If the god sends me to hell for not believing in him after his followers were so cruel, then he is a tyrant and I want nothing to do with him. If he recognizes my goodness and doesn’t care whether I had faith in him or not… then it sure sounds like I don’t lose.
This is along the lines I think.
If the “God” that exists is the one that has allowed some of the absolute abhorrent acts of the world and condones the hate that some of his followers display then I don’t want to go to his idea of eternal heaven or whatever 🤷♀️
That’s what people don’t get. Threatening that you don’t get to go to the heaven of some guy you don’t agree with anyway is just not that threatening 😅🤷♀️ it’s like trying to threaten a vegan that they’re never going to be allowed to go to a steakhouse.
If basically any major religion’s god is real, we all lose. They’re all fucking giant assholes.
I’m not worshiping an asshole… unless its attached to someone hot.
unless the religions are gatekeeping the real knowledge behind their dogma and twisting it, so they can gain more secular power.
What’s wrong with Ganesh? He’s a pretty cool guy
Interestingly, the Christian God doesn’t care about your life, only about your soul. And whilst they say belief is the only way to him there’s an interesting thing most of these guys intentionally overlook.
If God is infact made of love, as so many claim, only those who are full of love truly believe. Now I ain’t saying atheists have more love in them than Christians, but I can say with A LOT of certainty that Christians aint got a lot of love atall
The phrase “there is no hate like Christian love” isn’t going away till the Christians do.
Pascal’s Wager. Just as ludicrous as it was last time someone posted it.
Gotta love Pascal’s mugger
If god were to be real I’d like to think that finite and cringe concepts like “do you love me because I killed myself for you? (Tick the according box)” would be so laughably far removed from the conversation that’s it’s not even up for consideration.
The supposed almighty creator, who resides over everything in existence itself,…. Spends it’s time worrying wether or not you touched yourself and why you didn’t believe in the santa guy from a book mostly used by evil conmen. Don’t make me laugh.
A long time ago, I had a friend bitching that people weren’t getting all dressed up at her church. I’ve always said that if God was real, they wouldn’t give a rats ass what people wore to church.
If there is a god, what’s the chance that you have the “correct” one of all the religions ever invented? If you go to hell for following the “wrong” religion your chance of going to hell is much higher than of hitting the jackpot.
Yep Ancient Egypt had it right with their religion. You die and Osiris says hi.
Filthy infidel! The only true god is the Eagle God, that nobody has thought about in 37.000 years!
HOW DARE YOU!! I will fight a holy war over this!
Have fun in Eagle Hell!
Heretic! The one true god is the Anteater God, that nobody has invented yet!
Dear Christian,
What if, after you die, you find out you’re dead, and you’ve wasted your precious time all along?
You lose.
p.s. your God is obsessed with foreskins, you lose either way.
What if, after you die, you find out you’re dead, and you’ve wasted your precious time all along?
I mean, what does it mean to “waste time” in this context? There’s a certain existential dread that comes with the mystery of death - really the mystery of consciousness generally speaking - and we all cope with it as best we can. I don’t think a ritualized means of managing one’s anxiety is time wasted. If your genuflections to a carving of a guy on a crucifix sooth your own anxieties of loss-of-self, more power to you.
But it does feel a bit like someone asking “What if you stepped on a crack and then it really did break your mother’s back?” I mean, that would be very scary and sad. I can’t see the correlation between these two things. I’m not going to painstakingly tip-toe down the sidewalk out of a concern I don’t take seriously.
I mean, what does it mean to “waste time” in this context?
Sitting in church, reading the Bible and Bible studies, praying to God, time spent working that is then tithed, etc. All totally worthless and time wasted.
worthless unless you genuinely enjoy it* though i cant imagine how anyone would truely want that.
Is the man sitting in church and reading from the Bible wasting his time any more or less than the man sitting in a field and contemplating the stars? In the end, they both amount to the same thing.
I feel like the whole concept of souls is just racism. Because for souls to have a concept of existence and value, some sort of identity between life and death must be, implying, basically, eugenics.
“This soul is better than this other soul” etc. An inherent superiority and inferiority, separate from our minds, insulated, even from logic.
Your idea about the concept of souls being rooted in racism is interesting. Although you lost me when you jumped from life and death as an identity to eugenics.
