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By Peter Fernandez
According to WorldAtlas.com, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Maine are the “least religious” states in the country.
“It could be that the history of Puritanism in New England paved the way for secularism,” the article speculated. “Puritans placed a premium on literacy and worked towards universal literacy so that churchgoers could read the Bible for themselves and form their own relationship with God.”
The same article referenced that the most religious states are Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas.
“Old time religion” practitioners are now the odd souls in the Green Mountain State’s nouveau humanist—pagan zeitgeist. Social justice has displaced divine law. School prayer is a fossil and the Pledge of Allegiance is looking a little like a doomed dinosaur, too.
In the past, the church or synagogue-attending Vermonters populated Vermont’s pious pews, households, workplaces, and schools. Not so much anymore, as the relativist who believes that “there is no absolute truth or universal standard applicable to all situations” has become the vocal majority.
“Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” stated comedian Jerry Seinfeld. Certainly not, unless there really is a Heaven and a Hell awaiting us after our physical death.
I am reluctant to be perceived as a magazine’s cartoon character on the street corner sporting long hair and beard, dressed in sackcloth spun with camel hair, and holding a poster sign that reads, “The End is Near.” In this black ink parody’s foreground, an onlooker cracks, “Gee, That’s just what my wife told me yesterday,” rubbing the exaggerated bump on his noggin.
The 17th-century French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher Blaise Pascal believed so. He proposed what is now known as Pascal’s Wager:
God is, or He is Not.
A game where heads or tails will turn up is being played.
For this reason, you can defend neither of the propositions.
You must wager. (It’s not optional.)
Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you win, you gain all. If you lose, you lose nothing.
According to Pascal, “a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God.”
Pascal’s Wager was perhaps the first reliable document to “posit that humans all bet with their lives either that God exists or does not exist.” That gamble will end ONLY one way or the other! Given the possibility that God does exist and assuming the infinite gain or loss associated with belief in God or with unbelief, a rational person should and could live as though God exists and seeks to believe in God.
If God doesn’t exist, then you will have only missed out on some temporal kicks, hedonistic depravity, and decadence, i.e., $$$, sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll. But if God does exist, and He is the Living God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the true author of the Bible? Then, you would have gambled with your life wrongly.
Maybe you will thank me not to evangelize. If I am wrong, and there is no afterlife, I simply cease to exist. But if you are wrong….
“For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” 2 Peter 1:16
The author is a children’s book author and Vermont resident.
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Categories: Commentary, Faith, Race and Division, Religion
There’s no wager for me. If one opens one’s mind, one’s eyes will indeed be opened to unquestioningly see the glory of God. Been there, done that.
Despite doing one’s part to minister God’s word and demonstrate your alliance through both word & deed (let’s not get caught up there please, there is no downside to at least attempting to be a good person in this life) – many people will never be able to be convinced or converted and that much we know.
We need to focus on continuing to try, and to rectify our own failings while doing so, which for me personally are many – especially when learning daily of the attempted tyrannical takeover of this once-free country and my anger & outrage over it all.
In the end though as many of us know, God indeed wins. And those who try to follow God also shall win. So it is written. So have many further confirmed through their martyrdom, and their mysticism.
There is no wager for me. No gamble. I’m on the winning team and those who oppose it risk eternal life. Sadly, right now though for those who do not believe, that’s for me to know and for them to find out. Eventually.
Interesting article. For myself, started searching for the truth, “What the hell is going on with our country, our state.”…..so I started reading.
And in my quest came across and finished about the same time, NIV Life Application Study Bible, The Smear, and Rules for Radicals (and prior Sun Tzu, the Art of War).
What was so interesting? I could see clear distinct patterns, explaining very clearly what is being played out before us. The Smear, painted vividly what was going on in the media. Rules for Radicals was/is standard operating procedure across our state and other states. And The Bible, very clearly is the foundational document for western civilization, if anyone disagrees, they clear have not taken the time to read this book.
Then you continue to study the book that bears good results, gives you peace, patience, love……
Even without heaven or hell, the words of Jesus Christ are so different from any leader to ever walk this earth, his words alone set him apart.
Then of course there are witnesses to what happened, what he did. And despite the fact the Roman empire would burn their letters, kill those following Christ, no one waivered. There was nothing, nothing they could do but, like any “corporation” see and competitor, they bought the franchise and made the Roman Catholic Church.
But it strayed from the true teachings, the Holy Spirit was not in so many, and once again you have a religion of works, rather than being infilled with the Holy Spirit.
Many know history well, many know Christ very well, and some of them are not of a kind and loving spirit but so filled with pride, so blinded for the desire of money and power, they will do anything to get it. What they can’t do is defeat a Christian filled with the Holy Spirit, following, working in harmony, following the lead of the Holy Spirit. There are no laws against, Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Gentleness, Meekness and Self-Control.
And this is why those who are bent on power and money, on deceit, division and destruction, don’t want a bible anywhere in sight. This is why any Theocracy, Dictatorship, Corporatist……New World Order of Pimps don’t want the populace to read this book and they DEFINITELY don’t want any talk of the Holy Spirit.
Can’t have the bible in Muslim Countries, Historically Bible was written in a language people no longer spoke, not in North Korea, not in any communist country…..
