If you have the chance, before you are on your deathbed read Pascal’s wager and then ponder it for the rest of your life.

If you have a chance, before you come up with any other ridiculous assertions, read a thorough rejection of Pascal’s wager and ponder it just for a couple of hours.

Don’t worry, it’s never too late to educate yourself.

Firstly it puts believers in the position of being gamblers trying to hedge their bets. Pascal says you should convince yourself that you believe in the Christian God just in case all that you have been told is true and so you’ll avoid going to hell. That is a very shallow and insincere reason to believe anything. It is completely empty of heartfelt conviction or personal responsibility. Not a very admirable motive to present to your maker. “Uh, hi Lord, I uh, convinced myself to believe in you ’cause I didn’t want to take the chance that you were real and I’d end up going to hell.”

Another flaw that comes to mind is that Pascal was assuming that there are no other religions than his own which make similar claims about eternal damnation if you don’t believe in them. But there are several. By picking Christianity, you are still taking the same chance that any of the several other gods might be the “real” one and several other religions might be the “true” one. So even if you passionately believe in the god that Pascal is recommending, your chances are far less than the fifty-fifty he offers that you’ve made the right choice, and you’ll go to hell anyway.

Piano man, I think that you should continue your belief if it sustains and comforts you, but please understand that Pascal’s wager is never going to convince a carefully thinking person to adopt your belief, because it is both a shallow and irrational argument.

Hi Jad. Glad you’re here, but your statement above made me chuckle. You see how it is logically impossible to define god as omnipotent (all-powerful) and then in the same breath state that he isn’t able to do something (i.e., explain himself properly)?.

It doesn’t work both ways.

Hi Karen,

Logically impossible no not at all. Just because we don’t have full knowledge of or have access to something doesn’t automatically make that something logically impossible. I don’t know all there is to know about subatomic particles and neither do many other really smart physicists but that doesn’t therefore mean they do not exist.

My main point though was that it is impossible for us finite human beings to understand fully an infinite being like God, simply because we are finite. It doesn’t therefore render the existence of God impossible. The Bible alone has more than enough information about God for any man in any lifetime. The existence of God is still logically possible.

“If you look for me in ernest, you will find me when you seek me. I will be found by you,” says the Lord…. – Jeremiah 29:13-14 NLT (among others)

God Himself will prove His own existence to the person who ernestly seeks Him.

Your assertion that God can be known through the Bible is contingent on your second claim that the Biblical authors a) actually talked to the real God, b) understood what was told them, c) wrote down what they were taught without error, d) the English translation we have now made it through the millennia to convey those messages unaltered, and e) that those who decided what was and wasn’t canon got it right.

Jad said: A couple of things with this. As a Christian I believe the above to be true. What you find a problem though, like the mixed bag of authors writing to different audiences, I find confirms even more the authenticity of the scriptures. Especially in view of the gospels and the way each book tells the true story of Christ but in different perspectives.

For me the “mixed bag” problem is mostly about the vengeful, genocidal, capricious OT God compared to the love, hugs, and salvation for everybody NT God. That along with the ideas of heaven and hell being exclusive (except for the late book of Daniel, perhaps) to the NT, and the general way the goalposts got moved (as they will when one religion grows out of another tradition) in regard to what rules need to be followed to please God.

It wasn’t like John had a copy of the gospel according to Luke right next to him to compare with, or any other gospel for that matter. Yes there are apparent errors in just the gospels alone but compared with the accuracy of the rest of the gospels these errors are minuscule. It should also be noted that none of these errors are ever in relation to the very important claims of Christ and the claims of His Father.

Modern scholarship puts the three synoptic gospels as being written prior to John, so I’d say he had all the gospels “right next to him to compare with,” actually. I won’t get into a whole set of exegesis here, but your other two points are highly debatable.

Speaking of errors who’s to say God didn’t place the errors or leave them there for a reason? I know it seems far fetched but how can a God that is supposedly an omniscient, omnipotent and wholly good be able to explain Himself fully through an imperfect, mortal, finite being?

Placing errors in the text seems to indicate that God could be purposefully deceptive, and therefore untrustworthy. The problem with simply allowing errors in the text that’s supposed to be straight from the Almighty, other than God not communicating clearly in the first place, which you’d think would be his desire if he wanted human beings to act according to his will, is that it would promote endless arguments and confusion over which part of the text was authentic and which part erroneous. Not that Christians have avoided arguments and confusion over what the Bible says on certain topics anyway.

My other point I wanted to make is that all major English versions of the Bible are not hand-me-downs from other versions of the Bible. They are all written from the original Hebrew and Greek texts which are virtually unchanged. This is a common misunderstanding. The Bible has the closest accuracy to its original texts than any other texts ever found throughout history.

It’s my understanding that none of the original autographs are currently extant. We have copies of copies. That said, the Dead Sea Scrolls seem to corroborate the accuracy of the copies of the Masorectic text we have now (as well as parts of the Septuagint). This means that the copies of the OT books we have now match up with those that were in existence 2000 years ago. That’s a good thing as far as the accuracy of the copying of the text over that time period. It doesn’t, however, tell us whether or not any modifications to the OT took place at any earlier dates, or anything about the historical or prophetic accuracy of the details of these texts.

In regard to the NT, it’s my understanding that the canonization process, like that of the Koran, involved codification followed by a program of destruction of heretical texts, including competing gospels of sects that were the rivals of what had become the state religion of the Roman Empire. I don’t know if there were changes made to the four gospels that were retained as canon; I have yet to review the work of scholars like Bruce Metzger and Bart Ehrman, and their critics, of course.