Christians like to invoke Pascal's Wager and say that if they are right and their god exists they have won everything and that if nonthing exists beyond this world they have lost nothing. In essence they ask non-christians "what if you're wrong?" In my own case, I will at least know that I refused to serve an evil being. But they are applying a false dichotomy. It is not necessarily the case that one or the other of those two considerations is true.
What if, after this life, we are judged by a being other than the christian god? What if the christian god is considered such a dangerous monster that all his followers are exiled -- for the well-being of the general spiritual population? What consolation do you have if you find that you lost such a bet that you thought you could not lose? I don't see how you could object that that would be unfair treatment. After all, you openly assert that you "deserve" hell.
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3 comments:
Why do you consider God to be such a monster - I sincerely ask for an answer.
Depends, which God(s) and whose interpretation. Of course someone who unquestioningly believes in a personal god can always fall back on the excuse that we do not know God's plan as mere mortals. According to that belief the mandates of the Old Testament God (killing of innocents or killing and torturing for relatively minor transgressions) or interpretations of Qu'ran which allow its followers to kill innocents can be shoved under the rug of greater plan. Under such mandate of "morality", believers learn the following lessons: (1) horrible deeds are OK as long as one can interpret the scriptures as justifying them (and if you're the believer wanting to commit something, that is easily done given the ambiguity of religious texts)(2) it's OK to be a victim and do nothing about it because it's all part of the divine plan, which often enables further victimization of others. Of course if its YOUR God he's never a monster he appears to Other. Or don't you think Mars was a monster?
Webster Hunt:
There may well be a god who is not a monster. However, the christian god, who supposedly flooded the world and commanded genocide and other assorted actions, would be a monster because of those actions. An edict of "leave nothing that breathes," does not give the impression of goodness.
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