Wager in the face of doubt: there is a God

  So on one hand we have the irrepressible, witty and very likable Christopher Hitchens facing a vicious cancer that is claiming his life, and who seems to take great delight in vigorously mocking Mother Teresa (who suffered her own doubts, as do we all). Hitchens thinks religion and faith are foolish, inconsequential wastes of time and brain.
  Hitchens is facing his malignancy in his own way, gently scorning the faithful's prayers and noting at the same time that not all Christians have love in their hearts. 
  What Christian, after all, would write this anonymously on a message board, as quoted in Hitchens' Vanity Fair piece found here:

Who else feels Christopher Hitchens getting terminal throat cancer [sic] was God’s revenge for him using his voice to blaspheme him? Atheists like to ignore FACTS. They like to act like everything is a “coincidence”. Really? It’s just a “coincidence” [that] out of any part of his body, Christopher Hitchens got cancer in the one part of his body he used for blasphemy? Yea, keep believing that Atheists. He’s going to writhe in agony and pain and wither away to nothing and then die a horrible agonizing death, and THEN comes the real fun, when he’s sent to HELLFIRE forever to be tortured and set afire.

  (Note to anonymous poster: The rain falls on the just and the unjust. Think about that when you get your diagnosis.) 
  Now Stephen Hawking, for years admired for his intellect and broad knowledge, writes that in no way was God involved in the creation beginning of the universe, whenever that was.
  The churches, sensing their hold on the argument weakened by such a remarkable critic, have countenanced arguments. Over at CNN:

Religious leaders in Britain on Friday hit back at claims by leading physicist Stephen Hawking that God had no role in the creation of the universe.

In his new book "The Grand Design," Britain's most famous scientist says that given the existence of gravity, "the universe can and will create itself from nothing," according to an excerpt published in The Times of London.

  (Note #2 from Dictionary.com, the meaning of the word create: to cause to come into being, as something unique that  would not naturally evolve or that is not made by ordinary processes. Perhaps Mr. Hawking needs to use a different word when he writes: "Spontaneous creation is the reason why there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.")
  Admittedly Hawking has been sort of off the reservation the last few years, with his pronouncements that we might need to go to outer space to survive and speculation about aliens, but his widely respected intellect wields a formidable impact on public thinking.
  Huh.
  Might I, with my much smaller-than-Hawking brain, suggest that even really smart guys aren't always right. (This over confidence seems to be a pit into which really smart people fall, with regularity.)
  During those years so long ago during which many of us believed hanging witches would solve evil, the church held great sway over our behavior as a nation.
  Enlightenment writing and thought encouraged our forefathers to move away from superstition to choose a democratic form of government, independence from previously established hierarchies and protection of religious freedom rather than a dependence on religious authorities to determine right and wrong. 
  You can rage against it and try to revise history all you like, but western civilization is based on Judeo-Christian and biblical principles.
  Hawking, Hitchens and their ilk can say and write what they want. 
  They can flail against the idea of a God Who Is There. 
  They can scorn God's creation abilities, even while they seek for alternate explanations in science. (Not all smart guys disavow God and His influence in the universe.)
  The Enlightenment encouraged our puny brains to challenge the deity, both conceptually and intellectually.
  This we have done, enthusiastically and with great pride, many of us never looking back.
  Yet it cannot be overlooked that much of what we believe in this life, whether solid or spiritual, is based on faith.
  We have faith that the sun will rise, that both good and bad will happen and the population will continue to increase and inhabit the earth. 
  Some men believe in global warming so passionately  (the handsome MSNBC anchor descriptor) that they are willing to kill. 
  Some believe man's influence on the Mother Earth is negative.
  But those of us who believe also have faith that the universe is itself governed, not by chaos, but a Force that has far more intelligence than the puny humans who shake their fists at the heavens.
  We have faith that the wondrous works of nature we see daily are rooted in purpose and determination, not chance, although whimsy cannot be excluded, given a puppy's frolics and the puff of a dandelion.
  We have faith that, when we look into the deep blue expanse that is the sky, somewhere beyond its blueness exists a Being who cared enough to spark our lives and who will receive us again one day when the cancer or the disease or the years claim us.
  We have faith that this is not really all there is.
  And a belief that even the hardest smartest hearts can be melted by an unreplicate-able amazing grace.

Newton wrote the words from personal experience. He grew up without any particular religious conviction but his life's path was formed by a variety of twists and coincidences that were often put into motion by his recalcitrant insubordination. He was pressed into the Royal Navy and became a sailor, eventually participating in the slave trade. One night a terrible storm battered his vessel so severely that he became frightened enough to call out to God for mercy, a moment that marked the beginning of his spiritual conversion. His career in slave trading lasted a few years more until he quit going to sea altogether and began studying theology.

  We press on, undeterred by the critics and non-believers, for we know that, though not perfect, we seek to "take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of [us]."
  In each of us, skeptic or saint, Blaise Pascal (a really smart guy) claimed 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."
  Each of us runs the race in a different way, taking different paths and facing different obstacles. Though some may come to peace with the belief that there is no God, no Redeemer, no Saviour or Lover of our Souls, for myself, I choose Pascal's Wager.
  Everything to gain. Nothing to lose.
  And happy, to boot.
  Who's not to love?