Another "What If" Thread

[Polycarp]

Everybody played along with the supposition that Jersey Diamond came up with, some weeks ago: What if the Rapture as envisioned by Left-Behind-style fundamentalists came to occur? What would your response to that event be?

Here’s another what-if thread along the same ilk:

Suppose that instead of the typographers’ space-filler here…

Dolor sit amet consectetur adipiscing elit sed diam. Nonummy nbili eius modem; tincidunt ut laore et dolore. Magna aliquam exercitation ullam corpore suscipit lobortis nisi ut aliquippa ex ea composterat.

…I had actually given you the evidence you needed to convince you that a (monotheistic, accept no substitutes, engaged in active godding) god exists, is interested in you particularly, and is in some way connected with the life, teachings, and doings of Jesus of Nazareth about 2000 years ago? This is the basic proposition of Christianity, but just for the sake of this thread, assume simply that much: He’s there, interested in you as a person, somehow worked in and through Jesus. For these purposes, we assume that one way or another, the gist of Jesus’s message was recorded in his own words (duly translated) in the four Gospels. No assumptions are made here about churches, Biblical inerrancy, Papal infallibility, Jonathan Edwards-style wrath of God, what is or is not sin, etc., other than the exact words Jesus may have had to say on the subject.

In short, I’m asking you to assume for this thread a very basic sort of Christianity, without accretions and interpretations, has been proven to your personal satisfaction, and then ask you:

How would this affect you? What if any changes would it make in your life?

I’d like to avoid the overall “proofs of God” question and its refutations, the “it can’t happen” sort of responses, the “the Bible says this” sort of witnessing, etc. Work with the assumption as given: whatever proof you personally would consider satisfactory has been given, and only about a very limited subset of dogma – just the existence of God and Him working through Jesus (along with enough evidence about what Jesus actually said to provide a basis for discussion). How’s it gonna affect you?

This is not (precisely) a witness thread – it’s more an investigation into how people incorporate their beliefs into their own daily lives. If it happens to move some people to accept my POV, cool! If not, it has a good humanistic purpose as well, as noted in the first sentence of this paragraph.

[Fenris]

*Originally posted by Polycarp *
**I’d like to avoid the overall “proofs of God” question and its refutations, the “it can’t happen” sort of responses, the “the Bible says this” sort of witnessing, etc. Work with the assumption as given: whatever proof you personally would consider satisfactory has been given, and only about a very limited subset of dogma – just the existence of God and Him working through Jesus (along with enough evidence about what Jesus actually said to provide a basis for discussion). How’s it gonna affect you?
**

Well, if I’m convinced that Christ is the only begotten Son of God, etc, and I’ve got objective proof, first and foremost I’m gonna do a whole lot of fast research on which “flavor” of Christianity I want to join, then convert, and convert fast. (I don’t know which flavor of Christianity I’d go for…possibly…th’ heck was C.S. Lewis…Anglican?) Frankly, I don’t know enough about which varient of Christianity believes what. I’d have to learn quickly: I don’t want to chance getting hit by a car or stung by killer bees if not saved, and at least some believe that you have to go through a ritual to be saved (water baptism, confession, etc).

In a way, Poly you’ve just pushed the question back a level. Before your proof, I didn’t belive in the divinity of Jesus. Now I do, but I have to figure out who’s interpretation is correct. And I better guess right: my soul may be at stake.

The next thing I’d do is to show/share the objective proof to my family/friends. Keep in mind that my two best friends are pretty strong athiests (as opposed to “weak athiests”) and showing the proof to my folks (fairly devout Jews) is going to be like tap-dancing in a mine-field. However, if it’s objective proof, they’ll be converted without too much agony.

I’m not sure what I’d do next. But the first few steps are covering my own butt (eternal damnation is not a pretty concept) and then helping my family/friends.

Fenris

[glee]

I’d like to think that I lead a decent sort of (agnostic) life already, so I don’t think it would be any problem to worship the God represented by Jesus.

