The setup of Pascal’s Wager, as this argument is generally known, is quite similar in form to Newcomb’s paradox. The glass box with the visible $1000 bill is your ordinary life on earth: you know it exists, and is yours to spend. The opaque box is your eternal reward. It might be empty, or it might be filled with a vast reward far beyond the one in the glass box. You will discover which one is the case only when you die and the box is opened. Do you take the glass box with the known, but finite reward, or the opaque box that could have nothing or everything inside it?
Science, Religion, and Secularism, Part XXXV: Justin L. Barrett—Why Would Anyone Believe in God? Part C
In our last two articles, we’ve explored one book in the exciting new field of cognitive science of religion. And we’ve seen how one of the findings in this area is that belief in God, or something like God, is natural to us, given the types of minds we have. Of course, this doesn’t show that one ought to believe Continue Reading …
Science, Religion, and Secularism, Part XXXIV: Justin L. Barrett—Why Would Anyone Believe in God? Part B
In our last article, we explored some recent findings in the cognitive science of religion (CSR). We saw how current research suggests that belief in God, or something like God, comes naturally to most human beings, most of the time, in virtue of the types of brains we have. I’d like to explore Justin L. Barrett’s arguments on this front Continue Reading …
Science, Religion, and Secularism Part XXXIII: Justin L. Barrett—Why Would Anyone Believe in God? Part A
“Belief in God is an almost inevitable consequence of the kind of minds we have.” —Justin L. Barrett
Science, Religion, and Secularism, Part XXXII: Alvin Plantinga and Reformed Epistemology
“Faith is not to be contrasted with knowledge: faith (at least in paradigmatic instances) is knowledge, knowledge of a certain special kind.” —Alvin Plantinga
Science, Religion, and Secularism, Part XXXI: William James—The Will to Believe
“To preach skepticism to us as a duty until ‘sufficient evidence’ for religion be found, is tantamount therefore to telling us, when in presence of the religious hypothesis, that to yield to our fear of its being error is wiser and better than to yield to our hope that it may be true. It is not intellect against all passions, then; it is only intellect with one passion laying down its law.” —William James
Science, Secularism, and Religion, Part XXX: William Kingdon Clifford—The Ethics of Belief
Imagine a ship owner who sells tickets for transatlantic voyages. He is at the dock one day, bidding his ship farewell, when he remembers a warning he had received from his mechanics the week before, that the integrity of the ship’s hull was questionable and that it might not be seaworthy. But on some plausible grounds or other he forms Continue Reading …
Science, Secularism, and Religion, Part XXIX: Antony Flew—The Presumption of Atheism
“If it is to be established that there is a God, then we have to have good grounds for believing that this is indeed so. Until and unless some such grounds are produced we have literally no reason at all for believing; and in that situation the only reasonable posture must be that of either the negative atheist or the agnostic.”
—Antony Flew
Science, Religion, and Secularism Part XXVIII: Charles Taylor—The Dark Abyss of Time
In our last article we explored Charles Taylor’s concept of “the buffered self,” a peculiar kind of self-consciousness engendered by Enlightenment rationalism, and which has become customary (at least for educated elites) in our own time. We saw how it can be at once a source of pride, a profound source of accomplishment and self-worth, and also a source of Continue Reading …
Science, Religion, and Secularism Part XXVII: Charles Taylor—The Malaise of Modernity
In our last article, we explored Charles Taylor’s discussion of a new religion that took shape in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: Providential Deism. Yet, as we saw, it was not entirely new but in many respects a development and expansion of themes already expounded on by the Protestant Reformation. Where the Protestant Reformers accused Catholicism of being authoritarian, superstitious, Continue Reading …
Science, Religion, and Secularism Part XXVI: Charles Taylor — Providential Deism and the Impersonal Order
In the last article, we saw how the Protestant Reformation challenged the premodern conception of reality, and began to put in place some of the elements we can recognize today in modern, Western-style secularism. In particular, there was a “flattening effect” when it came to time, space, and devotion. More and more, secular, ordinary time came to the forefront. The Continue Reading …
