The problem, first posed by an Italian monk in the late 1400s, had remained unsolved for nearly two hundred years. The issue in question was to decide how the stakes of a game of chance should be divided if that game were not completed for some reason. The example used in the original publication referred to a game of balla where six goals were required to win the game. If

A Biography on Blaise Pascal Blaise Pascal was born in France in the region of Auvergne in the town of Clermont-Ferrand in 1623. He came from a Catholic family, not surprising since France was known in the Middle Ages as the Eldest Daughter of the Church (Coulumbe, 2012). Religion, like science and math, was very important to Pascal and his family. Indeed, his father had expressed many of the same interests

Pascal's Gamble The human condition is one of suffering and redemption. One who does not suffer is not human. Death and the withering away of youth and vitality explicitly demonstrates the entropic nature of existence. This situation is problematic for the rationale mind. No universally accepted system of navigating the death sentence, known has human existence, has sufficiently explained the quandary. Blaise Pascal, the renowned 17th century mathematician and philosopher, in

Pascal & Giussani The Roman Catholic church is not generally considered doctrinally "broad," and indeed many of its most fascinating theological voices -- ranging from Pelagius in the fifth century to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., in the twentieth -- have often bordered on, or crossed over into, outright heresy. However, I wish to look at two explicitly Roman Catholic apologies for religious belief -- one written by an actual cleric,

All human beings are, however, impure and imperfect, which does not make it very difficult to rise above the rest in terms of self-perceived perfection. In comparison to God, however, this changes. The human being who is never dissatisfied with him- or herself, however, never becomes aware that there is a contrast to be made with God. This is what Calvin appears to mean by piety. People with true knowledge

Theology Pascal's projected apologia for Christian belief, for which the text of the Pensees offers some glimpse, would ultimately have reflected his sincere conversion (of sorts) to the gloomy Jansenist theology which hovers over his works generally. Ultimately rejected by the Roman Catholic church as heretical, Jansenism emphasized the fallen and corrupt nature of man in an Augustianian way, while at the same time suggesting that only God's grace can permit