Some things Jesus said that strike a massive chord with me:

• Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them

• how hard it is for them that trust in riches to enter into the Kingdom of God

• thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself

• a rich man shall hardly enter into the Kingdom of Heaven

[Mangetout]

I suppose a reasonable response would be to try to set up two-way communication with God, then ask [sub](Substitute suitable non-offensive generic term here>>)[/sub]HIM what I should do…

[Arnold_Winkelried]

I would find the Christian church that interprets God’s word in the most lenient and unobtrusive way possible (liberal Quakers or Unitarians would be a good choice) and keep on living exactly the way I do now.

[Arnold_Winkelried]

P.S. The reason I would find that church is because once in a while I would make an appearance so that god remembers me, and knows not to smite me or hit me with those big scary-looking wasps that I saw in a movie, when the end of times comes.

[Some_Guy]

If you saw my post in the other thread, you know what my answer will be here: even if I accepted the metaphysical underpinnings of Christianity as being absolutely true and factual, it’s a furher step from there to say that worshipping YHWH is a good thing. I’m familiar enough with my own thought processes to know that I could not worship any being as “above” me, and I certainly couldn’t tolerate paternalistic interference in my life from anyone, even if they had my absolute best interests at heart.

Conclusions:

1. I could not be a Christian, regardless of whether any God existed or not.

2. I happen to agree with some of the things was recorded as saying, just as I hold some beliefs that agree with Socrates, Buddha, Lao Tzu, and even Nietzsche. None of that implies that I accept their ethical system in full - In other words, I would reject being considered an “enlightened fellow traveller” just because YHWH and I agree on some points.

3. If I were in fact convinced that the Christian God existed, my entire interaction with him would consist of reminding him to please not interfere with my life.

[David_B]

Poly asked:

Suppose … I had actually given you the evidence you needed to convince you that a (monotheistic, accept no substitutes, engaged in active godding) god exists, is interested in you particularly, and is in some way connected with the life, teachings, and doings of Jesus of Nazareth about 2000 years ago?

That’s a rather tough call, I have to say. I don’t think that you could “provide” such evidence, as that is definitely something I’d need to experience and see first-hand (you know, dead rising from the grave and all )

Of course, if that were to actually happen, it’s kind of hard to think of what changes I’d make in my life because the whole world would pretty much be turned upside-down.

[edwino]

As glee, I try to lead a decent agnostic life. I feel that I respect my fellow person, I am quick to forgive and slow to wrath, and I try to follow all of the other central tenets that form the core beliefs of most religions out there. I do not murder, I try not to bear false witness, I respect my father and mother, and I try not to covet. The reason I do these things is not because of some threat of eternal damnation, nor do I look for a reward in the Kingdom of Heaven. In fact, I think it is rather selfish to be good to others only because you are promised a place in heaven. I think a omniscient God has better things to do than condemn us to eternal hellfires if we are a jerk. This is why I am agnostic – I can accept most of religion, but I see no need to make extraneous constructs of reward and punishment which don’t fit any physical observations.

Dolor sit amet consectetur adipiscing elit sed diam. Nonummy nbili eius modem; tincidunt ut laore et dolore. Magna aliquam exercitation ullam corpore suscipit lobortis nisi ut aliquippa ex ea composterat.

If I believed this, it would be a physical observation of the presence of God. Those extraneous constructs would now be neatly supported by data. If I believed the data, then I could accept God. Like any scientist, I would change my theories to fit the data. If my new theory was called “Christianity” and I arrived there by an evaluation of the data, I could easily live with myself.

[Zenster]

Not much would change in my life. I might use the word God instead of “good” more often. I might go to a Quaker church like I used to. I would still do all the good I do already, maybe in some different areas, that’s all.

[Triskadecamus]

Well, if I suddenly experienced something that made me believe that Jesus was real, and cared about me personally, in the present moment, I would . . .

Oh, wait, that already happened to me!

