Download or read book What Happens After Pascal s Wager written by Daniel Garber and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 74 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the consequences of French philosopher Blaise Pascal's (1623-62) famous conclusion that believing in a God that did not exist was safer than not believing in one that did. Among the aspects the book ponders are self-deception and deciding to believe, non-cognitivity and contingency, and rationality and history.
Download or read book Taking Pascal s Wager written by Michael Rota and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2016-04-21 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blaise Pascal's wager argues that since there is much to gain and relatively little to lose, the wise decision is to seek a relationship with God and live a Christian life. Michael Rota explores the dynamics of doubt, evidence and decision-making in order to consider what is necessary for people to embrace the Christian faith—and the difference it makes in people's lives.
Download or read book Pascal s Pensees written by Blaise Pascal and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-08-20 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection chronicles the fiction and non fiction classics by the greatest writers the world has ever known. The inclusion of both popular as well as overlooked pieces is pivotal to providing a broad and representative collection of classic works.
Download or read book Pascal s Wager written by Jeff Jordan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-10-26 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What if there is no strong evidence that God exists? Is belief in God when faced with a lack of evidence illegitimate and improper? Evidentialism answers yes. According to Evidentialism, it is impermissible to believe any proposition lacking adequate evidence. And if any thesis enjoys the status of a dogma among philosophers, it is Evidentialism. Presenting a direct challenge to Evidentialism are pragmatic arguments for theism, which are designed to support belief in the absenceof adequate evidence. Pascal's Wager is the most prominent theistic pragmatic argument, and issues in epistemology, the ethics of belief, and decision theory, as well as philosophical theology, all intersect at the Wager. Other prominent theistic pragmatic arguments include William James'scelebrated essay, 'The Will to Believe'; a posthumously published and largely ignored pragmatic argument authored by J.S. Mill, supporting the propriety of hoping that quasi-theism is true; the eighteenth-century Scottish essayist James Beattie's argument that the consoling benefit of theistic belief is so great that theistic belief is permissible even when one thinks that the existence of God is less likely than not; and an argument championed by the nineteenth-century French philosopher JulesLachelier, which based its case for theistic belief on the empirical benefits of believing as a theist, even if theism was very probably false.In Pascal's Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God, Jeff Jordan explores various theistic pragmatic arguments, and the objections employed against them. Jordan presents a new version of the Wager, what he calls the 'Jamesian Wager', and argues that the Jamesian Wager survives the objections hurled against theistic pragmatic arguments and provides strong support for theistic belief. In addition to arguing for a sound version of the Wager, Jordan also argues that there is aversion of Evidentialism compatible with a principled use of pragmatic arguments, and that the Argument from Divine Silence fails. Objections found in Voltaire, Hume, and Nietzsche against the Wager are scrutinized, as are objections issued by Richard Swinburne, Richard Gale, and other contemporary philosophers.The ethics of belief, the many-gods objection, the problem of infinite utilities, and the propriety of a hope based acceptance are also examined.
Download or read book Gambling on God written by Jeff Jordan and published by Rl Innactive Titles. This book was released on 1994 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gambling on God brings together a superb collection of new and classic essays that provide the first sustained analysis of Pascal's Wager and the idea of an infinite utility as well as the first in-depth look at moral objections to the Wager.
Download or read book Pascal s Wager written by Paul Bartha and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a comprehensive examination of Pascal's Wager, its underlying theology, philosophical influence, and role in contemporary decision theory.
Download or read book The Rejection of Pascal s Wager written by Paul Tobin and published by New Generation Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Armed with the results of critical historical research and a mind free from the shackles of dogma, Paul Tobin dissects the Bible and the historical Jesus in a way only a sceptic can. Tobin shows the bible, with its numerous contradictions, historical errors and scientific inaccuracies, cannot be considered inerrant. He guides us through the intricacies of modern archaeology and comparative mythology, showing us that the much told stories in the Bible - Adam and Eve, Noah and Moses - are myths, invented by the ancient Hebrews under the influence of Babylonian beliefs. He demonstrates that the gospels, far from being eye-witness accounts, were written by authors unknown to us and were composed many decades after Jesus' death. He reveals that the stories regarding Jesus in the gospels are a combination of historical memory, legendary development and mythical fabrication. With the field of biblical scholarship increasingly packed with evangelicals - where the results of "research" are always in line with traditional church teachings - this book fills an important gap in the literature on Christianity and the Bible.
Download or read book Christianity for Modern Pagans written by Peter Kreeft and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 2015-03-20 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Kreeft believes that Blaise Pascal is the first post-medieval apologist. No writer in history, claims Kreeft, is a more effective Christian apologist and evangelist to today's uprooted, confused, secularized pagans (inside and outside the Church) than Pascal. He was a brilliant man--a great scientist who did major work in physics and mathematics, as well as an inventor--whom Kreeft thinks was three centuries ahead of his time. His apologetics found in his Pens褳 are ideal for the modern, sophisticated skeptic. Kreeft has selected the parts of Pascal's Pens褳 which best respond to the needs of modern man, and offers his own comments on applying Pascal's wisdom to today's problems. Addressed to modern skeptics and unbelievers, as well as to modern Christians for apologetics and self-examination, Pascal and Kreeft combine to provide a powerful witness to Christian truth.
