10.8.05

Who is Blaise Pascal?

Does anyone remember Blaise Pascal?

He was the French mathematican/physicist who, despite many mathematical discoveries, is probably most remembered for his work involving the pressure exerted by liquids and gases. In fact, the unit of Pressure - the Pascal (Pa) - is named after this man.

Anyway i was reading the other day that Pascal was quoted as saying "There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus". I didn't think too much about it at the time.

Then, today i was reading an article on climate change. Interesting, the consequences of society's response (or lack thereof) to the issue of climate change was compared to our response to God - as described by Pascal. The analysis offered by Pascal was referred to as 'Pascal's wager' and was described in the article as follows:

"Believe in God though he does not exist, Pascal argued, and you lose nothing in the end. Fail to believe when he does in fact exist, and you lose everything."
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PS. In researching the first quote, to make sure i remembered it correctly, i discovered a website of quotes which contains many other quotes of Pascal. The address for Pascal's quotes is http://en.thinkexist.com/quotes/blaise_pascal/

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