Despite their
predicament, most people, incredibly, refuse to seek an answer or even to think
about their dilemma. Instead, they lose themselves in escape. Listen to
Pascal’s description of the reasoning of such a person:
I know not who sent me into the
world, nor what the world is, nor what I myself am. I am terribly ignorant of
everything. I know not what my body is, nor my senses, nor my soul and that
part of me which thinks what I say, which reflects upon itself as well as upon
all external things, and has no more knowledge of itself than of them.
I see the terrifying immensity of
the universe which surrounds me, and find myself limited to one corner of this
vast expanse, without knowing why I am set down here rather than elsewhere, nor
why the brief period appointed for my life is assigned to me at this moment
rather than another in all the eternity that has gone before and will come
after me. On all sides I behold nothing but infinity, in which I am a mere
atom, a mere passing shadow that returns no more. All I know is that I must
soon die, but what I understand least of all is this very death which I cannot
escape.
As I know not whence I
come, so I know not whither I go. I only know that on leaving this world I fall
for ever into nothingness or into the hands of a wrathful God, without knowing
to which of these two states I shall be everlastingly consigned. Such is my
condition, full of weakness and uncertainty. From all this I conclude that I
ought to spend every day of my life without seeking to know my fate. I might
perhaps be able to find a solution to my doubts; but I cannot be bothered to do
so, I will not take one step towards its discovery.
Pascal can only regard
such indifference as insane. Man’s condition ought to impel him to seek to
discover whether there is a God and a solution to his predicament. But people
occupy their time and their thoughts with trivialities and distractions, so as
to avoid the despair, boredom, and anxiety that would inevitably result if
those diversions were removed.
Such is the misery of man. But mention must also be made of
the greatness of man. For although man is miserable, he is at least capable of knowing that
he is miserable. The greatness of man consists in thought. Man is a mere reed,
yes, but he is a thinking reed. The universe might crush him like a
gnat; but even so, man is nobler than the universe because he knows that
it crushes him, and the universe has no such knowledge. Man’s whole dignity
consists, therefore, in thought. “By space the universe encompasses and
swallows me up like a mere speck; by thought I comprehend the universe.” Man’s
greatness, then, lies not in his having the solution to his predicament, but in
the fact that he alone in all the universe is aware of his wretched condition.
What a chimaera then
is man, what a novelty, what a monster, what chaos, what a subject of
contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, yet an imbecile earthworm;
depositary of truth, yet a sewer of uncertainty and error; pride and refuse of
the universe. Who shall resolve this tangle? -- Excerpted from The Absurdity of Life Without God, William Lane Craig
- Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Christian philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen. Wikipedia
