Why not hedonism?

[Mono no aware]

Jesus then said to the Jews who had believed in him, "If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free."

If you do X, then Y (and then Z).

Love God with all your heart, and then you will know the truth.  Of course if one never comes to know the truth then its a bit true-scotsman, but such is life.  Restating what I noted before, be a good friend and then know what a good friend is.

Does this verse exclude the interpretation that the truth is known (with this certainty you all demand) only in the beatific vision?

No, I don't think it excludes that interpretation at all.  But doesn't that only push the problem back a step?  If there is a promise that the truth will be known in the afterlife, then still it seems that the faithful must able to be certain of that promise in this life.  The faith, however minimalist it might be, would have to contain at least a single absolute certainty somewhere upon which all else would depend, otherwise the original problem would persist: that what God has revealed to his creatures is only potentially true—and thereby potentially false.  It would have to be "true that ye shall know the truth."

[Non Nobis]

I am interested in everyone's comments.

We do not require it of anything else we do in our lives, we did not require it when we chose our spouses, picked our careers, decided where to live.  But now we require it of faith?

Hi Davis Blank...it is a pleasure to interact with you friend...

I am curious how you would answer the following question: if your Catholic faith is not absolutely certain, then why is it a sin to doubt it?

...anticipating one possible answer, "well, because God has revealed it and therefore to doubt is sinful" is begging the question, of course.

I am not asking in order to be contentious...I would just like a satisfactory answer, since I am more or less stumped on it myself...

Faith involves both the will and the intellect.  The will (with GRACE, which requires PRAYER) can assent (will to think) to what is taught, even if there ISN'T absolute certainty in the first place. You PRAY that you assent only to what is true.  (Sorry for the uppercase  if anyone minds).

I think the certainty you get by faith is not as absolute as some want to have, because you can have difficulties.  "Lord, I believe, help my unbelief". If you call this certainty "relative certainty", then I think (strong) faith makes you satisfied with this relative certainty (and the relative certainty that you have that you WILL have absolute certainty in the beatific vision). By definition faith is NOT SIGHT, so it doesn't have the certainty of sight. You lean on Christ, who is Truth, and trust God (doesn't mean absolute knowledge) that He lead you to Christ's church, and you commit to what is taught (the assent of faith): breaking that commitment is sin. (Of course there is human effort involved in studying the motives of credibility, but finally you need to pray to get that  faith that only God can give)

(In a sense I suppose that you only have relative certainty that  you existed a minute ago but it is satisfying certainty (unless you are Daniel), and you are wrong to deny it.  If it is right to say you have relative certainty of things taught by faith, faith makes that certainty satisfying (depending on the strength of your faith), and if you disbelieve or deliberately entertain doubts, you are breaking your commitment. In heaven all such relative certainties will be absolute) 

Perhaps more perfect faith would mean you don't have to say "help my unbelief". But if you have some lack of absolute certainty,  it makes no sense to say "now I shouldn't (or don't) believe at all"!

Here is a quote from a previous post of mine:

...
Believing Catholics are like the Apostles who heard Christ say " "Except you eat the Flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, you shall not have life in you.".  They do not understand what he is saying (think how much of more of a shock it was for them hearing it for the first time, unlike us).  But they do not walk away like some disciples, saying "This saying is hard, and who can hear it?". Instead, Simon Peter speaks for them "Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. [70] And we have believed and have known, that thou art the Christ, the Son of God.". Catholics should believe the same thing about the Catholic Church.

Next, here is a quote from someone who is not a traditionalist or scholar but rather a popular Catholic priest on youtube; he quotes the CCC.  I'd be glad to hear any criticism anyone reading this has of what he has to say:

Fr. Mike Schmitz
https://bulldogcatholic.org/in-your-last-column-you-said-you-believe-everything-the-church-teaches-what-if-i-struggle-with-believing-where-does-that-put-me/

Q: In your last column, you said you believe everything the Church teaches. What if I struggle with believing? Where does that put me?

A: We are sometimes under the impression that believing or having faith means that we simply accept a teaching or the situations of our lives with no questions. If that is the case, then I need to clarify what I mean by having faith. It certainly does mean assenting to all of the truths of the Catholic Church, but it does not necessarily mean the absence of struggling with belief.

We know that faith is not mere belief. Faith is when we submit our intellect and will to God, who has revealed himself to us through Scripture and tradition. It involves both our minds and our lives. Because of this, faith is not the absence of a struggle. The life of faith is by its very nature a battle to place our entire selves under Christ's lordship. If you struggle to do this, it is not failure, it is engaging the call.

