The philosopher Pascal (1623–62; hunchback Jansenist author of the Pensées) had talked of a choice facing every Christian in a world unevenly divided between the horror of a universe without God and the blissful—but infinitely more remote—alternative that God did exist. Even though the odds were in favor of God’s not existing, Pascal argued that religious faith could still be justified because the joys of the slimmer probability so far outweighed the abomination of the larger one. And so it should perhaps be with love.
