"Wouldn't you rather live like there is a God"
Offline "Wouldn't you rather live like there is a God and find out there isn't than the other way around?"
That was a question asked on my college forum on myspace a few days ago. I just saw it today and wrote the following response. Anyone else have opinions?
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I LOVE it when people ask that question "wouldn't you rather live like there is a God and find out there isn't one?" It's so ignorant it's cute.
First let me point out a morality argument I have here. If you live a good life purely because you feel as though you will get rewarded by the big guy in the sky after you die, then you are (in my opinion) not being very moral.
If you live a good life because on a human, basic level it feels right, then you are being moral.
I mean, come on, that's like saying "I'm going to give starving children in Africa food so they can eat but only because I know I'll be on the front page of several world news papers because of it." Uh... anyone else see a problem here?
"If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul." ~Isaac Asimov, I. Asimov: A Memoir
Now, you have a right to believe whatever you want, but I must also point out that just because the issue of God itself is unprovable, there is a probability factor that I don't feel gets enough attention. I saw a joke yesterday where a father asked his son to ask his mother, sister and brother if they would sleep with Brad Pitt for 1 million dollars. The son went and asked them and then went back to the dad and
"The boy replied: "Yes. 'Potentially,' you and I are sitting on three million dollars, but 'realistically,' we're living with two hookers and a future Republican congressman.''
Potentially there is a God up there, watching everything I am doing, knowing every thought I possibly have before I even have it. He gets to choose (holy shit there is even a gender assigned to this person that is too big for most religions to even define fully) what happens to me after I die, and knows me better than I know myself and on and on the list goes. Oh, this God, who is bigger than definition, refuses (because it is personal choice, after all) to "prove" he exists.
Really cute.
I love the whole "free agency" argument too. If you DO what God tells you to do, then you get to go to heaven, but if you DON'T do what God tells you to do then you go to hell, which is a place that is defined by eternal fire and brimstone. It's horrible, awful and miserable. So you have free agency IF YOUR WILLING TO BURN.
The intellectual leap backwards astounds me.
I have studied religion and spirituality for a long time, and this isn't even good enough of an argument to be considered skimming the top of why I think that question is the most ignorant thing I've ever seen in a long time, but I will, however, sum my answer up in one last paragraph:
I prefer to live my life the way I choose to without having an emotional or moral crutch to support me, or tell me what to do. I don't need a 2,000 year old book which is filled with contradictions to make me feel "special" and I for sure don't need some intellectual gap defined as God in my consciousness to make me feel like a good human being. I am a good person because of the way I live my life, not because of what I believe in or don't believe in. I do not, have not, and never will need, or desire an undefinable, contradictory mind crutch to make my life worth living.
So wouldn't I rather live my life like there is a God and then find out that there isn't? No, and I never will.
Now, with the thought that I have probably pissed off, personally insulted and belittled most of the religious people on here, I need to go write a paper and get to class.
--Sarah--
Prayer: How to do nothing and feel like your doing something.
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If Christianity is true, God is a fucking asshole!
I agree with you.
You might like this article:
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/92/story_9263_1.html
Alan Dershowitz argues externally motivated behavior is not morality, but merely prudence. True morality is internally motivated. You'll see in the article that theists must act as if there ISN'T a god, to be moral.
Again, we agree. The reward for moral action is the action itself. The act that does some good for someone, feels good to the healthy person.
Here's something that might interest you as well: The catholic church agrees with Asimov.
Check out this interview with Monsignor Albacete:
http://meaningoflife.tv/?speaker=albacete&topic=death
"Over the years, this prerequisite for admission to heaven--believing that Christ died for your sins--has been a strong incentive to become or remain a Christian. But if God really loves humankind, shouldn't He let, say, a good Buddhist or Jew through the pearly gates? God goes further than that, says Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete in this clip from his meaningoflife.tv interview: even atheists are eligible for salvation. This radical reinterpretation of scripture, Albacete notes later in the interview, has now become official Catholic doctrine (unbeknownst even to many Catholics)."
So even well thought theists agree with your points.
Right - what you've described is coercion, not free will
You've only insulted the ignorant. And the insult stems from their own inabilty to comprehend your rational points. They have little choice but to lash out, like wounded animals
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
When I first tried to read the Old Testament all the way through (I think I was about 13), I remember getting sick at the thought of all those animal sacrifices. All those guts sliding around, and people burning things, what was the point? It was years later before a teacher explained to me that they did it so the rabbis would have something to eat (duh).