The great figures of the Old and New Testaments demonstrate that faith involves struggle. Think of Abraham struggling to walk in faith as he is called from his homeland. Consider the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel through the night. (As a result of his struggle, he is rewarded with the new name Israel.) Even Jesus, in a mysterious way, struggled when faced with doing his Father's will in the Garden of Gethsemane. Think of the great saints who asked the deepest and most difficult questions about the existence and nature of God, suffering and salvation.

The difference between these examples and someone who rejects God is the difference between having doubts and having difficulties. Not only are doubts and difficulties not the same thing, they are not even the same kind of thing. Doubt is a decision. A difficulty is a dilemma.

Every sin is essentially a decision. No one sins accidentally. A sin is not a mistake. Sin is essentially about relationship. It involves knowing what God wants and refusing to obey God in love. It isn't an error; it is saying "no."

Sin looks like this: "God, I know what you want me to do. I don't care. I want to do what I want to do."

Therefore, when it comes to doubt, this also involves full knowledge and full consent of the will. It is saying, "I know what the Church teaches, and I know why the Church teaches this. I refuse to submit to it."

That may be you. You may find yourself in rebellion against God or against the Church. But it may be that you have difficulties with belief. Many times, we think that we are doubting when we are actually merely struggling to understand or to live up to our call to be holy.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls this struggle "involuntary doubt." It refers to "hesitation in believing, difficulty in overcoming objections with the faith, or also anxiety aroused by its obscurity" (CCC 2088). This is vastly different from "voluntary doubt," which "disregards or refuses to hold as true what God has revealed and the Church proposes for belief."

The difference between difficulties and doubts is so profound that Blessed John Henry Newman once stated that "10,000 difficulties do not make one doubt."

And yet, we have to be a person who is not content with difficulties or anxieties. We may say things like "I struggle with some teachings of the Church" with a sly look in our eyes. That contentedness with difficulty is neither noble nor harmless. It is one thing to struggle to know and love God and something quite else to have "difficulties" and not care to resolve them. That attitude can often lead to a spiritual blindness and an inability to hear God when He speaks. There is very little that God can do with the cool and indifferent.

Even if people have a difficult time with faith, if they struggle to seek after and follow God, they are light years ahead of one who does not believe and does not care. If we seek, knock and ask, we have Jesus' word: We will find.

[Tales]

We do not require it of anything else we do in our lives, we did not require it when we chose our spouses, picked our careers, decided where to live.  But now we require it of faith?

Hi Davis Blank...it is a pleasure to interact with you friend...

I am curious how you would answer the following question: if your Catholic faith is not absolutely certain, then why is it a sin to doubt it?

...anticipating one possible answer, "well, because God has revealed it and therefore to doubt is sinful" is begging the question, of course.

I am not asking in order to be contentious...I would just like a satisfactory answer, since I am more or less stumped on it myself...

Greetings Sir,

I guess I would first wonder what do we mean when we say certain.  I am certain that 2+2=4 for it could not possibly be anything but 4.  I am not in the same sense certain that my wife loves me, but I am certain that she does.  However, I imagine that with enough skepticism and a cynical enough eye I could begin to doubt her love for me.

Likewise, I am certain that Jesus will keep His promises.  As my wife has provided enough evidence to me that she loves me, Jesus too has provided enough for me to be certain of Him.  Again, I could introduce overabundant skepticism into my life and begin to doubt my wife, but that would be an injustice against her, for she has done nothing to warrant such extreme doubt.  I will leave it up to you to extrapolate to our relationship with God.

[Tales]

No, I don't think it excludes that interpretation at all.  But doesn't that only push the problem back a step?  If there is a promise that the truth will be known in the afterlife, then still it seems that the faithful must able to be certain of that promise in this life.  The faith, however minimalist it might be, would have to contain at least a single absolute certainty somewhere upon which all else would depend, otherwise the original problem would persist: that what God has revealed to his creatures is only potentially true—and thereby potentially false.  It would have to be "true that ye shall know the truth."

I do not follow.  Hypothetically, if Jesus makes a promise of certainty in the afterlife, why does it thus entail that He also provides certainty in this life?  If He promises it only in Y, then why must it also be in X?

I would also ask the same question I just posed our friend.  What do we mean by certain?  What does this certainty you seek look and feel like?  Does it come in the form of a mathematical proof, a contract written in blood, an over abundance of evidence, a very strong emotion, or what?

