While I often disagree with this author, I found this brief article on faith intriguing.  It directly relates to both faith in God and the afterlife.  I believe the argument is a cogent one to become a seeker of both God and the afterlife:

The Power of Pascal's Wager

Posted Apr 11th 2008 1:21AM by Dinesh D'Souza


Skeptics say that we cannot know whether God exists, and in a sense they are right. The Bible says in Hebrews 11:1 that faith is "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." If the believer knew, there would be no question of faith. Consider this: I don't have faith that my daughter is in the seventh grade; I know my daughter is in the seventh grade. I haven't been to heaven, and so I cannot say that I know there is such a place. But I believe that there is. Faith is a statement of trust in what we do not know for sure.


But is such faith reasonable or is it, as the atheists frequently allege, "blind faith"? This central human conundrum is the subject of Pascal's famous wager. Pascal did not invent the wager. It was offered by the Muslim theologian Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali in his medieval work The Alchemy of Happiness. Pascal was familiar with Ghazzali and probably derived the argument from him. But Pascal gave the wager its current classic expression, and in doing so he places an unavoidable choice before all believers and unbelievers.


Pascal argues in his Pensees that in life we have to gamble. Let's say you are offered a new job that may take your career to new heights. It looks extremely promising, but of course there are risks. There is no way in advance to know how things will turn out. You have to decide if you will go for it. Or you are in love with a woman. You have been dating for a while, yet you cannot be certain what marriage to her is going to be like for the next several decades. You proceed on the basis of what you know, but what you know is, by the nature of the matter, inadequate. Yet you have to make a decision. You cannot keep saying, "I will remain agnostic until I know for sure." If you wait too long, she will marry someone else, or both of you will be dead.


In the same way, Pascal argues that in making our decision about God, we will never understand everything in advance. No amount of rational investigation can produce definitive answers, since what comes after death remains unknown. Therefore we have to examine the options, and we have to make our wager. But what are the alternatives, and how should we weigh the odds? Pascal argues that we have two basic choices, and either way we must consider the risk of being wrong.


If we have faith in God and it turns out that God does not exist, we face a small downside risk: metaphysical error. But if we reject God during our lives, and it turns out God does exist, there is much more serious risk: eternal separation from God. Based on these two possible outcomes, Pascal declares that it is much less risky to have faith in God. In the face of an uncertain outcome, no rational person would refuse to give up something that is finite if there is the possibility of gaining an infinite prize. In fact, under these conditions it is unreasonable not to believe. Pascal writes, "Let us weigh up the gain and loss involved in calling heads that God exists. If you win, you win everything. If you lose, you lose nothing. Do not hesitate, then: wager that He does exist."


The ingenuity of Pascal's argument is that it emphasizes the practical necessity of us making a choice. This necessity is imposed by death. There comes a day when there are no tomorrows, and then we all have to cast our votes for or against the proposition on the ballot. The unavoidability of the decision exposes the sheer stupidity of agnosticism and religious indifference. These are people who refuse to choose when there is no option to abstain. So the refusal to choose becomes a choice--a choice against God.


Pascal also exposes the pose of the atheist who fancies himself as a brave and lonely man facing the abyss. We admire a man who is steadfast in the face of unavoidable adversity. If we knew we were alone in the universe and that death was the end, then there is no alternative but to stand tough in our mortal skins and curse the darkness. But what would we think of a man who stands ready to face a horrible fate that he has a chance to avert? If you are trapped in the den with a hungry lion, and there is a door that may offer a way out, what sane person would refuse to jump through the door? Viewed this way, the atheist position becomes a kind of reckless intransigence, a foolish attempt to gamble with one's soul.


With their trademark venom, atheists typically condemn, although they cannot refute, Pascal's wager. Christopher Hitchens can do no better than to launch an ad hominem attack on Pascal as a "hypocrite" and a "fraud." Attempting condescension, Richard Dawkins proclaims Pascal's argument "distinctly odd." And why? Because "believing is not something you can decide to do as a matter of policy. At least, it is not something I can decide to do as an act of will." Dawkins is right about this, of course, but the real issue is whether he wants to believe and whether he is open to the call of faith.


Pascal writes that there are two kinds of reasonable people in the world: "those who serve God with all their heart because they know Him, and those who seek Him with all their heart because they do not know Him." Pascal recognizes that faith is a gift. We cannot demand it but only ask God to give it to us. In the meantime the best thing to do is to live a good and moral life, and to live as if God did indeed exist.


And pray the prayer of the skeptic, which I get from the philosopher Peter Kreeft. "God, I don't know whether you even exist. I think you may be only a myth. But I'm not certain....So if you do exist, you must be hearing me now. So I hereby declare myself a seeker, a seeker of the truth, whatever and wherever it is. I want to know the truth and live the truth. If you are the truth, please help me." It is the claim of Christianity that all who seek God in this way with earnest and open hearts will find Him.


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M

I believe that faith and belief aren't quite the same thing. Beliefs often require assertion, while faith is a deeper inner understanding we tune into. I figure somewhere inside we know the answers.