Science, Religion, and Secularism Part XXV: Charles Taylor—The Protestant Reformation and the Rise of the Disciplinary Society
In previous articles, we’ve taken some first steps toward answering the underlying question of Charles Taylor’s book, A Secular Age. He asks us to look at Europe around the year 1500, and observe that belief in God had an unproblematic, normative, even a central, character for those societies. But when we look around today, we find a very different climate. Continue Reading …
Science, Religion, and Secularism Part XXIV: Charles Taylor—Time, Space, and Self in the Enchanted World (Part B)
In our previous articles, we began to explore what Charles Taylor calls the “bulwarks of belief.” These are the aspects of psychology and society that made belief nearly irresistible for most Europeans around the year 1500. Taylor postulates these bulwarks thus: that purpose and design were evident in nature and history; that God was implicated in the very existence of Continue Reading …
Science, Religion, and Secularism Part XXIII: Charles Taylor—Time, Space, and Self in the Enchanted World (Part A)
In the previous article, we explored the “Bulwarks of Belief”—those features of the premodern, European mindset that, according to Charles Taylor, made belief in transcendent realities nearly inescapable. There were basically three of them: God’s purposes were evident in the design of nature, and in particular incidents (often construed as this-worldly dispensations of divine justice); God was implicated in the Continue Reading …
Science, Religion, and Secularism Part XXII: Charles Taylor—The Bulwarks of Belief (A Secular Age, Part B)
In our last article, we began to explore the philosophy of secularism, through Charles Taylor’s book, A Secular Age. We saw how Taylor’s three senses of the word describe a progressive development: first, a retreat of religion (itself a problematic term) from the public to the private sphere; then, a decline of religiosity in the private sphere; and finally, the Continue Reading …
Science, Religion, and Secularism, Part XXI: Charles Taylor: A Secular Age (Part A)
Of the three elements in our series—science, religion, and secularism—science has probably received the most philosophical attention, at least in the contemporary context. Indeed, the constitution of a category, “philosophy of religion,” presumes a sectioning-off of certain topics that have, historically, been integral to philosophy. It presumes, in other words, a growing distance between religion and philosophy. This in turn Continue Reading …
Episode 184: Pascal on Human Nature (Part Two)
Continuing on Pascal’s Pensées.
More on our human desire and how God is supposed to address that, plus Pascal’s views on political philosophy, the relation between faith, reason, and custom… and finally, the wager! Why not just be a skeptic? Is Pascal right that people suck?
Listen to part 1 first or get the unbroken, ad-free, Citizen Edition now. Please support PEL!
End song: “44 Days” by Dutch Henry, written and sung by Todd Long, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #34.
Visit thegreatcoursesplus.com/PEL for a one-month free trial of The Great Courses Plus Video Learning Service.
Science, Religion, and Secularism, Part XX: What is Science? (Part B)
In my last essay, I argued that it was important to distinguish science from non-science, and that a first step toward doing so was to distinguish between nomothetic (law-seeking) sciences like physics and chemistry, and idiographic (particularizing) sciences like biology and geography. I tried to show that science doesn’t have to copy methods characteristic of physics in order to count Continue Reading …
Episode 184: Pascal on Human Nature (Part One)
On Blaise Pascal’s Pensées (1670).
Is it rational to have religious faith? You’re likely familiar with “Pascal’s Wager,” but our wretchedness is such that we can’t simply choose to believe and won’t be argued into it. Pascal thinks Christianity is the only religion to accurately describe the human condition.
Don’t wait for part 2! Get the unbroken, ad-free Citizen Edition now. Please support PEL!
Sponsors: Visit MUBI.com/PEL for 30 days of free curated movies and Squarespace.com for a free trial and 10% off with offer code EXAMINED.
Episode 184: Pascal on Human Nature (Citizen Edition)
On Blaise Pascal’s Pensées (1670).
Is it rational to have religious faith? You’re likely familiar with “Pascal’s Wager,” but our wretchedness is such that we can’t simply choose to believe and won’t be argued into it. Pascal thinks Christianity is the only religion to accurately describe the human condition.
End song: “44 Days” by Dutch Henry, written and sung by Todd Long, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #34.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- …
- 6
- Next Page »