After his 2 hour “Fire” encounter, he spent his entire life trying to convince people that Christ is real.
The collection is just his thoughts, a book he never finished, what he thought would be the final apologetic convincing everyone that Jesus is the Christ.
Nature shows that God is real, and reflects His beauty.
“Physical science will not always console me…, but the science of ethics will always console me.” I.e. it’s more profitable.
The practicality of his genius. The calculator, the bus (takes the profits and gives to the poor and a hospital). Gave away everything except for his Bible, a’Kempis and Augustine.
Pascal has a 9 month or so gestation, then he has the Fire experience.
198. The sensibility of man to trifles, and his insensibility to great things, indicates a strange inversion.
154. When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant and which know me not, I am frightened and am astonished at being here rather than there; for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then. Who has put me here? By whose order and direction have this place and time been allotted to me? Memoria hospitis unius diei praetereuntis.
210. The last act is tragic, however happy all the rest of the play is; at the last a little earth is thrown upon our head, and that is the end for ever.
213. Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world.
217. An heir finds the title-deeds of his house. Will he say, “Perhaps they are forged” and neglect to examine them?
229. This is what I see and what troubles me. I look on all sides, and I see only darkness everywhere. Nature presents to me nothing which is not matter of doubt and concern. If I saw nothing there which revealed a Divinity, I would come to a negative conclusion; if I saw everywhere the signs of a Creator, I would remain peacefully in faith. But, seeing too much to deny and too little to be sure, I am in a state to be pitied; wherefore I have a hundred times wished that if a God maintains Nature, she should testify to Him unequivocally, and that, if the signs she gives are deceptive, she should suppress them altogether; that she should say everything or nothing, that I might see which cause I ought to follow. Whereas in my present state, ignorant of what I am or of what I ought to do, I know neither my condition nor my duty. My heart inclines wholly to know where is the true good, in order to follow it; nothing would be too dear to me for eternity.
212. Instability.—It is a horrible thing to feel all that we possess slipping away.
From 194. The immortality of the soul is a matter which is of so great consequence to us and which touches us so profoundly that we must have lost all feeling to be indifferent as to knowing what it is. All our actions and thoughts must take such different courses, according as there are or are not eternal joys to hope for, that it is impossible to take one step with sense and judgment unless we regulate our course by our view of this point which ought to be our ultimate end. Thus our first interest and our first duty is to enlighten ourselves on this subject, whereon depends all our conduct. Therefore among those who do not believe, I make a vast difference between those who strive with all their power to inform themselves and those who live without troubling or thinking about it.
I can have only compassion for those who sincerely bewail their doubt, who regard it as the greatest of misfortunes, and who, sparing no effort to escape it, make of this inquiry their principal and most serious occupation.
But as for those who pass their life without thinking of this ultimate end of life, and who, for this sole reason that they do not find within themselves the lights which convince them of it, neglect to seek them elsewhere, and to examine thoroughly whether this opinion is one of those which people receive with credulous simplicity, or one of those which, although obscure in themselves, have nevertheless a solid and immovable foundation, I look upon them in a manner quite different.
This carelessness in a matter which concerns themselves, their eternity, their all, moves me more to anger than pity; it astonishes and shocks me; it is to me monstrous. I do not say this out of the pious zeal of a spiritual devotion. I expect, on the contrary, that we ought to have this feeling from principles of human interest and self-love; for this we need only see what the least enlightened persons see.
“I know not who put me into the world, nor what the world is, nor what I myself am. I am in terrible ignorance of everything. I know not what my body is, nor my senses, nor my soul, not even that part of me which thinks what I say, which reflects on all and on itself, and knows itself no more than the rest. I see those frightful spaces of the universe which surround me, and I find myself tied to one corner of this vast expanse, without knowing why I am put in this place rather than in another, nor why the short time which is given me to live is assigned to me at this point rather than at another of the whole eternity which was before me or which shall come after me. I see nothing but infinites on all sides, which surround me as an atom and as a shadow which endures only for an instant and returns no more. All I know is that I must soon die, but what I know least is this very death which I cannot escape.
“As I know not whence I come, so I know not whither I go. I know only that, in leaving this world, I fall for ever either into annihilation or into the hands of an angry God, without knowing to which of these two states I shall be for ever assigned. Such is my state, full of weakness and uncertainty. And from all this I conclude that I ought to spend all the days of my life without caring to inquire into what must happen to me. Perhaps I might find some solution to my doubts, but I will not take the trouble, nor take a step to seek it; and after treating with scorn those who are concerned with this care, I will go without foresight and without fear to try the great event, and let myself be led carelessly to death, uncertain of the eternity of my future state.”
