Do present day theists require a fideistic attitude toward the natural world? I tried this approach when I was a practicing Christian. All the answers I required where in the Bible. It answered every question that was worth asking, and if it didn't, we could twist and force it to answer. Can a human living in a civilized nation with good education maintain reason and faith, or do we have to ignore one to retain the other?
Pascal's wager
āGod is, or He is not.ā But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn upā¦ Which will you choose then? Let us see. Since you must choose, let us see which interests you least. You have two things to lose, the true and the good; and two things to stake, your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two things to shun, error and misery. Your reason is no more shocked in choosing one rather than the other, since you must of necessity chooseā¦ But your happiness? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God isā¦ If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.
I've been aware of Pascal's wager for a little while: I found it while reading apologetics writing. To be honest, I don't find it a terrible argument for belief but a heavy handed one. It's a blunt object to the side of your head. You'd be stupid not to believe, because if you believe and you're wrong you've lost nothing. This is where I begin to disagree. You lose the ability to be a free thinker. My opinion is that Christianity, among the other big monotheistic religions, is all or nothing. Either the Bible is divinely inspired and all true or garbage. Spoiler alert, it belongs in the trash.
When believing I lose reason and logic. If I choose to believe, I must choose to be a fideist. I must choose to elevate faith above all evidence. The Bible must be an accurate historical document. The great flood of Noah's time was real, and he fed the raptors every night before going to sleep himself.
After the flood we all get drunk, pass out naked and condemn a son to slavery for seeing us do so. However, let's say the flood is fact. We still have to believe the story of Exodus. We have to believe that a god who condones slavery, genocide, rape and murder to be our savior and omnibenevolent. There are plenty of other stories in the Bible that raise doubt. Except for the one about a guy who had super-strength until he got a hair cut. That is obviously true. Then we have to believe a virgin born rabbi was the son of God and resurrected. After believing everything in the Bible and ignoring those pesky gnostics that were left out by the church, we have to tell everyone else who believes different than us they are wrong. All of the other religions of the world, some older than Judaism, were all fairy tales but the one we like is truth. To do all of this, I argue that you must be a fideist, because reason would have died in the flood 4000 years ago.
With our advances in science and mathematics over the past century, it becomes difficult to ignore the evidence. To be a Christian today, it required putting my fingers in my ears and saying LA LA LA LA LA as loud as I could. 200 years ago, with poor education and our understanding of the natural world being inaccessible, I get it. The one book everyone had was the Bible. It was the only information available to them, unless you were one of them rich educated folk (terrible southern accent). I needed to drown out all information that would contradict my worldview. I failed. With every piece of new information I wanted to know more. After my skepticism began, I realized I was tuning out quite a lot of information that would change how I view the world around me. I began to explore this new world of knowledge, reason and evidence. I learned one thing immediately. I don't know shit.
If anyone is actually reading this and made it this far, I'd like to hear your opinion on this. Please see the links below for more information on Pascal's wager and fideism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fideism
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/
