What’s So Great About Christianity, Chapter 17

This week’s class examines Chapter 17 of D’Souza’s book titled “A Skeptic’s Water: Pascal and the Reasonableness of Faith”. Pastor Dan begins by discussing Blaise Pascal, a French philosopher and mathematician. Pascal wrote some papers which provided insights into the Christian faith, and became known for “Pascal’s Wager”. This stated that each person can decide to have faith in the words of the bible and in heaven.  Alternatively, they can choose not to. Given that we don’t know what life after death will be like, it makes sense to have faith, because we have nothing to lose. This furthered the argument that reason and faith go together.   One does not need to chose one or the other.  This class also reviews the idea of a closed universe.  A closed universe operates on its own, according to natural laws.  There is not divine intervention.  This is contrasted with an open universe,  where God intervenes according to God’s plan for us.