Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Christianity In Terms Of Odds?

...Only as an intellectual proposition detached from reality, that is, unsupportable by evidence. However, Christianity does not claim to appeal to a detached intellect, as if all we know are ideas, but to the full person who has, in addition to an intellect, both a will, as well as bodily senses. Therefore, I can think of at least three things to say:

1.) it is from the data of the senses that the rational proof for God's existence are employed in what's called the Cosmological Argument -- it proceeds from experience. Here, in the C.A., God's existence and perfections are arrived at through our physical grounding (senses) in the physical universe (physical objects of senses) -- God's existence is a proposition attached to reality (Catholicism says rational proofs for God's existence are "preambles to faith", thus assuring the necessity of reason in religion), and;

2.) there's the will: As George Brantl eloquently said, “It is only in the waiting, thirsting spirit that revelation can find a reply”; thus, "Christianity," says C.S. Lewis, "is addressed only to penitents, only to those who admit their disobedience to the known moral law… [i]t offers forgiveness for having broken, and supernatural help towards keeping, that law." In other words, Jesus Christ speaks to an essential need of our human nature, which only God can meet, and which takes us to the third point;

3.) the trustworthiness of Jesus Christ, who was crucified for claiming to be God, combines one and two, and leaves us with a personal choice, a choice of trust, which cannot be quantified in terms of odds. Since it concerns our will, and choice, it would be like, as Peter Kreeft said, "Suppose you hear reports that your house is on fire and your children are inside. You do not know whether the reports are true or false. What is the reasonable thing to do—to ignore them or to take the time to run home or at least phone home just in case the reports are true?" ( http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/pascals-wager.htm )

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