Pascal’s Wager

If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is….

…”God is, or He is not.” But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager? According to reason, you can do neither the one thing nor the other; according to reason, you can defend neither of the propositions.

Do not, then, reprove for error those who have made a choice; for you know nothing about it. “No, but I blame them for having made, not this choice, but a choice; for again both he who chooses heads and he who chooses tails are equally at fault, they are both in the wrong. The true course is not to wager at all.”

Yes; but you must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked. Which will you choose then? Let us see. Since you must choose, let us see which interests you least. You have two things to lose, the true and the good; and two things to stake, your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two things to shun, error and misery. Your reason is no more shocked in choosing one rather than the other, since you must of necessity choose. This is one point settled. But your happiness? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.

“That is very fine. Yes, I must wager; but I may perhaps wager too much.” Let us see. Since there is an equal risk of gain and of loss, if you had only to gain two lives, instead of one, you might still wager. But if there were three lives to gain, you would have to play (since you are under the necessity of playing), and you would be imprudent, when you are forced to play, not to chance your life to gain three at a game where there is an equal risk of loss and gain. But there is an eternity of life and happiness. And this being so, if there were an infinity of chances, of which one only would be for you, you would still be right in wagering one to win two, and you would act stupidly, being obliged to play, by refusing to stake one life against three at a game in which out of an infinity of chances there is one for you, if there were an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain. But there is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite.

Once I finished Stranger I immediately picked up Wodehouse’s The Man With Two Left Feet to clear my brain and refresh my literary palate. Between Wodehouse and my on-going reading of Augustine’s City of God I should be right as rain soon.

Aimee emphasized the significance of Augustine’s view of women and purity (it’s a matter of the will and not the body). Mindi discussed her appreciation of how Augustine defended Christians (corporately and individually) against the pagans and did not blame them for not being holy enough or involved enough in their culture (more from her here). Jared had only read the first few pages and so mostly listened and questioned. Brent served as our fact – checker; he is better than Wikipedia. I made a few embarrassing blunders about Roman history but thoroughly enjoyed the chance to explore Augustine’s theology and the historical context of his work.

Next Friday we will gather again to discuss book two and hopefully have a few more join us.

Something Wicked This Way Comes 

Anyway, the vision of joy overcoming fear and of life rooted in sturdy faithfulness unites the two books and makes Bradbury’s worth sticking through the slow and the weird.

I have finished a few books lately and want to blog about Something Wicked This Way Comes and Speaker for the Dead. I’ll try to get to those tomorrow. For now, I’m continuing with Pascal’s Pensees (which I embarrassingly mispronounced recently), Ceasar’s Gallic Wars, and Augustine’s City of God.

I recently finished William Gibson’s Neuromancer. And I really don’t know what to think of it.

I did enjoy the book. The plot was intriguing: well-paced and complex. The protagonist precisely, if lightly, drawn. It is an atmospheric story: one without much exposition but where every detail tells. I am not familiar with cyberpunk but I know that Neuromancer is much praised as a pioneering title in the genre. All of this to say that I think the book stands well on it’s own but it will likely be even more engaging and important to those with specific interest in cyberpunk.

In December I signed up for a free trial at Audible.com and downloaded Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. This was both my first Gaiman and my first audiobook.

First to review the medium: I am not much suited to audiobooks. This particular audiobook may be a good or a bad example of the medium and I wouldn’t know, however, based on this example I don’t think I will be trying any new ones. It did while away the hours of driving at least as well as music would have done but not much better (and I am no lover of music). I was almost continually frustrated by how slowly Gaiman was reading his book to me; I could have finished it in less than half the 8 hours I spent on the road and I still have 4 and 1/2 hours left of the book! Were I often on the road I could perhaps incorporate audiobooks into otherwise non-reading time. As I am not, I shan’t. I was also frequently annoyed by sound-effects. Not contented to read me the narration describing a voice as coming over a static-heavy telephone line, Gaiman had to create that effect with static that made it difficult to understand the words. A book is not a radio-play; if I must listen to it instead of read it I would prefer straight narration with no more than slight intonation changes indicating different characters.

As to reviewing the book itself, I am only two thirds of the way through the book. I have frequently enjoyed Gaiman’s clever turn of phrase and am moderately eager to discover the outcome of the story. I find Door to be an engaging character but Richard an annoyingly dull one. Gaiman’s didactic purpose is blindingly obvious but not entirely offensive. We’ll see how it ends once I scare up a print copy, or find four and a half hours of walking or driving time to devote to the remainder.

We rang in the new year with 8 of our very best friends. We spent the evening eating, discussing Constantine’s eldest son Crispus, women in ministry positions, and the relative merits of such diverse things as The City of God, Harry Potter, “Tangled,” and The Lord of the Rings.

The next morning we attended church and then Jared and the boys headed up to Lucky Peak to play in the mud with more good friends while I went to the 4th annual White Elephant Book Exchange.

I borrowed a shelf-full of books on my 2012 reading list from Brent and am looking forward to extending my sci-fi and fantasy education.

I am almost finished with Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair and will review it soon.

I started Latin lessons this morning. Pronunciation and 4 conjugations – wheee!

The other night I awoke in a cold sweat from a nightmare wherein I had gone two entire days without reading. Good to know that my subconscious priorities closely mirror my conscious ones.

I’ve now posted my reading list for 2012 here.

A few notes:

As stated on the list I have a couple of goals. The most important one to me personally is learning some Latin. As a lover of the classics I am always slightly ashamed that I’ve never even begun to study Latin. I want to work my way through the series of video lessons, vocabulary lists, and interlinear translations I’ve planned. My hope is that by the end of the year I will feel comfortable with very basic reading and translation. I have no idea if I am being wildly optimistic or not. We’ll see how it goes!

While I’ve read many, many classics, I do have a few gaps left. The eighteen classics listed include two repeats that I haven’t read recently enough and the other sixteen will be new for me. I’m excited to get to know them.

The heavy science fiction and fantasy reading is a bit of a lark. I do consider these genres to be truly enduring, and I hope to teach a course some day that explores those qualities, I actually haven’t read very widely in science fiction and fantasy. I tend to find a single author and then read very deeply in their catalog. I’m excited to spread out a bit more.

Finally, there are some oddments under “Other” that I’ve had on my to-read list for awhile and I’m eager to get to them (especially the Chesterton!). I’m a little concerned about trying to obtain all of these books, I only own a handful on the list, but with room on my shelves I’m sure to find the money…