Pascal's Wager?

[Thief]

The parable describes a farmer throwing seed onto a path, rocky soil, and into thorn bushes...i.e. conditions that would have been apparent to any reasonably observant farmer. It also talks about seeds being eaten by birds... i.e. a situation any reasonably responsible farmer would try to prevent.

The parable tells the story of a farmer who doesn't care whether his seeds grow into crops or not.


Don't presume to tell me my motives.

So...you were not coy....and simply don't get it.

The parable leans to say.....spirit abides as flesh is born.
Some say we are born to be what we are.

I do agree to a point.
That point would be 'denial'.
Self denial first.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

So...you were not coy....and simply don't get it.

What did I just say?

 

[Thief]

What did I just say?

Not much.

 

[Windwalker]

A sower who throws his seed on rock where it has no chance of growing is lacking as a farmer.

That's too funny. When we take the parable as not being an example of the types of fertile soil, but as about the farmer, in other words missing the point of the metaphor by taking it literally and missing the figurative nature of it, it ends up being absurd. If you wish to make a case that this literally speaks poorly of the farmer, then you have to reconcile that with where he directly teaches to not cast your pearls before swine. There are lots of places where it speaks about being wise where you sow your seed, so to speak.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

If you wish to make a case that this literally speaks poorly of the farmer, then you have to reconcile that with where he directly teaches to not cast your pearls before swine.

No, I don't.

The Bible was written, tweaked, and re-tweaked by countless people over centuries, each with their own agendas. The Gospels are almost a blog of what was happening in the early church as the Bible was being brought together: whenever a dispute between rival Christian factions was going on, poof - a quote from Jesus on the issue would conveniently appear in the latest version of the Gospel.

I have less expectation that the Bible would be consistent with itself than I have that Wikipedia would be.

 

[Deidre]

That's too funny. When we take the parable as not being an example of the types of fertile soil, but as about the farmer, in other words missing the point of the metaphor by taking it literally and missing the figurative nature of it, it ends up being absurd. If you wish to make a case that this literally speaks poorly of the farmer, then you have to reconcile that with where he directly teaches to not cast your pearls before swine. There are lots of places where it speaks about being wise where you sow your seed, so to speak.

Hai windwalker,

What do you think the ground signifies though in the parable?

 

[Deidre]

Well, I had a revelation, albeit not an original one. lol ^_^
Pascal was a theist. If he were a deist, I could buy into what he was saying a bit more.

 

[Thief]

That's too funny. When we take the parable as not being an example of the types of fertile soil, but as about the farmer, in other words missing the point of the metaphor by taking it literally and missing the figurative nature of it, it ends up being absurd. If you wish to make a case that this literally speaks poorly of the farmer, then you have to reconcile that with where he directly teaches to not cast your pearls before swine. There are lots of places where it speaks about being wise where you sow your seed, so to speak.

Try not to mention the 'pearls before swine' metaphor.
Too many people take it personally.
I started a thread about it some time back......it got locked.

 

[Windwalker]

No, I don't.

The Bible was written, tweaked, and re-tweaked by countless people over centuries, each with their own agendas. The Gospels are almost a blog of what was happening in the early church as the Bible was being brought together: whenever a dispute between rival Christian factions was going on, poof - a quote from Jesus on the issue would conveniently appear in the latest version of the Gospel.

I have less expectation that the Bible would be consistent with itself than I have that Wikipedia would be.

Interesting response. I never proposed that the Bible was perfect, some revealed word of God that contains no contradictions, editing, pseudepigraphal writings, etc. All I said is that your literal interpretation of a parable was suspect, and I merely illustrated that teachings such as cast not your pearls before swine is actually more direct of a teaching, not a metaphoric way to teach a different truth. How you turned into a debate on this is curious.

I stand by what I said, that even if simply reading the sower of seeds parable by itself, it's a pretty suspicious interpretation you apply to it. Even if the farmer was a moron or careless, the point is about people's receptivity and responses to Knowledge.

 

[Windwalker]

Hai windwalker,

What do you think the ground signifies though in the parable?

I think it speaks to how people respond to receiving truth and knowledge. It speaks in metaphor about how people either choke out things that challenge their worldviews, grab hold of it quickly as some new fashioned truth to follow looking to it to give them quick easy Answers with a capital A only to fall away when it doesn't give them the fast path to enlightenment, or those who instead consider carefully what is heard and received and allow it to grow and transform their understand and their lives.