[Kreuzritter]

Or maybe the chemicals in my brain provided me with an experience of profundity.  I do not know.

And I don't know what that means. It's a way of speaking I was "taught" by society but which I found to be totally vacuous once I began to look beneath the language. Epiphenomena. Phenomena being ontologically "caused" by abstract theoretical objects. Things not being what they are but "really" something else. The devaluation of the senses in favour of an invisible "objective" world. The dismissal of dreams, visions and mysticla experience as "all in the mind", or worse "in the brain". In its most crass physicalist form: colours are "really" wave packets of photons, sounds are "really" vibrating physical particles, love is "really" a chemical reaction, all experiences are "really" brain states; a so-called "materialism" which actually denies the reality of matter and replaces it with the mathematical noumena of atomistic physics. But most metaphysical systems do the same. Where the Presocratic hylozoists were, like the philosophers of the Upanishads, characterising intuited natures by analogy of being, the later metaphysicians attempt to replace reality with a system of thought that magically "causes" it to be, the meanining of that never being explained. It's a load of nonsensical bunkum, and once you've thrown it out, the world begins to open up.

I'll disagree with you that Pascal had an understanding of religion which was bullcrap.  He was a Jansenist.  "GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob—not of the philosophers and of the learned."  The piety and commitment of the Jansenists was lived, not declared, and my criteria is "by their fruits you will know them," so I rate them highly.

Calvin could have said as much and the Puritans done as much. Fastidious. Prayerful. Living their beliefs. That doesn't change that their beliefs were messed up. It's like a reaction against over-theologising but misconstrued. Like the Puritans, they rejected a perceived formal and "dead" faith of rituala nd theology, but they put in its place a practical piety and political action. They're thoroughly exocteric, even in their "spirituality". Hence their emphasis on moral rigorism, their love of miracles, their iconoclasm-lite, their distaste for Marian devotion. Because Mary, embodiment of Wisdom and paragon of theosis, is so essential to mysticism. It's also funny how people so anti-Pelagian in word were so Pelagian in practice.

Anyone can declare, from the unkempt preacher on the street corner with his placards and microphone to the clean-cut Mormon boys on the doorstep.  They all claim certainty.  I'd rather be shown than declared to.  "Come and see." 

That's a fair point. But I'm not preaching. I'm not asking anyone to believe me. I'm just stating my own case. At most I'm saying if you allow and hope for the possibility, you could try this and this. Or don't.

[Kreuzritter]

Jesus then said to the Jews who had believed in him, "If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free."

If you do X, then Y (and then Z).

Love God with all your heart, and then you will know the truth.  Of course if one never comes to know the truth then its a bit true-scotsman, but such is life.  Restating what I noted before, be a good friend and then know what a good friend is.

Does this verse exclude the interpretation that the truth is known (with this certainty you all demand) only in the beatific vision?

No, I don't think it excludes that interpretation at all.  But doesn't that only push the problem back a step?  If there is a promise that the truth will be known in the afterlife, then still it seems that the faithful must able to be certain of that promise in this life.  The faith, however minimalist it might be, would have to contain at least a single absolute certainty somewhere upon which all else would depend, otherwise the original problem would persist: that what God has revealed to his creatures is only potentially true—and thereby potentially false.  It would have to be "true that ye shall know the truth."

There's a distinction between the phenomenon of knowing and an epistemological justification of an alleged truth by reason. And ther experience of knowing something can be distinct from the experience of the object of knowledge.

Anyway, I have absolute certainity of my self, by immediate experience and reason, of God, by experience and reason, and of Jesus, by experience; I have the experience of knowing these things. I have no doubt regadrign them.  Knowing Jesus and his nature, I have faith in him, that he will not lead me astray, a trust confirmed in my sacramental experience. Believing that, I have faith in the Catholic Church into which I trust I've been led by him.

[Mono no aware]

I do not follow.  Hypothetically, if Jesus makes a promise of certainty in the afterlife, why does it thus entail that He also provides certainty in this life?  If He promises it only in Y, then why must it also be in X?

I may not've formulated it well.  But you had offered that the truth being spoken of in John 8:32 was the Beatific Vision.  That would entail something like a "fullness of truth."  In order for the promise to have been divinely issued, however, there would have to be at least one kernel of truth that could be known here on earth: the promise itself would have to be absolutely true.  One truth now, every truth later.  Otherwise it would be no better than a promise any mortal human could make, and in that case I'm not sure how we can say Christianity has been revealed by God.  It could've been revealed by a person claiming to be God.  As I understand it, this is why it's said, in Catholicism, of things like paradoxes and theological mysteries that we won't ever understand them unless and until we make it to heaven.  But in terms of what we can know, things like the dogmas of the faith can be known with certainty.  That much is implicit in the claim that whatever the Church solemnly teaches, she teaches infallibly.

