Interesting.
I've got sort of an anti-Pascal's wager.
If God exists, and is a god of love, then he won't be too torn up over me using my reason and logic observing death, sickness, tragedy, and the inherent brutality and arbitrariness of nature, and coming to the conclusion that he does not exist.
If he is truly evil, judging his creation harshly behind the facade of "love", then why would I choose to serve him?
If he doesn't exist, then I won't have wasted my life clinging on to false hopes.
I'd say that's worth a lot.
Of course you can take a reversed approach, but my question would be what do you personally give up by belief in God or following religious teachings?
I can honestly say there hasn't been one sacrifice in my life that I've had to make for my religious beliefs that didn't enrich my life.
I personally think from my experiences my life has been enriched following religious tenants. In fact, the times when my life wasn't going well was when I was deviating from the teachings of my faith.
Regardless of a belief in God or not there is such great truth in many religious teachings that help us to live better lives. And living in such a way is more indicative of moral character than professing belief.
In my religion we aren't even supposed to mention who is going to Hell or Heaven and Gentiles or nonbelievers who don't believe but act in what we call righteous ways are to be praised instead of shunned or castigated. But that's not the popular Christianity ur gonna find in ur everyday pulpit brothel. But that's another story.
So yeah I could do whatever I want in life. Live a life of excess, glutton, murder, lies, lust and wrath. I could be selfish and lock myself away. I could be overly judgemental and self righteous condemning people to hell at every turn.
Or I could be an honest person who treats people the way I want to be treated, who finds beauty in the miracle of life and believes that there is far more to life than what my empirical senses can pick up.
If I lived that great of a life and die and there is absolutely nothing on the other side, I still will have won because of the richness of the life I lived based on the wisdom I learned from my religious teachings.
But if I lived the opposite life even if there's nothing on the opposite side, Ive still lost out on so much. Because whether u wanna believe in God or not, lol, the wages of sin is still death. Overeating will still lead to a severely limited quality of life and in many cases, premature death. Excessive lust has led to many deaths. Wrath still results in death.
And so on. So you will have wasted ur entire life and even shortened it in many cases, all because you wanna rebel against an ideas associated with a divine being you think is imaginary anyway? Lmao!
It's like cutting your nose off to spite ur face. Lmao!
Even if you don't believe in God, live a Christian life and I think ur just as good as any believer...
In fact Paul talks about non-believers shaming the Christian community and how God recognizes that. But like I said, we don't wanna talk about true religion.
My bad, lemme get back to my hell mongering...
Heathen!!!! You goin to hell! Infidel!
Smh.