Originally Posted by Clintone
Our only hope is a god who rewards based on works, rewards everyone equally, or who doesn't exist or doesn't concern itself with the fate of humanity, or who is not-all powerful or all-knowing. Here's why that's the case.
*I think a completely just God can't exist in our universe, unless it's not all-powerful, or all-knowing because no matter how many afterlife rewards there are, people and other feeling life forms will forever have gone through unnecessary bits of hell. No matter how many trillions of years Bob from the medieval ages lives for in the afterlife, Bob will forevermore have had to choose between caring for his wife who had the bubonic plague and risking getting it himself, or leaving her in solitude during her last moments. That will eternally be a totally unnecessary experience.
*However, a God could still exist that pays attention to ethics enough that it's behaviors would be predictable for humans. I don't think it could be an omnibenevolent God...unless its power has limits. Our universe is too messed up for an omnibenevolent God to be in control of it. However, we might still be able to anticipate how to please it in ways that make our own consciences feel at ease. The traits of these versions of Gods I'll call not perfect, but halfway decent, might be the following:
#1. An all-powerful God who rewards everyone equally, due to the view that we're all basically clockwork created by our genetics and how those genetics interact with our environment, and the worst people in the world just got unlucky (or lucky? (for some of the thieves and con-artists and such)) depending on their genetics. So, I'd go to the afterlife alongside Norman Borlaug, Nelson Mandela, Osama bin Laden, Joseph Stalin, and Britney Spears. However, perhaps Osama bin Laden and Joseph Stalin have their eyes opened and are shown something that teaches them some kind of empathy, and that way we can all get along.
#2. An all-powerful God who rewards based on works. The more you assist your fellow life forms to just kind of feel better throughout life, the more of a reward you get. I really wouldn't see this God as being as fair as the previous God, because while we do have free will...that free will is just the product of our genetics and environment. There is no need (or sense) in punishing behaviors that don't result in improved behaviors, so if we aren't sure the afterlife exists, these afterlife rewards don't improve our behavior and therefore this God is behaving in a pointless and rather unfair fashion, I'd argue. The most just God possible would want the worst people possible to achieve the same rewards as the best people, in the afterlife. (now, it might not want the better people to know that the worst people are getting equal afterlife rewards as them, because they'd get ticked off...but it would want everyone rewarded equally). Still...such a God would have a code of ethics we can relate to, and we'd have reason to trust that what it tells us at least stands a pretty decent chance of being true (imagine it speaks directly in our minds...or as a booming voice that tells its wishes that rolls through the skies one day, or something). The point is, this God has an understandable code of ethics it wants others to follow, and because its desires all appear to be rooted in behaviors that assist feeling life, there would be no obvious motivation for it to be lying, so I'd say it'd be worth following its advice.
#3. An uncaring God - this God doesn't give people any compensation for the bubonic plague and similar terrors. However, I don't think the others are perfectly fair either, so it's just a matter of degree. Life is a mixture of pros and cons. You could look at it like such a God both helps, and harms people through existence, and it's up for debate whether existence is overall a good or bad thing, and that'll probably depend largely on individual perspectives. This God would not provide an afterlife, or Karma. It doesn't go out of its way to harm us. It just kind of lets nature do its thing, so there's no reason to believe it would go out of its way to harm us in the future. There wouldn't be any way to please this God though...but we can get stuff done ourselves as we've always done.
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So those are the halfway decent Gods, and the omnibenevolent God is also out there, in some alternate universe filled with rainbows and unicorns, in which the worst sicknesses you can get involve mild itchiness, and small amounts of unpleasantness exist here and there just to keep people from getting bored.
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And now comes the bad hypothetical Gods...the Gods that we have no reason to trust, because they clearly don't care about us or anything resembling ethics, and therefore if we choose to do exactly what they tell us to do, for all we know they're just lying to us to confuse us for their amusement:
Bad God #1: The pure maltheist God. This God views us like little ants it wants to fry with a magnifying glass. It doesn't bother to think about ethics. It's just intrigued by frying us with its magnifying glass. It probably invented the Bubonic plague for the same reason that people play Grand Theft Auto, and wander around hitting pedestrians with baseball bats and running over prostitutes with their car, in that game. The difference, of course, is that the pedestrians in Grand Theft auto lack sentience or pain receptors, which would be totally irrelevant to the pure maltheist God.
Bad God #2: The God that imposes rules that have nothing whatsoever to do with ethics of any kind, and that people have no proof of the existence of, and claims to punish people for not following these rules, so whether they'll be punished or not for following these rules is purely chance...even if the God is telling the truth (because we can't prove it exists).
