Pascal's birds: Signs and significance in nature*

Abstract

I address a puzzle in Pascal's Pensées. While Pascal emphasized that God is hidden, he also seemed to think that signs of God are everywhere in nature. How does he reconcile these two claims? I offer a novel solution which emphasizes the role of love and what I call “second‐personal” significance, and which results in a distinctively Pascalian account of religious experience of nature. By distinguishing implication from various senses of ‘proof’, I explain why, though deeply significant, such experiences cannot play the role of proving God's existence, and how they are compatible with God's hiddenness. Neither theism nor atheism is assumed by this account.