I would also ask the same question I just posed our friend.  What do we mean by certain?  What does this certainty you seek look and feel like?  Does it come in the form of a mathematical proof, a contract written in blood, an over abundance of evidence, a very strong emotion, or what?

In terms of being absolutely certain of the faith, Davis, I am not sure.  I wish I could answer you here, but since I've never had absolute certainty of the faith, I can't imagine quite what form it would come in.  The only thing I have absolute certainty of is my own consciousness, but I can't even say what that "looks and feels like," since consciousness is the thing that looks and feels.  It's an interesting question, though.  QMR and, as far as I read him, our friend Kreuzritter, have absolute certainty so maybe they can offer a description.  Then again, they both aver mystical perception, so there might be a quality of "beyond telling" that gets lost in translation, as would be expected of divine communication. 

I think the divine communication aspect is where we have our disagreement.  Take the analogy you gave of your wife.  You have certainty that your wife loves you.  However, if you were an 82-yr-old billionaire and your wife was a 21-yr-old Playboy model, I would have to wonder whether your certainty was justified.  Obviously that's an extreme example, but you take my point.  Beyond the superficial, it's more difficult to know.  What I don't think we can say is that the Catholic faith is akin to the love of a spouse.  It seems there would be a certain heresy, outside of romantic poetry perhaps, to suppose that a wife communicates her love infallibly.  There have been husbands certain of their wives' love where the marriage one day ended with her leaving.  "I'm sorry, Jimmy, but I don't love you.  I don't know if I ever did.  I guess I  thought I did, but I don't."  That's just a factual circumstance in life.  And there have also been many excellent wives who loved unto the death, and that is a beautiful thing.  But we can't say that the Church's professions are subject to even the possibility of deceit—which is necessarily a possibility in the human realm (the Blessed Virgin Mary excepted, of course, being sinless).

[Tales]

I may not've formulated it well.  But you had offered that the truth being spoken of in John 8:32 was the Beatific Vision.  That would entail something like a "fullness of truth."  In order for the promise to have been divinely issued, however, there would have to be at least one kernel of truth that could be known here on earth: the promise itself would have to be absolutely true.  One truth now, every truth later.  Otherwise it would be no better than a promise any mortal human could make, and in that case I'm not sure how we can say Christianity has been revealed by God.  It could've been revealed by a person claiming to be God.  As I understand it, this is why it's said, in Catholicism, of things like paradoxes and theological mysteries that we won't ever understand them unless and until we make it to heaven.  But in terms of what we can know, things like the dogmas of the faith can be known with certainty.  That much is implicit in the claim that whatever the Church solemnly teaches, she teaches infallibly.

A truth can be given and yet not be believed to be true.  Is that the fault of the truth teller or the receiver?  If the former then I again ask in what form such certainty must come.  If people doubt their own personal perceptions then what can possibly be done here by the truth teller to overcome the capability of the receiver to doubt seemingly everything?

I also note that Christ and His Church never claimed that the evidence given is so forceful as to eliminate all doubt.  We are not Calvinists.

In terms of being absolutely certain of the faith, Davis, I am not sure.  I wish I could answer you here, but since I've never had absolute certainty of the faith, I can't imagine quite what form it would come in.  The only thing I have absolute certainty of is my own consciousness, but I can't even say what that "looks and feels like," since consciousness is the thing that looks and feels.  It's an interesting question, though.  QMR and, as far as I read him, our friend Kreuzritter, have absolute certainty so maybe they can offer a description.  Then again, they both aver mystical perception, so there might be a quality of "beyond telling" that gets lost in translation, as would be expected of divine communication.

If we do not know what it would look like then how do we know we have not had it? 

I think the divine communication aspect is where we have our disagreement.  Take the analogy you gave of your wife.  You have certainty that your wife loves you.  However, if you were an 82-yr-old billionaire and your wife was a 21-yr-old Playboy model, I would have to wonder whether your certainty was justified.  Obviously that's an extreme example, but you take my point.  Beyond the superficial, it's more difficult to know.  What I don't think we can say is that the Catholic faith is akin to the love of a spouse.  It seems there would be a certain heresy, outside of romantic poetry perhaps, to suppose that a wife communicates her love infallibly.  There have been husbands certain of their wives' love where the marriage one day ended with her leaving.  "I'm sorry, Jimmy, but I don't love you.  I don't know if I ever did.  I guess I  thought I did, but I don't."  That's just a factual circumstance in life.  And there have also been many excellent wives who loved unto the death, and that is a beautiful thing.  But we can't say that the Church's professions are subject to even the possibility of deceit—which is necessarily a possibility in the human realm (the Blessed Virgin Mary excepted, of course, being sinless).

