"Your're so vain" - A song about God?

[David Sklansky]

[ QUOTE ]
Let's say you do not believe in the existance of God, but you follow all the rules except the one that you should believe in God. In case you were wrong in your assumption, why should God punish you for it?

You were a good person and treated others well and isn't that what God really wants? Why should he bother about the rest?

[/ QUOTE ]

The answer is ridiculously obvious. As long as you don't presuppose the truth of the New Testament. If there is a just God, he wants people to be "good" and realizes that no one can be perfect. If this God gives out rewards and punishments it will be correlated with the good and bad that was done. Perhaps there would be extra credit if the good was done late in life (so that a person who did bad most of his life would have more incentive to make up for his bad deeds, whearas he would have no hope without that extra credit. Still those who screwed up mightily for most of their life are in big trouble.) But for the most part, the good and bad would be weighed and justice meted out accordingly.

The problem with the above is that most people would fare badly under the scheme. Perhaps 90% or more of humans, when examined closely, not only don't reach perfection, but don't even get halfway there. So they desperately needed an excuse to stray from this philosophy (a philosophy which I think is basically what Jews believe) to give themselves a better chance.

The newer philosophy is not that you need to be more good than bad to get into heaven, but rather that you believe. And not just in God. You must also believe a modern story about him. That allows all of the scum a chance to get into heaven. That's bad enough. But it is not the sickening part of the belief. The sickening part is that in order for this theory to make sense to the common man, it must, along with giving scum (ie those who have lived the vast majority of their life differently than a just benevelant God wants them to) hope, it must detract from those five or ten percent of people who generally have pleased God, (if he exists.)

It appears that some Catholics shy away from this interpretation, even if they are not following the New Testament perfectly when they do. In other words they think that those who are especially pleasing to God need not believe some specific story to be "saved". But that Catholic interpretation is not pleasing to the scum (which probably includes me by the way). Because it makes them feel better about themselves if they believe that everybody is unworthy of heaven. Rather than merely 90%. So they came up with this nonsense that describes a just God as expecting perfection and putting everyone who doesn't achieve that, in the same boat. When you see the number of drug addicts, prisoners, lazy bums, etc etc who subscribe to this idea, it becomes clear that the strong psychological incentive for all these people was most likely the reason the idea came about and has perpetuated so easily.

[chezlaw]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Let's say you do not believe in the existance of God, but you follow all the rules except the one that you should believe in God. In case you were wrong in your assumption, why should God punish you for it?

You were a good person and treated others well and isn't that what God really wants? Why should he bother about the rest?

[/ QUOTE ]

The answer is ridiculously obvious. As long as you don't presuppose the truth of the New Testament. If there is a just God, he wants people to be "good" and realizes that no one can be perfect. If this God gives out rewards and punishments it will be correlated with the good and bad that was done. Perhaps there would be extra credit if the good was done late in life (so that a person who did bad most of his life would have more incentive to make up for his bad deeds, whearas he would have no hope without that extra credit. Still those who screwed up mightily for most of their life are in big trouble.) But for the most part, the good and bad would be weighed and justice meted out accordingly.

The problem with the above is that most people would fare badly under the scheme. Perhaps 90% or more of humans, when examined closely, not only don't reach perfection, but don't even get halfway there. So they desperately needed an excuse to stray from this philosophy (a philosophy which I think is basically what Jews believe) to give themselves a better chance.

The newer philosophy is not that you need to be more good than bad to get into heaven, but rather that you believe. And not just in God. You must also believe a modern story about him. That allows all of the scum a chance to get into heaven. That's bad enough. But it is not the sickening part of the belief. The sickening part is that in order for this theory to make sense to the common man, it must, along with giving scum (ie those who have lived the vast majority of their life differently than a just benevelant God wants them to) hope, it must detract from those five or ten percent of people who generally have pleased God, (if he exists.)

It appears that some Catholics shy away from this interpretation, even if they are not following the New Testament perfectly when they do. In other words they think that those who are especially pleasing to God need not believe some specific story to be "saved". But that Catholic interpretation is not pleasing to the scum (which probably includes me by the way). Because it makes them feel better about themselves if they believe that everybody is unworthy of heaven. Rather than merely 90%. So they came up with this nonsense that describes a just God as expecting perfection and putting everyone who doesn't achieve that, in the same boat. When you see the number of drug addicts, prisoners, lazy bums, etc etc who subscribe to this idea, it becomes clear that the strong psychological incentive for all these people was most likely the reason the idea came about and has perpetuated so easily.

[/ QUOTE ]
Seems like the obviously correct answer and it is so much more ridiculously more correct than the 'belief matters' brigade.

Its not at all obvious why god is doing all this handing out of punishment and rewards though. Seems a very simplistic idea when it requires the punishment of harm when god shouldn't allow the innocent to be harmed in the first place and if it turn out that no significant harm has been done then why the punishment? Also, its a peculiarly naive idea that this blink of an eye life determines our eternal fate. Its the same sort of naive idea as the earth being the center of the universe.

chez

[jsbjoe]

OP: quit trying to be logical

just stop it

[Max Raker]

It seems that believing in reincarnation would fix all of these problems. Any wrong that you commit in this life could be payed for in a different life. Somebody like Hitler would have a bunch of crappy lives but eventually get into heaven because God loves him. Not that their is any evidence for reincarnation but their isn't any evidence of an afterlife anyway. Seems like if you want to believe in a God that is just and loving this is the only option.