Stuck Between Agnosticism and Christianity

[Archon_Wing]

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Wikipedia tells us that "hell" is described by all these religions:

2 Religious literature & views
2.1 Bahá'í Faith
2.2 Buddhism
2.3 Chinese religions
2.4 Christianity
2.5 Deism
2.6 Greek Mythology
2.7 Hinduism
2.8 Islam
2.9 Japanese religions
2.10 Judaism
2.11 Maya faith
2.12 Norse Mythology
2.13 Taoism
2.14 Unification Church
2.15 Zoroastrianism

So even if you could force yourself to believe in this Jesus character, you'd still be 14:1 against avoiding hell, on the unlikely (silly!) assumption that these are the only options.


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vnh sir! And to think of all the sects within them too. [img]/images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img]

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As I already pointed out, most of the religions on this list don't subscribe to a notion of hell that we would be at all familiar with. Most of them describe an afterlife of some sort however.

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That is true, but wouldn't you agree that with the potential of so many afterlifes that just focusing on one possibility might not be that productive?

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Of course. I was just trying to point out that believing in Christianity doesn't put you at risk for alternative forms of hell because there aren't really many alternative hells. So if you are the most scared of the Christian hell, perhaps it would make sense to bet on Christianity because the consequences aren't as bad if you got it wrong.


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But that seems to me that one would just pick the belief that resorts to the most scare tactics as opposed to a belief that may focus on more positive things. It doesn't seem very healthy for one's mental health.

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Then again, I think it's pretty silly to live your life in fear of a place that we have no evidence for other than ancient texts.

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I would think so too. But I suppose scare tactics can prevent people from doing bad things. It's like telling children that Santa will leave a lump of coal if they are bad. Not saying that's a good thing but that's how things often work. Then of course, we may be annoyed at people who do not murder or steal simply because the religion says its bad. (That is, they have no explanation on why something is bad besides the fact that the belief had such a prohibition) That might leads to the belief that atheists have no reason to not murder and steal. Of course, this isn't just a religion thing. I've heard enough of "Drugs are bad because they are illegal" that I just smile and say nothing.