It Is Better To Believe in God's Existence Than to Deny It

Philosophy of Religion: Can We Prove That God Exists?

Philosophical Category: Pragmatic  (Pragmatism is a philosophical movement that includes those who claim that an ideology or proposition is true if it works satisfactorily, that the meaning of a proposition is to be found in the practical consequences of accepting it, and that impractical ideas are to be rejected.)

Blaise Pascal (1623-62)

• Pascal maintains that no argument for God's existence is satisfactory and belief alone is necessary for religious life.
• For Pascal, no rational proof for or against God's existence exists. Basically, One chooses to believe or not.
• Pascal asks us to consider two alternatives: either God exists or He doesn’t exist. If He does not exist, we lose nothing by believing he does exist. If he does exist, however, we lose everything if we choose not to believe.
• The belief in God, according to Pascal, comes from emotion, not reason.
• Pascal contends that whether or not God exists, it makes more sense to believe than not to believe. 

 

It Is Better To Believe in God's Existence Than to Deny It

• If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, have neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is. Basically , we cannot know that God exists.
• If we act based on certainty, and certainty is what we look for, we out not to act on religion, for it is not certain.
• The effects of religion are perceptible by sense, and the causes are visible only to the intellect.
• Proofs (of religion)  only convince the mind. Custom is the source of our strongest and most believed proofs. Through custom the mind is easily persuaded without even thinking about the matter (automation).
• It is then custom which persuades us of it (religion);  it is custom that makes so many men Christians.
• An easier belief, which is that of custom, which, without violence, without art, without argument, makes us believe things, and inclines all our powers to this belief, so that our soul falls naturally into it.
• The heart has its reason, which the mind does not know. Meaning that one cannot ration religion, one can only feel religion.