Now I want to add something here to be clear. I think this applies to any source of truth and knowledge like this. Metaphorically speaking, the "word of God" can be from anything. Such as from science. So the religious who stuff their ears when science reveals how evolution has formed and shaped all animal species on the earth, they are in my opinion directly rejecting "revealed truth". They are rejecting God, in effect. They are the ground overrun with weeds that choke out truth from growing in their gardens. The weeds in their case are the symbols of their religious identities they cling to out of fear a sense of security that they let choke anything but the familiar. It can also apply to anyone anywhere else in a belief system as well where they refuse to let anything in that challenges their system they have constructed around themselves. It goes both ways, to the secular who cling to science as the Answer, and to the religious who cling to their religion as the Answer.

Of course there are other metaphors one could come up with and not just these three, but the point is these are metaphors, and metaphors are figurative ways to describe the way things work in general, easy to grasp pictures. Taking them literally is to miss the point utterly.

 

[`mud]

Pascal....betting on the chance to go to heaven if you are really good on earth.
Or......going to hell if you are not.....or flipping a coin, that lands on it's edge.
I can't see the evidence of any chance that this 'god' exists, or angels on pinpoints.
I think the angels on the points convinces me that theists are full of it.
And....virgins in the sky ???? And floating thrones and pearly gates !
Take away the angels, and one might have a bet on the wheel of life,
but I really doubt it !
I'll keep looking for the pink unihorn, or maybe even a pink hornless horse !
~
'mud

 

[Windwalker]

Well, I had a revelation, albeit not an original one. lol ^_^
Pascal was a theist. If he were a deist, I could buy into what he was saying a bit more.

That's interesting. I'm not sure it would matter to me. If his point was in effect that it is better to live a thoughtful life devoted to developing the spiritual, interior life versus just pursuing nothing but the pleasures of the flesh and neglecting the interiors, it wouldn't matter what his frame of reference was to make that point. It could be any frame of reference, any idea of God or the Universe, and still be making the same point.

It's the point he appears to be trying to make that is the core of it, not how he imagined God to look. In other words, it's a case of not getting hung up on the particulars of how someone is framing their point, getting hung up on the finger pointing to the moon rather than looking at the moon itself, and realizing a finger is just a finger and not being distracted by it and missing the point altogether.

Again, just to clarify, I don't believe Pascal's wager would mean go join a church. It probably is more about "live a spiritual life", than find a religion.

 

[Thief]

I think it speaks to how people respond to receiving truth and knowledge. It speaks in metaphor about how people either choke out things that challenge their worldviews, grab hold of it quickly as some new fashioned truth to follow looking to it to give them quick easy Answers with a capital A only to fall away when it doesn't give them the fast path to enlightenment, or those who instead consider carefully what is heard and received and allow it to grow and transform their understand and their lives.

Now I want to add something here to be clear. I think this applies to any source of truth and knowledge like this. Metaphorically speaking, the "word of God" can be from anything. Such as from science. So the religious who stuff their ears when science reveals how evolution has formed and shaped all animal species on the earth, they are in my opinion directly rejecting "revealed truth". They are rejecting God, in effect. They are the ground overrun with weeds that choke out truth from growing in their gardens. The weeds in their case are the symbols of their religious identities they cling to out of fear a sense of security that they let choke anything but the familiar. It can also apply to anyone anywhere else in a belief system as well where they refuse to let anything in that challenges their system they have constructed around themselves. It goes both ways, to the secular who cling to science as the Answer, and to the religious who cling to their religion as the Answer.

Of course there are other metaphors one could come up with and not just these three, but the point is these are metaphors, and metaphors are figurative ways to describe the way things work in general, easy to grasp pictures. Taking them literally is to miss the point utterly.

I prefer to consider a parable as if I was one of the crowd....in His time on earth.
The words were intended to sort out....those who have ears that hear.

Science as we now know of it.....did not exist.
That's not to say it should be pushed aside.

I believe in God and heaven because of it.

