Three Wise Men... Three Wise Statements

I’m just finishing up the book Is Belief in God Good, Bad or Irrelevant? A Professor and a Punk Rocker Discuss Science, Religion, Naturalism and Christianity edited by Preston Jones. Boy, is it packed with things I could talk about for months. It’s opening my eyes more to the depth of an atheists beliefs… and although I completely disagree and much of the arguments make me want to pull my hair out… I do respect their view and can understand why they’ve come to the conclusions they have. Anyway, I just read the following three statements and I had to repeat them here:

“Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.” Blaise Pascal, mathematician and philosopher (1669)

“Help me, Lord, to discern and to understand whether it is better first to call upon you or to praise you, or whether it is better first to know you before calling upon you.” Augustine, church father, Confessions (A.D. 397)

“Believing that there is not a god, you have as little evidence for that as you do for believing there is a god. You have no evidence for either… You can’t answer the questions except by the act of faith, and if it’s an act of faith, it’s just as much an act of faith as saying there’s no god as saying there is a god.” John M. Thoday, geneticist (2003)