St. Augustine sums up an implication of Pascal's Wager: "We do not understand in order to believe; we believe in order to understand."  Augustine advocates neither gullibililty nor blind faith.  Rather, we act as if our faith is anchored to precious truths and then take the risk of seeing whether this decision (1) expands our capacity to give and receive love, (2) makes more sense out of our daily struggles and life journey, and (3) leads to spiritual experiences that are psychologically convincing to us, not rationally demonstrable.  Apathy, not doubt, is the opposite of faith.  In both Hebrew and Greek, the biblical term "faith" means "faithfulness," not mental assent to a body of theological propositions. Faithfulness to our quest allows periods of skepticism.  Doubt is an essential part of our spiritual journey and is a vital tool to deepening our faith and removing its oversimplications.  

Many instinctively react against the implicit fear that motivates a spiritual quest based on Pascal's Wager.  It is important to recognize that the implementation of the Wager is a long process with several stages.  If one remains stuck in the stage of existential angst, then the Wager should probably be abandoned, at least temporarily, in favor of exploring another belief system.  The right kind of fear can help us establish the right priorities as long as this fear ultimately gives way to the biblical principle: "There is no fear in love, because mature love casts out all fear (1 John 4:18)."  The problem is this: it takes a long journey in the school of hard knocks to develop a lifestyle of MATURE love.  The biblical principle of faith seeking understanding is therefore essential to spiritual growth and peace of mind.

Don

if we're talking about whether to be an atheist or to believe in God, which is best, with the least risk of loss to the soul then first we might try to figure out what God is. I read somewhere the God word came from the word Good. is this true?

then we could start there, whether one believes in goodness. yet an atheist is obsessed with proving God does not exist, having to go thru life proving goodness does not exist is a hard road to take also but I would not say that an atheist would exist outside of God's mercy and therefore condemned.

There is always an option to choose again, frequently through painful experiences are new choices made. we must see to believe, yet it's also true we must believe before we can see.

I agree with Recoverer faith is something much more solid and creative than can be mere belief systems. Belief systems need frequent testing, to see if they are true. In this sense I agree with Don, we attend the school of hard knocks to gain mature love in our souls.
After awhile fear recedes with risk taking becoming the adventure of faithfulness. It only hurts for a minute to begin self scrutiny what we do believe exactly and if we have conflicting beliefs, we get a conflicted life with that.
best to go on the straight and narrow path for me, personally speaking. I am always in listening mode this way. thanks for the thread Doc.

Can't argue with Blink - I'll believe in God so long as God believes in me.
d

Guess we all have differing meanings for terms Alan, and in a sense it's only a matter of concensus and usefulness - but one academic definition of trust is ‘the willingness of a party (or organisation/group) to be vulnerable to the actions of another party (or organisation/group) based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of their ability to monitor or control that other party.’

'A key feature of the definition is the willingness of the trustor to accept vulnerability and/or risk. Ability/competence, goodwill/benevolence, integrity/honesty get listed as the factors of perceived trustworthiness.'

There's big questions as to the limits - it has it's origin in interpersonal stuff, and consequently is clearly specific to only a pretty narrow range of realities - but of course gets extended to companies, brands, spiritual teaching, the weather: maybe even God.

It's of course academically a minefield, given the usual problems the scientific culture introduces to  dealing with subjective stuff in anything much more than purely behavioural terms. (how people and things behave from the viewpoint of an 'independent' observer) You could for example if this was not dictat define trust as a 'certain sort of feeling in the gut', for example.

Belief gets really complicated if you factor in the fairly typical perspective that mind creates though. It implies  that what we perceive as our reality depends almost entirely on what we happen to believe. Meaning that if we are to ever hope to approach any sort of absolute reality we need to stop believing and come to rest easily with uncertainty  - to avoid investing in our beliefs and perceptions.

Meaning there's no such thing as an independent observer, at least not unless he/she is realised.

Hence the quote from RAW I've put up before - 'belief is the death of intelligence....'

Hi Alysia. I've been a bit preoccupied with work, and trying to cut down my 'habit' a bit.  Good to see you around too.

Language is very important stuff. It's often argued as being an important means by which we hypnotise each other into what is in a sense a shared set of pre-conceptions, leading to a shared (but usually inaccurate) view of reality. Cultural conditioning if you like.

Words are far from being a 100% flexible means of description - there's so much built into the structure of language that makes assumptions about the nature of reality.

For example. Our most basic level of consciousness (probably evolved when we were blobs swimming in the sea) simply decides 'nice = go towards and take in mouth', 'not nice  = move away from) associated with parts of the brain and nervous system that evolved long before the thinking parts is for example probably the root cause of our inclination to think in dualities rather than holistic networks of multiple variable. Also our very deeply rooted tendency to judge everything in these terms.

So many of our words tend to label things good, or bad and seem to reflect this - and lead us to act accordingly  - at least when we act impulsively and before the higher levels of consciousness have had time to kick in. While more evolved views suggest that it's often far wiser and more realistic to simultaneously juggle the multiple variables  that describe a situation to decide a course of action.

Buddhism's networked myriad of causes and consequences and middle way ideas for example. Buddhism of course also has a word for this initial judgement too - it suggests that the conscious rationale we use to subsequently justify many of our actions is developed retrospectively, that this initial judgement is unconscious.

Meditation and mindfulness are for example a lot about calming these lower levels of consciousness and training us to avoid impulsive action for long enough until the higher left (thinking) and right (intuitive) aspects of mind kick in.

With practice we seem to be able to condition ourselves to use this mode - they seem to at least partially supercede the lower levels. But language probably acts to keep on tending to suck us back into the old ways. (getting the beJesus scared out of us is pretty effective too)...