424. The heart has its reasons; that reason knows not of.
Pascal is not saying here that faith is irrational, but rather trans-rational.
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With apologies to those who have already read Lee Strobel’s masterful “The Case for a Creator,” its too bad Pascal didn’t have access to today’s scientific thought. Read on:
“Thnk about the extraordinary beauty, elegance, harmony, and ingenuity that we find in the laws of nature,” he replied as we headed back to the conference room.
“Whole books have been written about it. Weinberg once spent an entire chapter explaining how the criteria of beauty and elegance have been used to guide physicists in formulating the right laws. The theoretical physicist Alan Guth said that the original construction of the gauge theories of fundamental particle physics ‘was motivated mainly by their mathematical elegance.’
“One of the most influential scientists of the twentieth century, Paul Dirac, the Nobel Prize winer from Cambridge, even claimed that ‘it is more important to have beauty in one’s equations than to have them fit experiment.’” One historian said mathematical beauty was ‘an integral part’ of Dirac’s strategy. He said Dirac believed physicists ‘first had to select the most beautiful mathematics — not necessarily connected to the existing basis of theoretical physics — and then interpret them to physical terms.’”
“And you see beauty in the laws and principles of nature,” I asked.
“Oh, absolutely,” he declared. “They’re beautiful, and they’re also elegant in their simplicity. Surprisingly so. When scientists are trying to construct a new law of nature, they routinely look for the simplest law that adequately accounts for the data.”
I interrupted with an objection. “Isn’t beauty in the eye of the beholder?” I asked. “What’s beautiful seems so subjective.”
“Subjectivity can’t explain the success of the criterion of beauty in science,” he replied. “We wouldn’t expect purely subjective patterns to serve as the basis of theories that make highly accurate predictions, such as the success of quantum electrodynamics to predict the quantum correction to the g-factor of the electron.
“Besides, not all beauty is subjective; there are also objective aspects of it, at least in the classical sense. In his book The Analysis of Beauty, written in the mid-1700s, William Hogarth said the defining feature of beauty or elegance is ’simplicity with variety.’ And that’s what scientists have found –a world where fundamental simplicity gives rise to the enormous complexity needed for life.”
I ventured another alternative. “Maybe the concept of beauty is merely the product of evolution,” I said. “Perhaps it has survival value, and so our sense of what’s beautiful has been shaped by natural selection.”
“That would only apply to things we can see, touch, or hear — things in our everyday world that are necessary for survival. BUt evolution can’t explain the beauty that exists in the underlying world of physical laws and mathematics,” he said.
“In physics, we see an uncanny degree of harmony, symmetry, and proportionality. And we see something that I call ‘discoverability.’ By that, I mean that the laws of nature seem to have been carefully arranged so that they can be discovered by beings with our level of intelligence. That not only fits the idea of design, but it also suggests a providential purpose for humankind — that is, to learn about our habitat and to develop science and technology.”
Collins mentioned that Davies had also commented about the beauty of nature in his book Superforce. Later I found the passage:
A common reaction among physicists to remarkable discoveries . . . is a mixture of delight at the subtlety and elegance of nature, and of stupefaction: “I would never have thought of doing it that way.” If nature is so “clever” it can exploit mechanisms that amaze us with their ingenuity, is that not persuasive evidence for the existence of intelligent design behind the physical universe? If the world’s finest minds can unravel only with difficulty the deeper workings of nature, how could it be supposed that those workings are merely a mindless accident, a product of blind chance? . . . Uncovering the laws of physics resembles completing a crossword [puzzle] in a number of ways. . . . In the case of the crossword, it would never occurr to us to suppose that the words just happened to fall into a consistent interlocking pattern by accident
“Under an atheistic viewpoint,” Collins continued, “there’s no reason to expect that the fundamental laws would be beautiful or elegant, because they easily could have been otherwise. Even Weinberg, who’s an atheist, conceded that ’sometimes nature seems more beautiful than strictly necessary.’
“However, the fine-tuning for simplicity, beauty, and elegance does make sense under the God hypothesis. Think of the classical conception of God — he is the greatest possible being, and therefore a being with perfect aesthetic sensibility. It wouldn’t be surprising at all for God to want to create a world of great subtlety and beauty at its most fundamental level.”
-Robin (to clarify, the passage in its entirety was quoted from Strobel’s book. The “I” is Strobel, not me.)
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