A man can be certain of something and yet still be wrong.  That he was wrong does not negate his certainty.  I do not see a problem here.

[Daniel]

I've spoken with atheists before about whether or not a personal visitation from Jesus would convince them - unsurprisingly, the answer is usually no.

I probably wouldn't either. Because what good is an apparition if you don't already have faith? Without faith there's no way to know that this Jesus you're seeing is in fact God or a saint, as opposed to a devil, somebody trying to trick you, or even a hallucination.

You believe, or you do not.  This is not to say that both sides do not have reasonable explanations for their stance, but it is to reject the idea of some absolute provable certainty, this magical 100%-its-true-you-cannot-deny-it-here's-the-proof-read-it-and-weep type argument / evidence.  Searching for this is absolutely futile, its kicking against the goads, Jesus never promised it, the Church never promised it, and you cannot even absolutely refute the ridiculous brain-in-vat hypothesis.  We do not require it of anything else we do in our lives, we did not require it when we chose our spouses, picked our careers, decided where to live.  But now we require it of faith?

There are some major differences between "faith" and the life decisions you've mentioned.
1.) There's no such thing as choosing the "wrong" spouse, the "wrong" career, or the "wrong" place to live. Those things are all relative... some potential spouses/careers/locations might be worse than others, but none are absolutely "wrong". The wrong religion, however, is absolutely wrong.
2.) Ignoring the possibility of scandal and other sins accidental to the choice, choosing the "wrong" spouse/career/location does not in itself offend God in any way whatsoever (as far as I know). But choosing and practicing the wrong religion does offend God (as far as I know).
3.) Nobody claims certainty (in the strict sense) with respect to whether or not he has chosen the correct spouse/career/location. But the Catholic Church demands certainty of us with respect to faith and morals.
4.) If we treat religion like any other life decision, then there's hardly any reason to be Catholic. Because when we choose our wife/career/spouse/location, we examine the subjective evidence and make what we believe to be the best decision. But if we hold religion to the same standard, we end up choosing something like deism, Neoplatonism, pantheism/monism, or even atheism. We don't choose Catholicism which seems messy, seems to contradict the natural sciences, seems to make God into a monster, doesn't really match our personal everyday experiences, and yet nevertheless causes us much suffering in our trying to live up to everything it demands of us (laws which seem to be coming from man rather than from God).

It's not electing to follow God's "rules" because you intellectually acknowledge him as sovereign, which isn't even a logical necessity of that acknowledgment.  Just ask Lucifer. It's loving God and neighbour out of vital necessity by the divinity dwelling within and ones ever-deepening union with it.

You're always thinking in terms of obedience demanded by authority, lists of rules, and the knowledge of the intellect. This is Satanism, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the Law that cannot save.

Sorry if I'm just not understanding, or if you've already covered this, but how does this work exactly? Would you agree with my paraphrase?:
Knowledge is irrelevant. Man cannot know right from wrong. So each man ought to do (or, each man is compelled to do?) whatever he desires to do. If his desires are good then he will live a good life, but if his desires are bad then he will live a bad life. Man's natural desires are always bad, so men typically live bad lives offensive to God. But God chooses some people and replaces their bad desires with good desires. Consequently, those men do what they desire to do, and live good lives which are pleasing to God.

God "damns" people who don't have goodness in their heart and refuse to act on the work of the law that is written onto it; because that's what damnation is. This is why there's no such thing as "ingorance" of what is moral, "ignorance" of what the good "demands"; because people know the nature of their actions, and they choose those which are after their heart.

I'm not sure I follow. What exactly do you mean by "people know the nature of their actions"?

[Mono no aware]

A truth can be given and yet not be believed to be true.  Is that the fault of the truth teller or the receiver?  If the former then I again ask in what form such certainty must come.  If people doubt their own personal perceptions then what can possibly be done here by the truth teller to overcome the capability of the receiver to doubt seemingly everything?

