Might I add, did you really believe that an atheist would think God was genetive?
(note: the above was a rhetorical question. I await your answer.)
The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*
Back to the OP, and this is an agnostic, not an atheist, talking here. The only time I ever came face to face with death was when I was a 17-year-old kid running JV cross-country. We’d run our race and the seniors were running theirs, and we were supposed to be on the sidelines cheering everybody on. Then this guy from Shawnee Mission Northwest HS went down right in front of us. I turned him over and he wasn’t breathing. We raised the alarm. A couple of coaches got there instantaneously and started doing CPR on the kid, and one of them yelled, “Run, motherfucker, and find a phone!” (this was 1982, before mobiles). I sprinted as fast as I could towards a house across the street and a girl near me sprinted toward the Ranger station for the park in which the race was being held. We got ambulances there on the double and the paramedics came and did the electric shock on that guy’s heart. None of it worked. He died. He had contracted a virus that somehow entered his circulatory system and running a two-mile cross-country race overcharged his heart and did him in.
The guy’s name was Ryan Young. I went to his funeral. I’ll never forget it.
I was an agnostic back then when I was 17, too. I guess I sort of risked my life in sprinting across the street–it was a four-lane road with heavy traffic. But the most important thing was getting an ambulance there. You don’t know what it’s like until you’ve been in an extreme situation like that. I’ve never run faster, and I’d taken my spikes off. When it comes down to it, in an extreme situation, you do what you have to do, no matter what you believe in.
Lawrence
God bless you for your efforts with Ryan.
Spiritus
My point evaded you. If God is genitive, then He is nature-centered; that is, He is man’s creation. But if God is ablative, then He is God-centered; that is, we are His creation. Therefore, if our faith is His gift to us (rather than our gift to Him), then there is only one God, despite however many perceptions of Him we have.
And Pascal’s wager holds.
By His own pronouncement, Lib, God is nominative: “I AM”
I do see where you are going with your borrowed-from-grammar categories. But the point I once tried to make is that it does not matter what concept we may have of God (or his absence); what matters is whether or not He exists and what He expects of us if He does. That totally objective fact or its absence is key. Whether Chaim sees him through the lens of Jewish Orthodoxy, Adam through Pentecostal Christianity, me through a rather woolly Liberal Episcopalianism, you through Libertarian lenses, Tris through a fascinating metaphorical structure, David and slythe as a despicable petty tyrant to be avoided, or whatever concepts any of us may have is not pertinent to the base question of His existence and intent.
And I believe I am on record as standing for my beliefs: if the Divine Weasel is Who Is In Charge, He can damn me with the atheists and all the rest of us who choose to think for oneself and believe that love of one’s fellow man counts for more than Levitical purity.
- Mispercerceptions of god have no bearing on the rewards of faith.
- atheism is a misperception of God if God does in fact exist.
- Atheism has no bearing on teh rewards of faith.
Pascal’s Wager fails.
Or else not all “misperceptions” are created equal, in which case Pascal’s Wager fails on the classic false dichotomy.
The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*
Depends on how God judges those misperceptions. I like C.S. Lewis’s view in The Horse and His Boy, that whatever is rendered in good faith to a false god, the true God takes for his own. YMMV.
I interpreted jayburner’s original question to resolve as “do Atheists conceive of any higher values than their own life?” Speaking for myself, the answer is yes. I value my family, humanity, and certain principles higher than my own life.
I’m not talking about “emergency” or “sick of it” heroism, where one risks his life in the heat of the moment without really thinking about it, or where they guy charges the machine gun nest, not because of any deeply held philosophy, but because he’s sick of being shot at, sick of the mud, etc.
I’m talking about eyes-open, opportunity to back out, walking into the reactor to fix the coolant leak heroism.
We all have to die; I want to die well. If I can, dying in bed of advanced old age surrounded by my loved ones is just peachy. But if a situation were to present itself where I had to knowingly do something fatal to save my children, a whole group of people, or to defend a principle I value highly, I would do so. “The fear of death is the beginning of slavery.”
He’s the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armor, shouting ‘All Gods are Bastards!’
Do rationalism, materialism, existentialism, etc qualify as “false gods” in this equation? If so, then the wager collapses as noted above.
What about human sacrifice in the name of Kali or desecration of chirches in the name of Lucifer? Are there any bounds placed upon “good faith”? If the answer is yes, then the false dichotomy immediately rears its head. If teh answer is no, then the wager has equivalent payoffs no matter the choice and collapses under its own weight.
Pascal’s Wager is bad logic. It always has been.
The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*
If this were the Pit, I’d make some commment like, “Sure, but in your case, I’d make an exception.” But I won’t do that. 
I’m an atheist and I most certainly HAVE pulled someone out of the way of a truck, though I did so in a way that would not have endangered me. The guy had on his Walkman and couldn’t hear the truck that was bearing down on him. I grabbed him by the arm and yanked him back onto the curb. I saved him, but I was also furious at him for being so foolish, for making it necessary for me to save him.
You see, life is so precious for us, we just may be MORE motivated to save your life than a theist. We believe that your life is the only one you will ever have; what can be more precious, more valuable, more worthy of being saved?
And there is also the possibility that such altruism may be the result of millions of generations of evolution and that we, believers and non-believers alike, just can’t help ourselves.
When all else fails, ask Cecil.
It occurs to me that the question at hand, whether someone would sacrifice themselves even if they didn’t believe in a reward in some after life, raises the contrary question – would a believer in eternal damnation ever kill someone?
I think we know the answer to the latter question, and by extension, the former.
Anyone remember who it was that said anyone who has nothing important enough to risk dying for has nothing worth living for?
“A man who does not believe in something worth dying for is not fit to live.”–The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (That’s probably a paraphrase.)
When all else fails, ask Cecil.
I’m moving my PW comments to the PW thread.