I am a “Believer,” and if God manifested Himself to all mankind I would be looking for the man behind the curtain. If God showed Himself to be as petty and capricious as the Old Testament records, then I would be forced by my morality to join the resistance, and find a way to keep Him from interfering in our lives again.
Ya’ll are crazy. Hell yes, I’d submit. There is a lot of crazy shit in the bible (or so I’ve heard, haven’t read it myself), but what I get from many Christians is that there is also this primary idea of god as sort of an ultimate love, and they seem pretty happy believing that. If I believed in god, I think I could be perfectly happy with that vision of the universe. Certainly I’m not going to risk hell out of spite.
(And miss Elizabeth, I’m so sorry to hear about your brother.)
I think this is why we need to up the ante on the scenario.
What if the God who reveals himself is a monster. The first thing he commands everyone to do is to kill a baby. Your baby, someone else’s baby, it doesn’t matter. Killing a baby is your way of demonstrating you’re on board with the new agenda. Hell is waiting for you if you don’t.
Do you still think it’s crazy for people not to submit?
Depends. If as the OP wrote the fundamentalists are right, and these are the same fundamentalists who insist that certain Churches that practice confession aren’t actually Christian, you might find yourself out in the cold… err… hot. :eek:
It’s only interesting if you’re completely clueless about the entire concept of science and falsifiability. Any argument about the accuracy of the Bible must refer to what the Bible actually says, yes? The Bible says X, which would imply Y, but Y is not true, therefore X is not true.
I would bow down and say all the deeply self-denying things I would be expected to say, totally insincerely, just like all the other Christians do. “Oh, yassuh, boss-man, I sure is sorry foh all the ebil tings day I done in my sad sorry life, yassah…”
It’s still crazy, but a good kind of crazy.
Sure, and that same “under duress” behaviour would be pretty normal and understandable from most people whether it’s god (whichever god) or a hostile Q-alien, or just some nut with a gun.
When the psycho with the gun, death ray, or eternal hellfire points at you and demands like Gilbert’s peers “Bow, bow, ye lower middle classes!” the rational thing to do is some grovelling. 
But there’s a gulf between fearful kowtowing and genuine worship… and if that’s what the OP’s deity is after I’m not sure I have it in me even if the outcome is bad stuff.
Dear God,
Sorry about the non-belief bit, I was just using the facilities that you (in your wisdom) gave me and was following what I considered to be the past path given the evidence.
Now that you, (in your most compassionate glory) have provided your creation with even better evidence I will, naturally, get in line and my slightly over-wide ass to church.
Regards
Battle Pope
P.S. Sorry about refering to the Holy Spirit as a “pasty asshole that Peter Venkman could whip one-handed” I was drunk at the time and had just watched Ghostbusters. Please don’t smite me too hard.
I present the Ornery Programmer, whom I consider to be the biggest obstacle to accepting Pascal’s Wager.
Imagine a programmer of an artificial world who is interested in spontaneously-arising intelligences (that is, intelligences that she didn’t explicitly program). Our world is her experiment, and she’s studying all of us.
What she’s most interested in is finding intelligences that reject received wisdom, because those are the intelligences that are likeliest to make new discoveries. Actually you don’t need the “because,” because we have no idea what would motivate the Ornery Programmer. She wants ornery intelligences, just because.
So when she comes across an ornery intelligence, one that doesn’t accept received wisdom, she saves that intelligence. Others are discarded.
In order to better filter for ornery intelligences, she might even reveal herself to the intelligences. In order for the filter to work, she has to order the intelligences within the artificial world to do or believe awful or absurd things: that way, she can pretty clearly tell who’s accepting received wisdom and discard those intelligences.
Of course, I don’t believe in the Ornery Intelligence. But it seems likelier to me that we’re the product of the OI than that we’re the product of YaHuWaHu. So Pascal’s Wager holds no fear for me: I’m better off wagering that the Creator wants us to think for ourselves. I think this approach would hold true even if God came down and demanded certain things from us, because:
- How are we to know what motivates an omnipotent being, and
- Why should we believe an omnipotent being is telling us the truth?
I’d probably just flip him off and go to Hell. At least I’ll be warm.
It would certainly invoke a bizarre mixture of emotions. Shock, wonder, elation that an afterlife and being reunited with my loved ones was a possibility, irritation that theists were right and now I’d have to sit through boring church crap to make sure I ended up on the right side in said afterlife, embarrassment because theism has always seemed way more than a little embarrassing to embrace and I’d feel weird and self concious.
I’d probably work my way through those immediate emotions and eventually get to anger at the unjust things that are allowed to go on despite an all - powerful being running the show, and anger that he’s kept silent through wars fought in his name, and left people without guidance when he had the ability all along to reveal himself to them. I’d want answers on the questions of our day, like a definitive declaration that climate change is or isn’t caused by humans, gay marriage is or isn’t ok by him, abortion is or isn’t ok, etc. If he wasn’t forthcoming with clear answers about those things, I’d be very angry and struggle to outwardly submit to him.
It would be a major emotional upheaval and it would take years for the dust to settle. Not really easy to predict where I’d end up because it would largely depend on how he explained himself.
I wouldn’t find the thought of my relatives in an afterlife comforting at all. It just means my relatives are either screaming in agony forever in Hell, or brainwashed praise-robots in Heaven. If the scenario in the OP is true, then there is no hope, not even in death. Especially in death. We are in effect all damned, and our only choice is a damnation of agony, or one of lobotomy.
Yep, asshole or not. Not interested in spending an eternity in hell.
ETA : that’s assuming that going through the motions or something like that is sufficient. If I must actually feel love for an asshole god, I’m doomed, obviously. That’s not something you can control.
Well, no. You’re not expected to not eat pork, etc… If you’re not a Jew. And you’re not expected to convert, either. Besides, there would probably be no hell.
So, I’d rather have Orthodox Jews to be right on the money than fundamentalist Christians. In fact, I’d rather have anybody other than Fundamentalist Christians be right. Allah is supposed to be merciful, and regarding other religions, you’re generally judged on your merits or not at all.
It would mean that I now live in an irrational and incomprehensible universe without cause and effect and without laws about how things act. A universe in which there’s no distinction between actual things, likely things, possible things and impossible things. There’s no way to live in that kind of universe.
The only proof that would sway me would be direct contact. Not some burning bush crap either. I would demand an audience with God and demand that any and all questions be answered to my satisfaction. I would base my subsequent obedience on how our chats went.
This may seem like I have quite the ego, what with expecting this God to answer to me, and to my satisfaction. But I’ve done just fine without the guy to date and I won’t just jump at some snake oil salesman. If my suspicions lead to me rejecting God, that’s his problem.
I’m obedient if someone threatens me with a gun.
If there’s some guy who can create rivers of blood, lakes of fire, what does it matter if it’s a real God™? I may as well at least pay it lip service and wrath-dodge as long as I can.
Hey can I just cut and paste my posts from the other thread?
I’d challenge him to a drinking contest.