But again, asking me what form this certainty would come in is like asking a man blind since birth to describe the contents of a photograph.  I have never had absolute certainty of the faith so I don't know.  I do have absolute certainty of my consciousness, but I can't tell you in what form consciousness comes.  Maybe absolute certainty of the faith would infuse one's entire consciousness—an "in Him we live and move and have our being" kind of perception.  I cannot say from experience. 

If the faith is merely a collection of assertions which we weigh according to our reason, and thus do we gain our respective levels of certainty, then that's okay.  You have assessed the evidence and are certain; I have done the same and am uncertain.  I was originally coming to this from the angle of things like grace and infallibility: if the truth-teller in question here is also the omnipotent creator, then presumably there is no way in which he can fail to provide his creatures of certainty should he desire to.  Possibly he wanted it to be a different way, more like a shell game: the truth is contained in a particular religion just as the ball is under a particular mug, and let the apologists do the convincing.  But in that case we have uncertainty.

A man can be certain of something and yet still be wrong.  That he was wrong does not negate his certainty.  I do not see a problem here.

I agree, so long as we are still talking about a man's certainty of something like his wife's love.  With humans, who are fallible creatures, there is always the possibility of deceit.  If you are saying that a man can be certain of the fact that Jesus Christ is God and potentially be wrong, then I guess we have no disagreement.

[Tales]

I probably wouldn't either. Because what good is an apparition if you don't already have faith? Without faith there's no way to know that this Jesus you're seeing is in fact God or a saint, as opposed to a devil, somebody trying to trick you, or even a hallucination.

And how do you propose to know that your "faith" is not in fact the faith of the devil and he's yet tricked you again?

As I asked Mr. PDR, what does this certainty you seek look like / feel like?

Regarding religion being objectively right or wrong, I believe that to be the case because I believe as the Church teaches, but you do not, so why do you believe that to be so?  Why is this life decision different from choosing a wife?  The deist god certainly doesn't care.  Nor does the atheist vacuum.

[Tales]

if the truth-teller in question here is also the omnipotent creator, then presumably there is no way in which he can fail to provide his creatures of certainty should he desire to.  Possibly he wanted it to be a different way, more like a shell game: the truth is contained in a particular religion just as the ball is under a particular mug, and let the apologists do the convincing.  But in that case we have uncertainty.

Yes, I am taking the truth-teller as Christ.  Given as the way this has all gone down, what with Christ walking the Earth for only 33 years, His ministry being only a fraction of that, I think its clear that what He is providing us vis-a-vis certainty is not the certainty you seek.  The faith comes from Him but He does it through the people whom comprise His Body.  The faith is not such like a robot being activated by a command code, where a foreign good hearted man is given the faith, then hears the words from a missionary's mouth "Christ is God" and then click-whirr the gears of his robot spirit spin into belief.  He's going to require convincing of some degree - some more than others, but every single person requires some amount of it.

The convincing comes in a variety of forms.  Christ performed miracles to convince those lucky to walk with Him.  He works miracles through saints once in awhile to show He's still got it, which convinces some of the truths the Church speaks.  Yet others are convinced by seeing the good works of a Christian, or the beauty the Church has brought forth.  Still others are convinced by mystical visitations, or deep personal relations with Christ.  Point is, we're all being convinced by something - the faith is not such that Christ gives it to us, and then like good little robots, we believe with undying certainty.  Calvinists might disagree.

I am certain that my wife loves me.  But when she snaps a cold word at me and glares I might, for a time, begin to doubt.  But that is wrong of me to do.  For she has a thousand times a thousand shown me her love, and this moment in which emotions got the better of her, is not indicative of the lack of love.  Similarly, I am certain that reality is as I sense it.  And yet once in a blue moon I get in a mood, in the right place walking the right path in the right lighting, and I get this fleeting thought that none of this is real.  Am I uncertain, should I feed this doubt?  I'd say that I am certain despite this silly doubt, and that I should not feed into this doubt, as I suspect I could let it run wild.

That's the way we humans are.  It's a part of our fallen nature.  We can believe whatever it is we want, no matter how whacky.  It's also why logical discussions go no where (yet I continue in vain), because we can make our logic support whatever it is we want.  We can doubt whatever it is we want.  I can, if I let myself, truly doubt reality.  Our friend Daniel has agreed he'd doubt Christ even after a personal visitation.

This certainty we are speaking of is not iron-clad from all doubt.  If Jesus wanted to give such certainty He'd be walking next to us 24/7 bopping us over the head with His sandals each time we erred.

