Entries that relate to Pascal’s wager.
Is There a God? I have some good news for you, gentle reader: I can recommend to you a wonderful apologetics book by a distinguished Oxford philosophy professor, it’s only 123 pages long, and you can read it right now for free since the whole book is online here [link: https://ia801904.us.archive.org/13/items/RichardSwinburne/RichardSwinburne-IsThereAGod.pdf ]. I was led … [Read more…]
Maybe it’s the lawyer in me, but I find that sometimes it’s useful to pretend you have to make arguments supporting the opposing side. So, how would you imagine an intelligent rejection of Pascal’s Wager? This imaginary person would, it seems to me, have to say this sentence to himself: Okay, I understand that it … [Read more…]
There’s an interview of Stephen C. Meyer by Terrell Clemmons (“Faithful Knowledge,” 42, 45) in the September/October 2024 issue of Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity, in which the former says (emphasis in original): …. Someone once said that the work of the Holy Spirit is to make subjectively real to the individual believer things that … [Read more…]
There’s a new book out, A Summer with Pascal, by Antoine Compagnon. I have not read it, but I did read a review of it in the Wall Street Journal last week (July 27-28, 2024, at page C12), and it looks interesting. I feel I should note the book’s publication on this blogsite — after … [Read more…]
I recently posted this on National Review Online‘s “The Corner”: I very much enjoyed Kayla Bartsch’s Corner post on Friday (“Sociology Comes for Sundays”) and would like to add a bit to it. It is certainly true that “religious practice” can have a variety of secular benefits, even if one lacks solid faith, and that noting … [Read more…]
Joseph Epstein is what used to be called, and I guess still is, a “man of letters.” That is, he is a writer of his own books, essays, and shorter pieces, on a wide variety of nonscientific subjects, as well as a literary critic. If you’ve run across him lately, it’s probably through short columns … [Read more…]
This is a very engaging book, with an exciting premise: It imagines what it would be like if St. Paul and the prophet Muhammad were to have a formal debate on whether or not Jesus was resurrected (!). The idea is that MIT has been able to create two opposing lifelike holograms that, by computers … [Read more…]
I’m a Lee Strobel fan, and would put his trilogy of The Case for Christ, The Case for Faith, and The Case for a Creator near the top of my apologetics list. The book that is the subject of this post follows the same template as his others: The author makes an intelligent division of … [Read more…]
I’m a Lee Strobel fan, and would put his trilogy of The Case for Christ, The Case for Faith, and The Case for a Creator near the top of my apologetics list. His book that is the subject of this post follows the same template as his others: The author makes an intelligent division of … [Read more…]
Here are four basic points that I think apologists should make: (1) There is a variety of strong evidence that a Supreme Being — that is, God — exists. (2) There is also strong evidence for the historicity of the Gospels, and in particular their core message that Jesus is God. (3) Pascal’s Wager makes … [Read more…]