[Buddha-l] Batchelor

[Jim Peavler]

On Mar 15, 2010, at 9:38 PM, [DPD CDT] Shen Shi'an wrote:

> Nay... not even close. Pascal's wager clearly lacks intelligence. It might work in urging a life of goodness to some extent, but fails in the department of truth as a proof. As Voltaire put it, it is "indecent and childish... the interest I have to believe a thing is no proof that such a thing exists." In a way, the Four Assurances by the Buddha are the opposite - promotes true objective thinking and goodness at the same time.
> 
> A joke to share, from Anne Dillard:
> 
> Somewhere, and I can't find where,
> I read about an Eskimo hunter who asked the local missionary priest,
> "If I didn't know about God and sin, would I go to hell?"
> "No," said the priest, "not if you did not know."
> "Then why," asked the Eskimo earnestly, "did you tell me?"

There is a nice take on Pascal somewhere in the voluminous works of John Adams. He suggests that the payoff on the god insurance recommended is not that you get to go to heaven(just in case), but by believing that you are going to go to heaven relieves you of a lot of tension and anxiety about death so you can go ahead and spend your remaining time doing worthwhile things.

I personally still prefer to return to where I was before my birth.



Jim Peavler
http://www.vivanewmexico.com/blog

"When the experts are agreed, the opposite opinion cannot be held to be certain; 
"When [they] are not agreed, no opinion can be regarded  as certain by a non-expert;   
"When they all hold no sufficient grounds for a positive opinion to exist, the ordinary man would do well to suspend his judgement."  Bertrand Russell.