Now, this second God is really what I want this thread to focus on. It's the reason I made this thread...and here's the important thing to consider about this second God:
IF A GOD IS WILLING TO PUNISH PEOPLE FOR BEHAVIOR THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ETHICS (SUCH AS LACKING A BELIEF IN A BEING WHOSE EXISTENCE IS IMPOSSIBLE TO PROVE) THAT GOD CLEARLY DOESN'T CARE ABOUT ANYTHING A HUMAN MIGHT SEE AS RESEMBLING ETHICS...AND THEREFORE WE HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO REASON TO BELIEVE THAT THIS GOD IS NOT MERELY LYING TO PEOPLE. FOR ALL WE KNOW, IT MIGHT PUNISH PEOPLE WHO DO WHAT IT SAYS, AND BELIEVE IN IT, MORE THAN PEOPLE WHO DON'T.
Furthermore...there could, actually, be a motive that DOES involve human-like ethics for a God to punish people who blindly do what it tells them to more than people who don't, in some circumstances.
Let's go back to that God in the "halfway decent God" category - the halfway decent God #2 who rewards based on works, who gives people more rewards when they assist their fellow life forms to live more pleasant lives in general. Let's imagine that's the God who exists. It doesn't just want to reward the people it views as good, who help other people oftentimes. It wants to punish the bad people, who harm other people oftentimes.
Let's imagine, in order to better figure out who is a "bad" person and who is a "good" person, this God sends out various tests into the world. Some of these "tests" could come in the form of religions.
Perhaps, if you translate these religions in a manner that leads to you assisting your fellow life forms, or if you ignore these religions and contemplate what will help feeling life the most, you'll be rewarded.
However, perhaps if you just blindly follow whatever holy text you find most appealing in a manner that harms others, you'll be punished.
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Therefore, if a God truly exists that claims to reward and punish based on belief in itself, given that its existence can't be proven, we're best off treating that God as if it's a purely maltheistic God and ignoring everything it says, because it clearly pays no attention to ethics so we have no reason to trust it, and, if that seems to be the case, our best hope would be that, in actuality, that God is the halfway-decent God #2. who is a better guy than he seems, who is just trying to tempt people into sinning, by trying to frighten people into doing what an unjust God tells them to do, even if it harms feeling life.
So, for example, in the Bible, when Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son Isaac, perhaps this sort of thing could have been a test of halfway decent God #2...a test which, perhaps Isaac failed through doing what he was told rather than refusing to harm a living being in a seemingly pointless way.
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Therefore, we're all best off just kind of relaxing and following our consciences, or maybe researching to find truth...but just following rules because a holy text tells us too isn't going to give us any kind of afterlife advantage if those rules are not rooted in something resembling ethics...ethics that assist feeling life in some way.
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I figure that's yet another one of those anti-Pascal's wager arguments. If God is going to punish you for nonbelief, you're screwed no matter what, because it doesn't have any reason not to punish the believers too, because such a being shows no signs of being concerned about ethics anyway. However, if you try to see reality clearly, or your beliefs are relatively harmless, there could be a motive for a God who is interested in ethics to reward you.
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So, either the God doesn't exist or doesn't care about living beings (or is not all powerful), or else it's a lot like one of the monsters written about by H.P. Lovecraft, or it's going to be interested in human ethics. There really isn't much room for a God who just says, "Do what I say and you'll be rewarded. Kill your son, Abraham," who we have much reason to believe will be on our side in any way. Gods like that are probably going to be more along the lines of the Lovecraftian monsters route.
Any supposed "God" who tells you to kill your son is a lot more likely to be something like Shub-Niggurath craving human flesh in order to feed her dark brood, whispering Machiavelian temptations into your mind, than it is likely to be a paternal, loving figure...and this should be a lot more obvious than it is, because in just about every horror story that involves ghosts, there are Machiavellian spirits whispering temptations to people (see Jack Nicholson's character in "The Shining") and the ghosts are never, ever, the good guys, and all of them probably would have sounded exactly like the supposed "Lord" (a.k.a. Cthulu or Azathoth or one of the terrible Old Ones destined to awaken and devour humanity at some point, in Lovecraft's stories) probably would have sounded like to Abraham.
I'd have thought horror stories and sci-fi would have driven this message into humanity's brains thousands of times by now. NEVER DO WHAT THE GHOSTLY WHISPERS TELL YOU TO DO, WHEN IT INVOLVES PHYSICALLY INJURING ANOTHER PERSON.
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There is no hope if a God rewards and punishes based on belief in itself
