Note: Today’s essay is a postscript to a recent piece for The Republic of Letters. It’s not necessary to read the earlier essay to follow my meditation today, but it might add context and depth.
This is a great piece, and it's reassuring to read someone else taking a similar path through the landscape of faith and doubt. Regarding Pascal's Wager and the objection you raise about insincere faith ("To think that you could simply hedge your bets in that way would require imagining God as a clueless parent who believes everything you say, even when you’ve been out partying all night" — beautifully put):
Pascal does confront this in his Pensées. He addresses those "so made that [they] cannot believe", recommending that they "follow the way by which [previous converts] began; by acting as if they believed, taking the holy water, having masses said, etc." In short, act like a believer until habit anaesthetises you to your scepticism and inculcates faith within you. Shorter still: fake it until you make it.
My reading of Pascal (though I'm certainly no academic or theologian) is that he isn't advocating for an attempt to trick God about your faith, but to actually find faith however you can. This is still intellectually dishonest if you regard faith as a mode of belief, but a) it's a little more nuanced than the usual view of the wager, and b) faith might better be understood as a practice than a belief anyway, but that's for another time.
great post / i read it with interest partly to see where you were going and partly because i don't know much about blaise pascal
"I find little motivation in the ideas of paradise or hell, which drive Pascal’s wager, but belief in a power greater than the chaos currently ruling the world has begun to hold fresh appeal." all the major myths of humanity portray humans (and their gods) as heroic and victorious / these are our stories / they could prove to be false or we could invent new ones but they have served us so far as if we really do have a positive attitude somewhere deep inside / i think that is evidence for 'god' or whatever you want to call it
This is a great piece, and it's reassuring to read someone else taking a similar path through the landscape of faith and doubt. Regarding Pascal's Wager and the objection you raise about insincere faith ("To think that you could simply hedge your bets in that way would require imagining God as a clueless parent who believes everything you say, even when you’ve been out partying all night" — beautifully put):
Pascal does confront this in his Pensées. He addresses those "so made that [they] cannot believe", recommending that they "follow the way by which [previous converts] began; by acting as if they believed, taking the holy water, having masses said, etc." In short, act like a believer until habit anaesthetises you to your scepticism and inculcates faith within you. Shorter still: fake it until you make it.
My reading of Pascal (though I'm certainly no academic or theologian) is that he isn't advocating for an attempt to trick God about your faith, but to actually find faith however you can. This is still intellectually dishonest if you regard faith as a mode of belief, but a) it's a little more nuanced than the usual view of the wager, and b) faith might better be understood as a practice than a belief anyway, but that's for another time.
Raises key issues of faith and choice, Joshua. Thank you for your continued devotion to our goals at Inner Life.
great post / i read it with interest partly to see where you were going and partly because i don't know much about blaise pascal
"I find little motivation in the ideas of paradise or hell, which drive Pascal’s wager, but belief in a power greater than the chaos currently ruling the world has begun to hold fresh appeal." all the major myths of humanity portray humans (and their gods) as heroic and victorious / these are our stories / they could prove to be false or we could invent new ones but they have served us so far as if we really do have a positive attitude somewhere deep inside / i think that is evidence for 'god' or whatever you want to call it
here's my take https://open.substack.com/pub/rohn/p/the-rohn-report-and-chaos?r=8nhjg&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
will go back for a re-read of your excellent post and check out alexandria