[Xavier]

Even though in the Pensées Pascal does argue, as you often do, that things like Scripture and miracles ought to be persuasive, in the portion concerning the wager he seems to be putting that aside

1. Hi Pon. Let's forget about the wager for a minute. Would you like to address some of the other issues. Philosophy shows there is One God. But only 3 religions in the world teach God is One. (Even if we randomly began by assuming that about any of the 9 odd major religions in the world, plus agnosticism if you want, had equal a priori probability of abouy 10%, this consideration would show the modified posterior probability is now either 25% or 33% for one of these 3 or 4 if you wish being true). Indeed, only the God of Abraham and Moses has consistently done so from the beginning until now, even before reason had solidly proved it. Therefore, this God is quite likely the True God.

2. Next, offering sacrifices to the Divinity is a clear mark of true religion, as even Roman statesmen and Greek philosophers knew and admitted. But of the remaining 3 or 4, only Christianity and the Catholic Church in particular has always and everywhere offered a pure Sacrifice to God, perfectly fulfilling Mal 1:11, an astonishingly difficult prophesy to fulfil by Her Perpetual Offering of the Sacrifice of the Clean Oblation of the Mass. These two considerations alone, though there are several others (Messianic Prophesies, Evidence for the Resurrection, Eucharistic Miracles, Incorruptible bodies of the Saints, the marvels of the divine Mother especially at Gaudalupe abolishing infanticide, at Lourdes, Fatima, Quito, Velankanni, and too many other places to name - She is Truly Our Lady of all nations) should suffice for all sincere inquirers to come to at least 90+% certainty, if not 99%+ that Christianity is true.

3. Now, if we come back to the wager: there's a 90+% likelihood at least that eternal life, this infinite good, with all the wonderful happiness it causes (even in this present life, when we contemplate it, as the beatitudes teach, and Christian experience suggests) is real and certain. On the other hand, there's a vanishingly low unlikely case that all religions are wrong and that all these things were mere coincidences. This gives us no assurance, no certainty, no likelihood of reward, no penalty of loss. If anyone wanted to apply the wager, it would apply now.

I don't feel a need for the wager. Jesus showed He is God because, after His public foretold sacrificial death as the Paschal Lamb under Pontius Pilate, He rose from the dead with His tomb empty - a reality known through its visible effects in the lives of the Apostles and on all subsequent history, which can only be explained by the Risen Christ. These are called external motives of credibility of the divine testimony, Pon, and are accessible to any inquirer or student of history. Once a person comes to Christ, he is assisted by the Holy Ghost in such a way that he receives the supernatural gift of enlightenment called divine faith. And as a person begins to live and practice the Faith, for e.g. in Eucharistic Adoration or in Holy Mass or Holy Communion, when he receives Christ reverently and lovingly, he will come to know also by internal spiritual experience (not speaking of the extraordinary here, but of the regular practice of a Christian life) that God has come to him. Thus, he will grow in faith and in supernatural life by practicing it.

One final consideration and question: imagine if we applied extreme agnosticism in the courtroom. "We have no way of knowing if the accused is guilty or not, per agnosticism, therefore every convict should be set free, and no one could be imprisoned". Would anyone do that? Clearly, there comes a point where we rely on moral certainty or safe to act upon certainty beyond reasonable doubt, make the decision and move on. So we must make a decision for or against the Risen Christ.

He has promised His Light and His Grace to all who seek and ask. God bless.

[Mono no aware]

I probably don't need as much convincing as it might seem, Xavier, in order to be persuaded that Christianity is the most likely of the theistic religions on offer.  But seeing as how Vatican II happened, I find Eastern Orthodoxy (should a form of Christianity be true) the more palatable form over Catholicism.  Vatican II is, to take Davis' analogy a step further, like finding your wife in bed with another man.  What is Catholicism anymore?  It is nothing but confusion.  What is the proper interpretation of EENS?  Or predestination?  Some traditional Catholics say saints might be in hell and Fatima is a demonic hoax.  Novus Ordo theologians ponder the "Eucharistic" quality of gay sex.  If I wanted to know what Catholicism consists of, I would get a different answer from Catholic to Catholic.  Pope Francis is presumably the ultimate arbiter in all this, but does anyone want that crackpot having the final say?  The definition of "indefectible" has been changed to "able to defect, but simultaneously never to defect according to a promise."  One must either reconsider that promise or go in for a perverse fideism.

