forget your word. Amen.” (source & full text)

This, he decided to keep hidden. He decided to keep it personal. The light that filled the room, the Jesus he recognized, his ecstatic feelings and emotions. I know what he must have felt, the burning fervour: the electricity running through every vein he possesses, heart-pumping fast, and the sense of awe and wonder magically coursing through his entire being. He was probably afraid if he wouldn’t cause a major hurricane on the opposite side of the world with the butterfly emotion he was feeling inside. His soul trembles, shaken by the Power, and uncontainable Love exuding all over!

He wrote none of that publicly. But why? I can’t help but wonder. Is this a male thing? Or the clear distinction of the two different ages, one being the age of reason, and the other the new age? And if Pascal was a man of this age, what would he do with the mystical experience he had?

If I were him, the whole world would know about my private encounter with the Holy Trinity. I would be going on and on about the light that filled my room, how a divinity had made a visit(three visits in one! Who does that??!!?), awakening my three beings(mind, body and soul) all at once. As a matter of fact, I did. And for the lack of my theological background, I think the words did not come out correctly. The proof of that is that my close families, my doctor and nurse suggested the following three: that I  1) raise my dosage, 2) be put on a mood-stabilizer for a limited period, 3) be hospitalized. I just couldn’t keep my mouth shut, or stop writing words. Eventually the Divinity Himself totally took over my soul in His attempt to rescue me from crossing to the other side of the river, a river of no return. He made the crazy horses bolt and stopped the carriage. But unfortunately, at that point, I was beyond gone, and so, I cannot retrieve the memory of my dramatic conversion clearly. So there. Way to silence me, God.

The carriage Pascal was riding was left hanging over a bridge above Seine River. He almost never crossed that river that day. Instead, he was thrown off from the carriage which was to hang dangerously over the river. He was retrieved from the accident without any physical harm and later that same day, experienced His revelation. God did not have to silence Him or make him blind to lead Pascal where He wants.

Pascal kept that day’s work all inside. He kept it inside his pocket. But the encounter was enough to re-prioritize his work. His brilliant scientific works took second place after the event. To this day, he is remembered as a genius mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, but most of all, he is a Christian philosopher who was given the gift of the discerning spirit. He realized that the God of the philosophers was not the God of the Bible. And that puts him in a completely different category. He wasn’t just a philosopher. He was a prophet.

But this is not how the Scripture speaks, with its better knowledge of the things of God.  On the contrary, it speaks of God as a hidden God, and because nature has been corrupted, he has left men to their blindness.  They can only escape from this through Jesus Christ, for without him all communication with God is severed.  “Neither knows any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whosoever the Son will reveal him” (Matthew 11:27).

This is what the Scriptures tell us when they say in so many places that those who seek God shall find him.  This is not the natural light of the noonday sun.  We do not argue that those who are looking for the sun at noonday or water in the sea will find it and that in the same way the evidence of God in nature is likewise.  It is not.  Rather it says, “Truly thou art a God that hidest thyself” (Isaiah 45:15).

If it is an evidence of weakness to prove God from nature, do not despise Scripture.  If it is an evidence of strength to recognize these contradictions, then respect Scripture for this.

It is a remarkable fact that no writer in the canon has ever used nature to prove the existence of God.  They all try to help people believe in him.  Neither David, nor Solomon, nor others ever said: “There is no such thing as a vacuum, therefore God exists.”  They must have been smarter than the smartest of their successors, all of whom have used proofs from nature.  This is most significant.

People despise Christian faith.  They hate it and are afraid that it may be true.

There is always enough light to illuminate the elect and enough obscurity to humble them.  There is enough obscurity to blind the reprobate and enough light to condemn them and deprive them of any excuse.

One of the things that will confuse the damned will be the recognition that they are condemned by their own reason, by that which they claimed to condemn the Christian faith.

To know God without knowing our own wretchedness only makes for pride.  Knowing our own wretchedness without knowing God makes only for despair.   Knowing Jesus Christ provides the balance, because he shows us both God and our own wretchedness.

-selected from les pensées  of Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)