KILL THE WISE ONE! KILL THE WISE ONE!
But seriously, does that idea, as stated, have merit?
To the extent that the speaker expects no manifestation of the existance and is satisfied with the gained feeling that God does in fact exist, sure.
Does that work for money?
It doesn’t work for beer.
To the same extent that Santa Claus exists because little kids believe in him, sure. Not exactly the kind of dignified station most people would desire for god, though, I’d think.
I have always said to my Atheist friends, “why not believe in God, what possible bad could it do? I mean, if you die and there is no God, then that’s it, you were right. But if there happens to be a God and you die not believing in him, then you’re fucked. So, what’s it gonna hurt to believe in him? Only good things can come out of it.”
Do a search on the SDMB for “pascal* AND wager”. There are more than a few flaws with the premise.
On the other hand, the OP’s thought certainly worked for Ka the Appalling.
Small Gods – Terry Pratchett .
From the article (this is not a quote from the book):
Don’t you always know he’s already thought of everything and ***parodied ***it, too?
Not really fucked, remember God is a forgiving God.
So whether you believe or not the situation is a win-win one
And then you wake up after death surrounded by angry gods with pointy sticks, the one in front saying “We’ll show you what we think of Mr Clever around here !”
Yes, it’s a paraphrase from memory of Terry Pratchett
Exactly how could they follow this advice? How does one arbitrarily choose to start believing in something and what would be the merit and veracity of ‘belief’ so actioned?
In other words, how is your suggestion useful in any real way?
Your god might be.
My god just hates it when people believe in him, so I try not to.
You should remember what happened to the prophets of Baal. :eek:
What if your God commands you to sacrifice your eldest son to him? Do you obey? Is that an example of ‘good things’? :rolleyes:
As for believing in a pathologically shy God, who will punish me for infinity, even though He knows he made me with a scientific inquiring mind…
…nah. Stuff Him.
For the moment it strikes me as more fun to ignore the part about trying to analyze what kind of force is inherent in belief and what it might be able to accomplish, and move on to what kind of God we’d likely end up with were it feasible.
Well, taking small steps, such a God couldn’t very well be the creator of the universe, because before there was anything, there was no one to believe. Such a God could not be beyond mortal understanding, because he/she/it would be conceived entirely within the believers’ consciousness. Such a God would seem, in fact, to be incapable of autonomy, let alone omnipotence and omniscience, because along with belief that there is a God comes a ton of beliefs about what God is like; what he wants, what he will and won’t do and has and has not done, and a lot of these beliefs are going to be contradictory and cancel each other out. Or each single believer gets his/her own God, but that’s like saying that because of individual differences in perception there are as many universes as there are people, which (for me) starts to dilute the concept below the point of significant meaning. Also, if we create God ourselves through our own beliefs, why do some religions have an injunction against idolatry?
It seems to me, finally, that whether or not belief can create a God, that it’s probably not what happened in our case. We’re a race of wishful thinkers, and lazy to boot: we’d be happy to believe in Gods who take much better care of us, and require much less of us, and we’d certainly have done it by now. If humanity as a whole could have any Gods we were willing to believe in, we’d be a lot more self-indulgent about it.
Plus, if belief were what causes God, s/he would certainly appear before us regularly, if only because it’s much easier for people to believe what they can see. If we’re going to substitute “faith” for “belief” and repeat the question, I still vote no, partly for the above reasons and partly because the first glimmer of faith would be (since cause precedes effect) false, and I reject any God reliant on a lie for his/her/its existence.
This is stupid. What if someone from another religion made the same statement to you? That all you have to do is believe his religion, because his god is not forgiving but your god is. So if you are right, then it’s okay, your god will forgive you. But if he is right, then you’re fucked because his god will not forgive you for believing something else or worshipping a different way.
Dont assume that there are only two choices, atheism or christianity. (I’m assuming you’re Christian) There are way more options out there than that, and your religion sounds just a stupid and ridiculous as any of the dozens and dozens of beliefs out there. Why should yours be the default choice for an atheist???
the difference between faith and reality this: faith in something may affect you if you believe in it enough. reality will affect you regardless of whether or not you believe it.
In fact, given the large number of polytheistic religions out there, it may well be fair to say, that upon that backdrop the difference between Christianity and atheism boils down to the atheist believing in one god fewer than the Christian does…
Now, Noone, the atheist might believe in three fewer gods. Be fair.
I hear it does work for sex. Sort of.