Not that the Orthodox don't have plenty of confusion themselves, just considerably less is all.  Even were I to accept Orthodoxy, however, I would always be picked up by a tsunami of doubt and tossed squarely back to agnosticism whenever I consider the problems of evolution and theodicy.  I am aware of the miracles.  All I can say is that the amount of reasonable doubt I have from evolution and theodicy is more than sufficient to overcome the miracle claims.  Hume's approach in his essay Of Miracles is sound.  It would require a separate thread, but if you think evolution and the problem of suffering can be swiftly overcome, then we might have it out there.  I predict that the pages will go into the double digits and no one will change their mind.  I would become an Orthodox Christian if, miracle of miracles, Vladimir Putin successfully invaded the United States and established Russian Orthodoxy as the state religion.  Privately I would remain agnostic, but I would more or less behave myself and not be an outright scoffer.  Attending the liturgy in a wood-hewn Russian Orthodox chapel with a bearded priest incensing the ikons would be a nice fit in these rural pinelands.  The ugly modern Protestant churches dotting the landscape around here are eyesores, and with the bishop's permission I would be content to destroy them.  I would be like that Early Church saint who went around burning down the pagan temples.

[Kreuzritter]

It's not electing to follow God's "rules" because you intellectually acknowledge him as sovereign, which isn't even a logical necessity of that acknowledgment.  Just ask Lucifer. It's loving God and neighbour out of vital necessity by the divinity dwelling within and ones ever-deepening union with it.

You're always thinking in terms of obedience demanded by authority, lists of rules, and the knowledge of the intellect. This is Satanism, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the Law that cannot save.

Sorry if I'm just not understanding, or if you've already covered this, but how does this work exactly? Would you agree with my paraphrase?:
Knowledge is irrelevant. Man cannot know right from wrong. So each man ought to do (or, each man is compelled to do?) whatever he desires to do. If his desires are good then he will live a good life, but if his desires are bad then he will live a bad life. Man's natural desires are always bad, so men typically live bad lives offensive to God. But God chooses some people and replaces their bad desires with good desires. Consequently, those men do what they desire to do, and live good lives which are pleasing to God.

No. No on every count.

Knowledge is irrelevant.

No. I'm distinguishing betweent he immediate knowledge of the heart and the intellectual knowledge of concepts that is arrived at through deriving it by a process of reason.

Man cannot know right from wrong.

Depends what that means. Man can know the natures of good and evil. But he can't derive an "ought" and an "ought not", absolutely, from reason.

So each man ought to do (or, each man is compelled to do?) whatever he desires to do.

There's no absolute "ought", or I don't know what such a thing supposed to mean. For a man to undergo theosis and attain the Beatific Vision, it is necessary that he have good in his heart and do what is in the divine will. In that sense, one could say that a man who wants Heaven ought to do good. It is also true that God is the force of good and desires Heaven for every man, and in both senses he commands that good be done, and so in this case one can say that man "ought" to do good if meant in the sense that God demands it of us.

Each man will in fact do whatever he wills to do. The only compulsion is out of himself, from an internal necessity, not an external imposition. But this is not a desire of the material body or soul; it is the consequence of a spiritual act.

If his desires are good then he will live a good life, but if his desires are bad then he will live a bad life.

If we are talking about the internal spiritual will, yes. If we are talking about the, from my perspective external, desires of the material body and soul, then no; even the good man has to conquer these to live a good life.

Man's natural desires are always bad, so men typically live bad lives offensive to God.

No. Man's desires, in any sense, are not always bad. But there will always be bad desires in his fallen state.

But God chooses some people and replaces their bad desires with good desires.

God chooses whoever will cooperate with his grace, and the result is given.

Consequently, those men do what they desire to do, and live good lives which are pleasing to God.

Yes, but it's not an abritrary choice, and it's not without cooperation.

God "damns" people who don't have goodness in their heart and refuse to act on the work of the law that is written onto it; because that's what damnation is. This is why there's no such thing as "ingorance" of what is moral, "ignorance" of what the good "demands"; because people know the nature of their actions, and they choose those which are after their heart.

I'm not sure I follow. What exactly do you mean by "people know the nature of their actions"?

I mean that things are what they are, that actions and the phenomena they involve have an essential nature and and intrinsic meaning. A person in possession of his wits knows what it means to torture and kill a child; he knows the spirit of the act, and he will encounter and know the demonic evil that will be invoked in committing it, from which he will either recoil in aborrence or revel in if he is wicked. That is an extreme example, but it is no less true of other evils.  It's totally inconsequential to whether I am acting in good or bad will, when it comes to something that is intrinsically evil in nature, that I know whether or not some authority I call "God" forbids it. Someone who chooses what is evil has evil in his heart, and that's that.