Countries founded on biblical truth have eons of good practices baked into their societies, The Scandanavian countries have the cross on their flags. Our nation was founded by a country the read, studied and was grounded in Biblical wisdom.
Then free countries like Haiti, mixed their freedom with voodoo from Africa and the Catholic faith and what do they have so many years later, you can see the results from space and it’s not good, even worse on the ground.
There is one way out of the current predicament our state and country is in. It can be done peacefully, cheerfully and with surprising results, it’s been demonstrated, century after century, over and over. Yuri Bezmanov, a KGB agent schooled in how to subvert a country even laid it out.
We only need to change our direction, personally, locally and nationally.
Old school term is repent.
TGBTG
Most of those who claim to represent him don’t even know his real name, nor do they obey his teaching to treat others as you would want to be treated.
They only know what they have been told by authority figures with covert and selfish agendas. Our modern newspapers are not truthful and neither is the version of history that is accessible to contemporary christians (which “Christ” would not even recognize as his own.) The way is narrow indeed.
Most of those who identify as christian would never sincerely entertain such advice: they pay the preacher to say they are righteous when they are not, and he would be out of a job if he said otherwise. This is how the Catholic church became fantastically rich by selling indulgences. The same is implied by other denominations, even if not explicitly expressed.
Riddle me this: If God doesn’t exist, why does Cern exist? Why does Yuval Noah Harrai talk about Him so much and say we can and will replace His creations? If there is no God, why is there Satanism or Atheism?
The follies of man and the mind of man trying to explain the supernatural, the Creation, and the Creator. Hence, the Natives, the original bloodlines, stay grounded in nature and the wisdom of nature – the polluting of nature is from the polluting of humankind by the wicked dwelling among us. The reason they shove swabs up to the brain barrier looking for the code and the bloodlines they want eliminated. The reason they innoculate with poison to re-write, pollute, and eliminate the divine code. The reason why churches and religions are full of dogma and government infiltration. The shepards are leading their flocks to ruin.
No one can explain why at the moment of conception, a burst of light is seen – they have filmed it, but they can’t explain it. Light is life. Keeping mankind in darkness is what they strive for through deception and lies over millenia.
Conflating belief in god with Christianity is pretty arrogant. Check out this article from the Christian Post:
https://www.christianpost.com/news/nearly-70-percent-of-born-again-christians-dont-see-jesus-as-only-way.html
This is a false dichotomy: the “bet” which Pascal proposes is that his opinion about what God is and what God wants is correct (which there is no evidence for). 45,000 christian denominations all disagree on some aspect of this topic. Which one will YOU bet on? Is it even possible to comprehend the bet when we don’t agree on the definitions?
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/crossexamined/2018/10/top-20-most-damning-bible-contradictions/
https://web.archive.org/web/20191023233724/http://www.internationalbulletin.org/issues/2015-01/2015-01-028-johnson.pdf
In other words, you believe that others will be punished in the afterlife for not adopting your model of god — and this god does not want you to enjoy music, human companionship, or the medicinal herbs that he said are “good” on page 1 of your Bible (and a gift to all mankind). But you will not be punished for disobeying the teachings of Jesus and casting the first stone along with your ballot. —Was that really Pascal’s theology too?
Well that sounds like extortion (and is typical of those who abuse the state’s police power), but the “wrong gamble” here is the logical fallacy: the Bible is riddled with contradictions✳️ — so if it has only one author, then “he” is a schizophrenic or a multiple-personality complex. But how did you arrive at the conclusion that a Roman dictator, the Greek gestapo and the pedophiles who run the Catholic church were appointed by a supreme being to decide which books are 100% true and which ones are not worth reading, when the surviving copies don’t all agree? And who was appointed to interpret them?
✳️
https://contradictionsinthebible.com/
https://www.npr.org/2010/03/12/124572693/jesus-and-the-hidden-contradictions-of-the-gospels
https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2013/08/19/an-incredible-interactive-chart-of-biblical-contradictions/
https://www.bibviz.org/
https://skepticsannotatedbible.com/
https://www.cs.umd.edu/~mvz/bible/bible-inconsistencies.pdf
https://infidels.org/library/modern/donald-morgan-contradictions/
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The primary logical flaw in Pascal’s wager is the simplification and ignorance of the complex conditions, variety of choices, and range of repercussions:
Many-Gods Objection: Pascal’s Wager assumes a binary choice between belief in the Christian God and atheism. However, there are many possible gods and religions, each with their own doctrines and consequences. This makes the wager less straightforward, as believing in one god might mean disbelieving in another, potentially leading to negative consequences.
Authenticity of Belief: The wager suggests believing in God as a pragmatic choice rather than a genuine conviction. Critics argue that belief based on self-interest rather than true faith might not be valued by God, making the wager ineffective.
Intellectualism: Some argue that belief is not a matter of choice but of conviction. One cannot simply decide to believe in something because it seems beneficial; belief requires genuine persuasion.
Simplification of Outcomes: Pascal’s Wager simplifies the outcomes to either infinite gain (heaven) or finite loss (earthly pleasures). Critics point out that this ignores the complexities and nuances of religious belief and practice.
https://iep.utm.edu/pasc-wag/
https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2019/09/23/flaws-in-the-logic-of-pascals-wager/
https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/84/does-pascals-wager-contain-any-logical-flaws-or-fallacies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager
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Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? —Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? —Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? —Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? —Then why call him God?