trigs;382675 wroteGambling on God:
We all see examples of people all around the world that don’t regularly worship or follow their religious teachings. However, they still don’t give up their belief in God or gods. For example, they still baptize their children, arrange bar mitzvahs, have religious funerals, pray in times of need, etc.
These people have the same principles that underlie their behavior: it’s best to maintain a minimal commitment to God, just in case. It is a similar reasoning to purchasing insurance: it’s not a lot of time or effort, but it might save your soul.
This wager makes sense if there were only two possibilities like it suggests, but of course there aren’t. There are many gods to believe in. Christians believe that you must accept Jesus as your savior. So if you practice Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, Buddhism, Judaism, Confucianism, or any other religion, you still lose if Christ turns out to be the King of heaven.
The stakes are still the same: eternal damnation is one possible outcome of being wrong. However, you can’t insure against this highly probably eventuality because if you pick the wrong religion, you’re damned anyway.
Maybe you think that an all-loving God wouldn’t condemn people to hell for believing in the wrong religion. However, a God this kind and accepting would surely not damn atheists to eternal damnation either. The only God worth taking out insurance against is a fundamentalist one, and those policies are valid for one very specific deity only.
Also, it seems odd to think of a God who can see into our very souls would accept a belief based on such shallow and calculating self-interest. Perhaps over time you would genuinely come to believe and not just be going through the motions. However, God may still recognize the insincerity that motivated your belief and judge you accordingly.
Therefore, the gamble needs to be stated differently. Your choice is between believing in one particular vengeful and punishing God who commands belief in only one of the fundamentalist religions as opposed to the many more competing ones; or believing either that there is no God or that he is not so egotistical to demand that you believe in him before he’ll offer you the opportunity to redeem yourself. Even if you bet on a nasty God, there are many to choose from, each of which will be displeased that you chose someone else. This bet doesn’t have the best odds.
I thought you were a "Humans are intrinsically seeking power-over" guy?
First: I've been savoring your Philosophy thread for a few days. You're a brilliant writer, and I couldn't bear to risk the spoilers and jump ahead from the Big Mike capitalism debate to tell you. If we're all single scoops of hard, deep frozen, vanilla, you are a double scoop of Rocky Road at that perfect moment just before it melts...IN A GOD. DAMNED. WAFFLE. CONE!
I'm enjoying your thread immensely. Thanks!
Re: the above quoted
I feel as though your position is completely logical and almost above dissension in the vacuum it is presented in...
However, the reality is a much dirtier place. We can't ignore the benefits the religious receive from their actions. Vain superiority, assuaging feelings of weakness, impotence in life...and maybe even creating hope, altruism [you're a phil-guy, I'm using that word to troll ;)] or inner peace.