It didn’t make headlines. I was a whole different person on the inside, but it only changed who I was on the outside very slowly. It turns out that a whole lot of my life was not all that philosophical, but was rather pragmatic, and to be honest, habitual. I did change, in some ways, but that was mostly a one step at a time, and some steps over and over sort of transformation. It’s amazing how often you can kid yourself that God won’t notice. But of course I do notice, and I tell God everything. Keeping secrets from God, and reminding Him of things is just silly. That doesn’t mean I don’t still try both, of course.

So my serious and facetious answers are the same. I would not change my life all that much. But I would change some attitudes and opinions a lot. That would change me, eventually. You still might not notice, and I still might be a complete jerk.

Tris

John, Ch 21 Ver 27: “Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.” Jesus, to Thomas

[JonScribe]

If it were all proved … I wouldn’t be wasting my time with meaningless hypothetical questions.

Granted, there is a difference between proof and accepting something as truth. Little about such matters of faith can be “proved,” but that doesn’t mean I don’t accept some of this as truth. But my actions and beliefs are directed by my personal values, empathy for others and discernment of right and wrong, not out of some desire for self-preservation in the afterlife. Why, then, would I change?

[Abe]

If it were all proved… and since I am agnostic I would start by asking a couple of questions arising from incredible interest. Such as

“what were you thinking?”

“what are you going to do with the false religions?”

“What took you so long”

“Can you explain the Problem of Pain a little better than Lewis did?”

“Can we have an updated version of [insert religious text here] just to get everything straight?”

And so forth.

At no time would I feel required to worship him, by the way. I see no correlation between the existence of God and having to adore him, although some religions would tell me I am wrong.

[Morrison_s_Lament]

I’d be very very angry at myself, God and Jack Chick.

Let’s see, eternity in hell with the Prince of Darkness, the Morning Star, Lucifer himself…

Or eternity watching Jack Chick sitting at God’s right hand, smug as a motherf*cker…

Ehm… geee… lemme think… can I get back to ya?

— G. Raven

[malkavia]

Satan, easy.

I’d rather spend eternity with a figment of everyone elses imagination than an all too real Jack Chick. gets nauseous thinking about it

[JohnnyMustard]

This question reminds me of one of my favorite passages from the Brothers Karamazov.

