What Are Your Conclusions?
Our topic for study has been, “Has Science Rediscovered God?” We’ve done this by evaluating the scientific evidence of the last 50 years. Without a doubt, the scientific evidence of the next 50 years will bring even more to the table which will either confirm or weaken our current conclusions. But, this is the time to formulate conclusions that you can draw right now from the known evidence. Please don’t cop out with a, “I don’t know.” Surely you know something based on the evidence. Which direction does it point? Follow the trail wherever it leads. Take a stand, and be willing to modify your course as new evidence and understanding is revealed.
I hope you have already started conversations about the material — especially with those who don’t think as you do. That’s the best way of learning — listening and engaging another person’s point of view. Are your arguments today stronger or weaker than when you started? Are you able to clearly articulate WHY you believe such and such, not just WHAT you believe — not just offering your opinion. Are you more open today to self-evaluation of your assumptions and worldview? Are your conclusions based on evidence and good reasoning, or are they more based on your ideology, even what you may WANT to be true? Even if based primarily on ideology or worldview, ask yourself, “Does the evidence support or negate my ideology?”
“Know thyself, the unexamined life is not worth living,” was one of Socrates most famous dictums. Socrates is considered the father of Western philosophy (lover of wisdom) because he facilitated becoming wise by asking questions and starting conversations — not because he knew a lot of the answers. In fact he taught that, “The only true wisdom is in knowing that you know nothing” — and he readily admitted that about himself.
What are your conclusions?
How has this study impacted your thinking about origins and destiny? About meaning and morality? About the Big Questions of life? What are your takeaways? How might you be different as a result of what you have learned? Are you more aware of your own worldview? Do you better appreciate the worldview of others? How might you want to follow up in action and study? Join us at Socrates@SaddleBrooke through the link below and start asking questions and entering into discussions at the Socrates Forum.
Blaise Pascal was a renowned 17th century physicist, mathematician, philosopher, and theologian. He argued that a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. He put the terms in a probabilistic formulation known as Pascal’s Wager: “If God does not exist you will have only a finite loss (perhaps of some pleasures and luxuries), whereas if he does exist you stand to receive infinite gains (heaven) and avoid infinite losses (hell).
Pascal said it this way, “If you win you gain all. If you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then without hesitation that He exists.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning expressed her conclusion in her epic poem, Aurora Leigh
Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes —
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware…
—
Author Oscar Wilde put it a little less poetically, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
I went on my own personal journey several decades ago. I took Pascal’s wager seriously and ended up gaining all! Here is my journey.