The parables are instruction of technique....mind and heart.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Interesting response. I never proposed that the Bible was perfect, some revealed word of God that contains no contradictions, editing, pseudepigraphal writings, etc. All I said is that your literal interpretation of a parable was suspect, and I merely illustrated that teachings such as cast not your pearls before swine is actually more direct of a teaching, not a metaphoric way to teach a different truth. How you turned into a debate on this is curious.

The point I was trying to get at was that looking for a single interpretation for the Bible by reconciling different passages against each other can sometimes be a mistake. Do we even need to decide which passage supersedes the other? It could very well be that nobody in the early church ever made a determination like that here - it could very well be that one came from one tradition or faction and the other came from some other tradition or faction, and neither paid much attention to the other's writings.

I stand by what I said, that even if simply reading the sower of seeds parable by itself, it's a pretty suspicious interpretation you apply to it. Even if the farmer was a moron or careless, the point is about people's receptivity and responses to Knowledge.

It's not "suspicious"; it's just a different perspective. I realize full well that the parable would have been originally given to an audience who considered God's character to be unimpeachable. What I'm saying here is that without that a priori assumption, Farmer God comes off as rather unwise or uncaring about his seeds.

 

[Deidre]

The point I was trying to get at was that looking for a single interpretation for the Bible by reconciling different passages against each other can sometimes be a mistake. Do we even need to decide which passage supersedes the other? It could very well be that nobody in the early church ever made a determination like that here - it could very well be that one came from one tradition or faction and the other came from some other tradition or faction, and neither paid much attention to the other's writings.


It's not "suspicious"; it's just a different perspective. I realize full well that the parable would have been originally given to an audience who considered God's character to be unimpeachable. What I'm saying here is that without that a priori assumption, Farmer God comes off as rather unwise or uncaring about his seeds.

Why is the Bible even relevant then? If everyone who reads it comes away with a bit of a different 'interpretation,' I'm not seeing its usefulness. (aside from other reasons)

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Why is the Bible even relevant then? If everyone who reads it comes away with a bit of a different 'interpretation,' I'm not seeing its usefulness. (aside from other reasons)

The cynic in me says that in modern Christianity, the Bible is useful as an echo chamber where you can put in any viewpoint you want and it comes out "endorsed by God." That's useful to people who want reassurance.

Less cynically, one description I've heard (from a knowledgeable member here, actually, though I'm paraphrasing) was that the Christian Bible was originally a sort of compendium of "things to be read during church services."

In that context, Bible interpretation wouldn't have been a complete free-for-all, since it would've been interpreted for the congregation based on the church's specific traditions.

... it's just that there were a range of traditions that varied from church to church.

Edit: it's probably worth pointing out that "sola scriptura" and individialistic Bible study are both relatively recent developments in Christianity. Early Christianity was much more community- and congregation-based than modern "personal relationship with Jesus"-type Protestantism where everyone has their own Bibles, IMO.

 

[Thief]

ok so...scripture is like unto a Rorschach ink blot test.

Still it remains.....you get it right....or you don't.

 

[Revoltingest]

ok so...scripture is like unto a Rorschach ink blot test.

Still it remains.....you get it right....or you don't.

"Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig, es ist nicht einmal falsch!"
Wolfgang Pauli

Rough translation:
It's not right...it's not reasonable enuf to even be wrong!

 

[Windwalker]

The point I was trying to get at was that looking for a single interpretation for the Bible by reconciling different passages against each other can sometimes be a mistake.

That certainly wouldn't be an error I would make.

It's not "suspicious"; it's just a different perspective. I realize full well that the parable would have been originally given to an audience who considered God's character to be unimpeachable. What I'm saying here is that without that a priori assumption, Farmer God comes off as rather unwise or uncaring about his seeds.

But that wouldn't be consistent with the teller of the parable's point of view then. I'm simply saying that one can take any metaphor and make it say something absurd, if it's read literally. So I don't accept that would be a valid interpretation of what the parable was meant to convey. I wouldn't even consider a "Freudian Slip" in the mind of Jesus. It's think at best, it's a clever political interpretation, but nothing to seriously consider.

 

[Windwalker]

I prefer to consider a parable as if I was one of the crowd....in His time on earth.
The words were intended to sort out....those who have ears that hear.

If Jesus were a teacher of Wisdom, in a modern context he would say to look at what science teaches us about the natural world and let it speak to you with awe. "Consider the lilies of the field," could be replaced by, "Consider the Hubble telescope".