I just thought the atmosphere of being constantly afraid of God, as if he were a boogeyman hovering around waiting to kill you, was ridiculous, and it made me deathly afraid to think what it would have been like to grow up in the ancient world.
No, I would not like to live as if there were a god. I used to. It was frightening, confusing and sad.
Yes, if only to wage blasphemous war on him in Satan's armies.
An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.
My opinion is that I cannot believe that in this day and age, with all this information freely available to us, that someone would put what is effectively Pascal's wager up on a college messageboard.
Sapient posted a thread a while back about how many times people send him Pascal's Wager as if he's never heard it. And that he's getting sick of refuting it.
I would too. It's weird, people like to ask atheists these kind of things, yet they don't tend to look around to see if it's been addressed before. Like okno, and "okno's wager"....
It's kind of cute....
It calls to mind their definition of "better life", which I suppose means "heaven at the end", rather than "banning gays from marrying, calling atheists bad people, holding up signs of dead fetuses at rallies etc."....
That song is awesome!
" I RATHER LIVE AND FOLLOW GOD'S PATH TO FIND OUT HES NOT THERE THAN DIE TO REALIZE I WAS GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY TO GO TO HEAVEN, BUT BECAUSE I WAS NOT A PERSON OF GOOD CHARACTER, I'M NOT GOING TO HEAVEN".
GOD DIED TO SAVE OUR LIVES, WHY CAN'T WE LIVE FOR HIM? HOW HARD IS IT TO BE A PERSON OF GOOD CHARACTER, WHAT HARM DOES THAT MAKE TO ANOTHER PERSON? FOR EXAMPLE, A KIND WORD HERE AND THERE, PARTYING HEALTHY WITHOUT ALCOHOL " THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT MOST TEENAGERS DO" oR HAVING PREMATURE SEX WHICH CAN ONLY LEAD TO WORRIES OF BECOMING PREGNANT OR CONTRACTING A TRANSMITTED DISEASE!! GOD'S COMMANDMENTS, GODS WISE WORDS--ALL FOR YOU TO BECOME A PERSON OF GOOD CHARACTER. Many people these days put all there time and effort and chase illegitimate wants in which they think that those things are the key to happiness, but its not! It may bring pleasant pleasure instantly, but what about the future? So much focus in themselves leading to becoming self-centered. What about you neighbor--do you know what he is going through? Do you know your mothers needs? We are a generation that are to focused in ourselves forgetting that there are people out there that need your help. Blessed are those that need not see, but believe in God for he is our savior and just trully wants to be with you in heaven. My point in this is to simply comment that it is no harm to live our lives following Jesus-following his commandments and caring for our next door neighbor. Yes, I definitely prefer to live for Jesus because I know I will be at peace, my conscious will too. For when I die I can be at peace knowing that i contributed to this world and lived my life happy at peace. For when I die to realize there is not God? Well Fudge it, atleast I had a good time in the world. To realize there is a God? Glory be God! I will be with him happy forever; for a lifetime. I will actually be HAPPY or should I say EUPHORIC.
I pray that all evil diminishes, that every generation realizes that having a good character is essential and that he/she finds God is his/her life, because once you find God, he will be your strength in any struggle in your life and you will expirience true peace.
Susie 8/7/2010
VIVA DIOS!!! Y LAS PERSONAS QUE LO AMAN Y VIVEN POR EL!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Depending on the particular nature of the infinities involved, you may be able to generate the same expected payoff via a mixed strategy. Here's the payoff matrix typically assumed by theists in these arguments.
I won't go into the mathematics too much, but if the two infinities involved are appropriately alike (as in heaven is as infinitely good as hell is infinitely bad) or if heaven's infinity is "bigger" (the infinities are such that heaven + hell is still +inf) then you could use a mixed strategy. In fact, if heaven + hell = +inf, then you could use a mixed strategy where Theism has a 1 in a trillion trillion trillion trillion chance and you'll still have the same expected payoff as the pure-strategy theist. If the infinities are only "alike" then your mixed strategy would have to favor theism, though even a 50.000000000000000000000000001% chance for theism would net you a +inf result.
Questions for Theists:
http://silverskeptic.blogspot.com/2011/03/consistent-standards.html
I'm a bit of a lurker. Every now and then I will come out of my cave with a flurry of activity. Then the Ph.D. program calls and I must fall back to the shadows.
Another troll necroposts a thread all the way back to the top of the forum. We should like, make a script that prevents this sort of dumbfuckery...
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)