I am a bug, and I recognize in all humility that I cannot understand why the world is arranged as it is. Men are themselves to blame, I suppose; they were given paradise, they wanted freedom, and stole fire from heaven, though they knew they would become unhappy, so there is no need to pity them. With my pitiful, earthly, Euclidian understanding, all I know is that there is suffering and that there are none guilty; that cause follows effect, simply and directly; that everything flows and finds its level - but that’s only Euclidian nonsense, I know that, and I can’t consent to live by it! What comfort is it to me that there are none guilty and that cause follows effect simply and directly, and that I know it - I must have justice, or I will destroy myself. And not just in some remote infinite time and space, but see it, and if I am dead by then, let me rise again, for if it all happens without me, it will be too unfair. Surely I haven’t suffered, simply that I, my crimes and my sufferings, may manure the soil of the future harmony for somebody else. I want to see with my own eyes the hind lie down with the lion and the victim rise up and embrace his murderer. I want to be there when everyone suddenly understands what it has all been for. All the religions of the world are built on this longing, and I am a believer. But then there are children, and what am I to do about them? That’s a question I can’t answer. For the hundredth time I repeat, there are numbers of questions, but I’ve only taken the children, because in their case what I mean is so unanswerably clear. Listen! If all must suffer to pay for the eternal harmony, what have children to do with it, tell me please? It’s beyond all comprehension why they should suffer, and why they should pay for the harmony. Why should they, too, furnish material to enrich the soil for the harmony of the future? I understand solidarity in sin among men. I understand solidarity in retribution, too; but there can be no such solidarity with children. And if it is really true that they must share responsibility for all their fathers’ crimes, such a truth is not of this world and beyond my comprehension. Some jester will say, perhaps, that the child would have grown up and have sinned, but you see he didn’t grow up, he was torn to pieces by the dogs, at eight years old. Oh, Alyosha, I am not blaspheming! I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the universe it will be, when everything in heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud: ‘Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed.’ When the mother embraces the fiend who threw her child to the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears, ‘Thou art just, O Lord!’ then, of course, the crown of knowledge will be reached and all will be made clear. But what pulls me up here is that I can’t accept that harmony. And while I am on earth, I make haste to take my own measures. You see, Alyosha, perhaps it may really happen that if I live to that moment, or rise again to see it, I, too, perhaps, may cry aloud with the rest, looking at the mother embracing the child’s torturer, ‘Thou art just, O Lord!’ but I don’t want to cry aloud then. While there is still time, I hasten to protect myself and so renounce the higher harmony altogether. It’s not worth the tears of that one tortured child who beat itself on the breast with its little fist and prayed in its stinking outhouse, with its unexpiated tears to ‘dear, kind, God!’ It’s not worth it, because those tears are unatoned for. They must be atoned for, or there can be no harmony. But how? How are you going to atone for them? Is it possible? By their being avenged? But what do I care for avenging them? What do I care for a hell for oppressors? What good can hell do, since those children have already been tortured? And what becomes of harmony, if there is hell? I want to forgive. I want to embrace. I don’t want more suffering. And if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price. I don’t want the mother to embrace the oppressor who threw her son to the dogs! She dare not forgive him! Let her forgive him for herself, if she will, let her forgive the torturer for the immeasurable suffering of her mother’s heart. But the sufferings of her tortured child she has no right to forgive; she dare not forgive the torturer, even if the child were to forgive him! And if that is so, if they dare not forgive, then what becomes of harmony? Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive? I don’t want harmony. From love for humanity, I don’t want it. I would rather be left with the unavenged suffering. I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if I were wrong. Besides, too high of price is asked for harmony; it’s beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as possible. And that I am doing. It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return Him the ticket.

Even if the Christian God were proven to my satisfaction to be the one, true, God, it would only leave me with more mental anguish and suffering. How can I, as Ivan Karamazov above, accept that a universe with so much suffering brought upon the innocent was created? For me, being a weak Atheist is more than just an acceptance of the evidence before me. How could I accept that God created this world, will all the horror and chaos before me?

Not much would change in my behavior if the Christian God were proven. I would still live according to what I believe is right. Better to constantly refine my own thoughts and beliefs pertaining to morality with study, than to accept the tenets of what seems to me to be a malevolant entity, even if the threat of an unyielding hell were before me. It is, as Alyosha called it, rebellion. But, it is the right thing to do.

[Typo_Negative]

He’s there, interested in you as a person, somehow worked in and through Jesus

I would need you to define ‘interested’.

If you were to define it as ‘loving’ or ‘caring’, it might well make a difference. It would probably take some time for me to get my mind around it.

If you were to define it as ‘counting up the sin tab and getting ready to bust out the whupping stick’, well then, I don’t think I would change much at all.

[RicoLaser]

If it was proven to me, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Christ was the Son of God and that he came to Earth and died for our sins, then frankly I’d be twice as confused as I am right now.

As of now, I believe in God, but not the God of the Bible. Not the God who tested Abraham by telling him to kill his son, or the God who condemns people to hell for the grand sin of daring to fall in love with a member of the same gender. I think all of that stuff is horrible, and if it was proven to me that THAT God was for real, I know exactly what I’d do. I’d spit in his face and get ready to spend eternity with Satan, who may not be the nicest fellow in the universe, but at least he understands the weaknesses of humanity and the concept of free will.