Eugenics is the final boss of racism. It all leads to that, every time.
All monotheistic religions are in a logic of us vs them.
You say monotheistic and it has me think. Ill never be religious… well, until we respect earth and its science, but uh, Im in favor of bringing back the old gods. Polytheistic is it?
Shower thought earlier: Humanity truly feels lost.
I’m not religious myself neither, but I could have a thing for animism maybe.
Pascals Wager was already stupid in the 17th century, it hasn’t really improved in the 350 years since then. Why do we need to rehash this still.
Pascals Wager was already stupid in the 17th century
The broad existential question was interesting. It’s part of a conversation about tail risks and cost-benefit calculations that you can apply to much more than just religion.
What I find more curious about Pascal’s Wager, from a theological perspective, is the logical consequence. Namely, that you’re obligated to find some kind of theological average between all known religious practices to maximize your own personal safety. And that theological average largely boils down to generic positive aphorisms -
- Do Unto Others
- Live Charitably
- Value Your Own Life And The Lives Of Others
- Reject Base Cravings
- Abhor Materialist Social Hierarchies
- Turn The Other Cheek
- Men Are More Important Than Women
- Slaughter A Live Animal To Appease Primal Forces
- Wash Your Asshole
- Remember That Old People Are Smarter Than You
Shit we should already know about and are inclined towards anyway. When you take a holistic view of religious studies, it peels away the pastiche and reveals the common truths of human existence. And Pascal’s Wager, as a thought experiment, helps navigate people to this point from an abstract logical framework.
“It’s easier to fool someone than to convince them that they’ve been fooled.”
People tend to develop biases when they are young and reinforce them when they get older.
If you cut across someone’s bias, they tend to see that as your attempt to trick them. And they fall back on a body of knowledge/experience that contradicts your efforts. If you encounter someone without bias, it is easy to seed a bias through presentation of slanted perspectives and cherry-picked information when you are their primary source of truth. But if your audience reflexively distrusts you, it is comparatively difficult to reshape their beliefs. You tend to have more luck playing on their distrust of you.
As an example, if you have someone who is racist and fearful of young, strong, black men, it is relatively difficult to tamp down that anxiety when around a person like this who they find intimidating. It is comically easy for a person that fits the description - but who is otherwise cheerful, passive, and pleasant - to intimidate the bigot with idle threats or make a fool of them by playing against their presumptions.
I think it falls under “those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it”. Each one thinking their the first to come up with this scenario (or act like it, after they saw it online, tv, movie…) likely doesn’t hold education (specifically history, philosophy, science, etc) in high regard.
But would either of you lose really. If god was real, and he punished you for not believing in him, is he the good guy or the bad guy. Sounds like the later. Which implies there is another who will reward you for just being a good person in general. So you wouldn’t lose.
The other option that is more likely if you assume god is omnipotent is that all of the religions are made up by humans. Same with all the rules. A real omnipotent god wouldn’t punish his own creation for doing what he created them to do. So again you don’t lose.
A real omnipotent god wouldn’t punish his own creation for doing what he created them to do
If you ever played a sims or rollercoaster game you know this ain’t true.
The concept of absolute forgiveness is terrifying to me. Rape, murder, and make people suffer with greed and corruption all you want … then say “Im sowwy about all that, forgive me” before you die and into Christian heaven you go. Fuck that. I want no part of that “heaven” … that is where pure evil will reign, it will be hell.
If I were evil and wanted to corrupt a bunch of religious idiots I would tell them that they didn’t have to be decent people, that they could just do what they wanted because a zombie god died for their sins. That would lead them to worship the wealthy and not care about their fellow humans, the suffering would be everywhere. Do you think that could work?
That comeback flipped the whole argument on itself. “You lose” has never backfired faster. 😂
What if, after you die, you find there is a god, but it’s of some long lost central African tribe that got wiped out by some conflict at the dawn of civilisation, and has been vengeful for over 8000 years?
If the christian god exists and the reward for serving him is eternal life in his presence, I will gladly accept the alternative.
"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
― Marcus Aurelius
Wow that’s way older than I realized!
I know right? Can’t believe it’s been 26 years since the Gladiator movie came out!!
26 years since the Gladiator movie came out
