The Wager

In my early years, I was troubled by very little, though some questions continued to nag at me. One is, “How did I get here?” Or, “Why am I here in the first place?” Finally, there is my objection, uttered ever more weakly through the years, “I never asked to be here,” which left me with one more question: “So, what is it all about?” Fortunately, I came across Pascal. Many young skeptics are never fortunate enough to find Pascal. He supplied the initial answer to my question. The answer is God. I took Pascal’s famous wager and bet on God’s existence. Intriguingly, the famed skeptic George Jean Nathan, Mencken’s sidekick and a founder of the first American Spectator, also took Pascal’s wager toward the end of his life. He became a Catholic. Allegedly, George—ever the pleasure-seeker—did it because he “wanted to go to Heaven.” Or, as that mysterious woman said to Bob Novak at Syracuse University so many years ago: “Life is short, but eternity is forever.”