The problem is that this God I despise is primarily an inhabitant of the Old Testament. The God that Jesus speaks of is a truly loving God, and pretty much the primary thing Jesus tells us is what Polycarp told us to assume in the OP: He’s there, interested in you as a person, and worked through Jesus. That’s where I’d get confused. Okay, great, he worked through Jesus. But who the hell is he? Is this the same God from the Old Testament, or was that just a bunch of primitive crap? I don’t have enough information to decide whether to follow Jesus or not. And now this razor blade of damnation has just grown thinner, because I know for a FACT that heaven and hell exist, and one of them IS going to be my final destination. I can’t hide behind the concept of, “Well, I don’t know ANYTHING for a fact” anymore. I’d be tempted just to be safe and pledge my heart to Jesus, but would I truly be pledging my heart or just covering my bases? And would He know? And if He did, would it piss him off? To say nothing of the still-unanswered question of exactly who He is. I’m a stubborn guy … I’m not sure I’d pledge my allegiance to the God of the Old Testament, no matter what I knew or what my punishment would be. I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror if I knew I’d agreed to be guided by the laws of a God who I believe to be really and truly WRONG.

So I suppose I’d just curl up in a corner in the fetal position and freeze up. Have a spiritual panic attack. Then go to hell by default.

Sometimes knowing nothing is better than knowing just a little bit.

[Freyr]

**Polycarp wrote:

…I had actually given you the evidence you needed to convince you that a (monotheistic, accept no substitutes, engaged in active godding) god exists, is interested in you particularly, and is in some way connected with the life, teachings, and doings of Jesus of Nazareth about 2000 years ago? This is the basic proposition of Christianity, but just for the sake of this thread, assume simply that much: He’s there, interested in you as a person, somehow worked in and through Jesus. For these purposes, we assume that one way or another, the gist of Jesus’s message was recorded in his own words (duly translated) in the four Gospels. No assumptions are made here about churches, Biblical inerrancy, Papal infallibility, Jonathan Edwards-style wrath of God, what is or is not sin, etc., other than the exact words Jesus may have had to say on the subject.

In short, I’m asking you to assume for this thread a very basic sort of Christianity, without accretions and interpretations, has been proven to your personal satisfaction, and then ask you:

How would this affect you? What if any changes would it make in your life?**

Okay, there’s only one God, He speaks thru Jesus and Jesus only (as said be Jesus himself, I believe) and basically Christianity is the only True Religion.

A few quesions then:

1. Why are all the other false religions, especially Islam, allowed to exist? If other religions are false yet we can’t really know 'til after we die, doesn’t this mean that our souls are subject to some pathetic version of “Let’s Make a Deal” ?? I can’t tell which religion is right 'til after I die, then it’s too late. Are these the actions of a Loving and Just God?

2. If Jesus is the only way to reach and understand God, doesn’t that mean that 99.99% of humanity has failed to get into Heaven or reach God because they never heard Jesus’s message? Human evolved into their present form some 100K years ago. Jesus’s message didn’t get to us 'til some 2000 years ago, and even then, it didn’t reach everyone on the planet 'til sometime in the 20th century. Does a loving God condemn people to hell simply because they were born at the wrong time and didn’t or couldn’t hear Jesus’s msg?

3. If the people who lived before the time of Jesus aren’t condemned to Hell or fail to reach God, then why was it necessary for Jesus’s sacrafice? Why the change of rules?

If I’m wrong on these deductions, please point them out to me. Otherwise, Poly, congratulations, you’ve just shown to me that the J/C God is truly a Divine Weasel. I’ll opt for the fires of Hell instead of living in His version of Heaven.

[tracer]

JohnnyMustard quoted The Brothers Karamazov:

With my pitiful, earthly, Euclidian understanding, all I know is that there is suffering and that there are none guilty; that cause follows effect, simply and directly; that everything flows and finds its level - but that’s only Euclidian nonsense, I know that, and I can’t consent to live by it! What comfort is it to me that there are none guilty and that cause follows effect simply and directly, and that I know it - I must have justice, or I will destroy myself.

Sounds to me like the ol’ Karamazov brothers have some rather childish issues they need to work through.