Hey, Pascal, have I got a wager for you
There is a certain symmetry in life sometimes. One of my defining experiences was the epiphany – sitting in the back of a religious education class – that the Catholics could not have it both ways; you cannot have an omnipotent, omniscient divine being and free will.
An eternity before I was created, God, who is responsible for everything in the universe, down to the quantum jumps of quarks, knew that I would be born, sin, and be condemned for those sins. Given this, what possible choices can be left for me?
Free will, if God is as the Catholics define him, cannot exist. The path from there to accepting that man made God, not the other way around was a short one.
For reasons that escape me the wife enrolled our one child to a Christian daycare centre. She pays the bills for this so I cannot complain, but one of the consequences is that they teach the little monster that Jesus is real, Noah existed and God lives in our hearts.
Well, this is causing tension. A 4-year-old can be quite definitive about these sorts of things and my protestations that God is a real as the Gruffalo are falling on indignant ears. The conflicting interpretations from different authority figures is creating opportunities for future councillors.
At the playground recently his recent opening conversational gambit to a potential friend was to declare; My daddy says God isn’t real, but God is real!
Thankfully, both the parent and their offspring took this in their stride but I confess, at times, to a certain uncertainty.
How do you and I know Putin is the president of Russia? I’ve never met him, never even been to Russia, but I am certain he is president because there is a global consensus on the fact.
If I was on a jury and several credible witnesses said Putin was president of Russia, that would convince me – yet there are over a billion Catholics, about the same number of Hindus and even more Muslins. They are all as certain their God exists as I am that Putin is the Russian president.
On what basis, then, do I reject their collective certainty? The level of hubris required to look at the 90 per cent of mankind that is certain beyond all doubt in the existence of a divine being and confidently dismiss them as entirely deluded is incomprehensible.
Dear God; I hope I have not lost Pascal’s Wager.