Download or read book Pascal Reasoning and Belief written by Michael Moriarty and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-13 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a study of Blaise Pascal's defence of Christian belief in the Pensées. Michael Moriarty aims to expound—and in places to criticize—what he argues is a coherent and original apologetic strategy. Setting out the basic philosophical and theological presuppositions of Pascal's project, the present volume draws the distinction between convictions attained by reason and those inspired by God-given faith. It also presents Pascal's view of the contradictions within human nature, between the 'wretchedness' (our inability to live the life of reason, to attain secure and durable happiness) and the 'greatness' (the power of thought, manifested in the very awareness of our wretchedness). His mind-body dualism and his mechanistic conception of non-human animals are discussed. Pascal invokes the biblical story of the Fall and the doctrine of original sin as the only credible explanation of these contradictions. His analysis of human occupations as powered by the twin desire to escape from painful thoughts and to gratify one's vanity is subjected to critical examination, as is his conception of the self and self-love. Pascal argues that just as Christianity propounds the only explanation for the human condition, so it offers the only kind of happiness that would satisfy our deepest longings. He thus reasons that we have an interest in investigating its truth-claims as rooted in the Bible and in history. The closing chapters of this book discuss Pascal's view of Christian morality and the famous 'wager' argument for opting in favour of Christian belief.
Download or read book Wagering on an Ironic God written by Thomas S. Hibbs and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pascal thus wagers all on the irony of a God who both startles and astonishes wisdom's true lovers.
Download or read book The Provincial Letters of Blaise Pascal written by Blaise Pascal and published by . This book was released on 1859 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Pens s written by Blaise Pascal and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 1995-12 with total page 716 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blaise Pascal, the precociously brilliant contemporary of Descartes, was a gifted mathematician and physicist, but it is his unfinished apologia for the Christian religion upon which his reputation now rests. The Penseés is a collection of philosohical fragments, notes and essays in which Pascal explores the contradictions of human nature in pscyhological, social, metaphysical and - above all - theological terms. Mankind emerges from Pascal's analysis as a wretched and desolate creature within an impersonal universe, but who can be transformed through faith in God's grace. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Download or read book Pascal s Wager written by Nancy Rue and published by Multnomah. This book was released on 2001-08-09 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Confirmed atheist Jill McGavock faces the mental deterioration of her brilliant mother. In a quest to cope with this devastating situation, Jill seeks out philosophy professor Sam Hunt. Savvy Sam challenges Jill to make "Pascal's wager" -- to "bet" that God exists by acting as if he does. The results not only change Jill's mind but transform her life in ways she never could have imagined. An exciting, faith-building thriller!
Download or read book Pascal s Wager written by Nicholas Rescher and published by University of Notre Dame Press. This book was released on 1985 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Why Read Pascal written by Paul J. Griffiths and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2021-05-07 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) is known in the English-speaking world principally for the wager (an argument that it is rational to do what will affect belief in God and irrational not to), and, more generally, for the Pensées, a collection of philosophical and theological fragments of unusual emotional and intellectual intensity collected and published after his death. He thought and wrote, however, about much more than this: mathematics; physics; grace, freedom, and predestination; the nature of the church; the Christian life; what it is to write and read; the order of things; the nature and purpose of human life; and more. He was among the polymaths of the seventeenth century, and among the principal apologists of his time for the Catholic faith, against both its Protestant opponents and its secular critics. Why Read Pascal? engages all the major topics of Pascal's theological and philosophical writing. It provides discussion of Pascal's literary style, his linked understandings of knowledge and of the various orders of things, his anthropology (with special attention to his presentation of affliction, death, and boredom), his politics, and his understanding of the relation between Christianity and Judaism. Pascal emerges as a literary stylist of a high order, a witty and polemical writer (never have the Jesuits been more thoroughly eviscerated), and, perhaps above all else, as someone concerned to show to Christianity's cultured despisers that the fabric of their own lives implies the truth of Christianity if only they can be brought to look at what their lives are like. Why Read Pascal? is the first book in English in a generation to engage all the principal themes in Pascal's theology and philosophy. The book takes Pascal seriously as an interlocutor and as a contributor of continuing relevance to Catholic thought; but it also offers criticisms of some among the positions he takes, showing, in doing so, how lively his writing remains for us now.
Download or read book Making Sense of God written by Timothy Keller and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-09-20 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in an age of skepticism. Our society places such faith in empirical reason, historical progress, and heartfelt emotion that it’s easy to wonder: Why should anyone believe in Christianity? What role can faith and religion play in our modern lives? In this thoughtful and inspiring new book, pastor and New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller invites skeptics to consider that Christianity is more relevant now than ever. As human beings, we cannot live without meaning, satisfaction, freedom, identity, justice, and hope. Christianity provides us with unsurpassed resources to meet these needs. Written for both the ardent believer and the skeptic, Making Sense of God shines a light on the profound value and importance of Christianity in our lives.
Download or read book Pascal s Wager written by James A. Connor and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-21 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Pascal’s Wager is a splendid read. Connor [...] a historian who understands religion and science equally [...] keeps us turning the page.” — Michael Gurian, author of The Minds of Boys “James Connor gives a racy account of a remarkable man [...] in a book that is a fascinating read.” — Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne, author of Quarks Chaos & Christianity “A compelling and readable study of one of the most influential thinkers in religious history.” — Publishers Weekly “Jim Connor is a gifted, talented man of letters...” — Malachy McCourt, author of A Monk Swimming “Bet on reading Connor’s fascinating chronicle and you can’t go wrong!” — Paul Halpern, author of Brave New Universe
