Rush drummer, Neil Peart's death this year is personally sad. I have been a Rush fan since 1989 and viewed Rush live, ten times.
Progarchy January 21, 2018 by Brad Birzer
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Fun Fact: (Neil Peart, my add) The theological default called Pascal’s Wager is a pusillanimous theorem stating that it’s “safer” to believe in God than not, because you have nothing to lose if you’re right, and everything to lose if you’re wrong. All I can say to that is “Man up, Pascal!”[vi]
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Not surprisingly, Nietzsche had written something quite similar about Pascal, calling him the most representative “worm” of Christianity, the worst of Catholicism in Beyond Good and Evil. Pascal possessed, the German philosopher decried, a wounded and monstrous “intellectual consciousness.”[vii] As will be seen later in this work, Nietzsche exerts a serious influence on Peart. As a child, Peart even spray-painted “God is Dead” on his bedroom wall.[viii]
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[vi] Peart, Far and Away, 72.
[vii] Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (New York: Vintage, 1989), 59.
[viii] Interview with Neil Peart, Jim Ladd, Deep Tracks (February 3, 2015). Peart explains the story in great detail, including the reactions of his mother and father, in travelogue of West Africa: The Masked Rider (1996; Toronto, ONT: ECW Press, 2004), 102.
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Secular philosopher and often quoted on this website, Simon Blackburn, explains Pascal's wager is the popular or vulgar view (278) that belief in God is the 'best bet' (278). The assumption is that it is clearly better to believe in God than to not to (279). Blackburn then states that belief means, eternal bliss and unbelief, eternal damnation (279).
A thought I had reading Peart's objection was which God? Who is the God that would be the best bet to believe in? Is revelation required with speculation or just speculation?
Also, Pascal's wager is not a theological default. For example, I was never taught this as default at any college, seminary, university or church I have attended. I have never read it as the theological default in any textbook or heard it as a theological default in any sermon. Sure, some will use it, but it is hardly a default in the theology world or Christian world.
Blackburn writes that 'Pascal had not considered enough possibilities.' (279).
As Blackburn notes 'it proceeds without reference to the likelihood of truth.' (279).
If Pascal meant the biblical, New Testament, Christian God then his wager needs to work with theological, biblical evidence, provided, as well as in my opinion, a demonstration that biblical, Christian, theology is true even with reasonable academic critiques from other academic disciplines, such as, as an important example, philosophy of religion.
In other words, reasonable, sound (all premises are true, therefore the conclusion is true), arguments that Christianity is internally (bible, manuscripts, and theology) and externally (philosophy of religion, archaeology, science, etcetera), reasonably consistent and certain.
I do not claim academic perfection, but below using biblical studies, theology and philosophy of religion, I provide evidence in a recent article below:
(Please check my archives for various evidence)
Saturday, May 11, 2019 Claim: The existence of God is not provable or disprovable
A good, British educated, Christian friend of mine once stated that he did not believe in Pascal wager's because it (paraphrased) was too fear-based. A reasonable point. A reasoned Christian belief is based on the historical (religious history), well-documented, atoning and resurrection work of God the Son, Jesus Christ, applied to chosen believers via regeneration (John3, Titus 3) through grace through faith alone (Ephesians 1-2). The gospel, as it is true, does not violate other academic truths from other academic disciplines, as all truth comes from God. It will violate some academic theories that are not actually factual.
Pascal's wager does not provide reasonable certainty by itself; it requires evidence for Christian faith and philosophy with it.
The New Testament/Hebrew Bible God is not dead, and other gods never existed.
BLACKBURN, SIMON (1996) Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
