So it’s a year-old comment that finally gets me to say something here.
This is how I felt too—I was raised Christian—specifically Quaker, a branch of Christianity with a nonviolent bent and the belief that God could speak to anyone at anytime, not just to prophets.
Eventually I somehow formed the impression that God, if He were as kind and all-loving as I was told, would surely judge nonbelievers and believers in other faiths based on their actions. I don’t know how heretical this would be—it may have helped that our Quaker meeting was and is a rather laid-back place that seems willing to accept atheism and progressive things—I once prepared to give a speech on why gay marriage should be allowed only to find everyone there was cool with it.
When I started to move towards agnosticism, I had the same thought: A kind god, if he really exists, as unlikely as any particular god seems, will understand and judge me by my actions. A cruel judgemental god might send me to hell, but I consider such a hypothetical figure’s decisions not worth respecting, and within the probability-space of that god’s existance, there is the chance that hell, run by a devil who rebelled against such a god, is full of cool people and not so bad. And if hell in such a world is eternal torture… well, then we live in a crapsack world and are powerless to do anything about it (looking back at these thoughts now, I wonder if life extension could be seen as giving the finger to a judgemental but non-interventionist god—if you would have us go to hell, then we’re staying here!). I rated the probability of that rather low, though.
Since then, my expected probability for any kind of god relatable to by humans has only dropped until I consider it more appropriate to say I am an atheist than an agnostic.
In retrospect, and given our belief franework at the time, that was pretty reckless. Suppose a Yahwé style God with a Muslim-style Hell (the Gospel doesn’t develop the concept as much) was the actual God, and that we had incontrovertible evidence of it. Wouldn’t humans forgive each other for obeying his cruel instructions, if it will save suffering for everyone involved in the long run?
Then again, htat hypothesis kind of screws with everything, since Belief and Faith are a prime part of classic!God’s evaluation system.
The most likely explanation in retrospect is that on some level we already knew our worldview was worth crap, but were too afraid of the unknown that an actually Atheist viewpoint seemed to offer. Did you get it, that feeling of complete wasteland and desolation, that loneliness and cold, when you were having your first true battles with Doubt? Or did it feel different for you?
So it’s a year-old comment that finally gets me to say something here.
This is how I felt too—I was raised Christian—specifically Quaker, a branch of Christianity with a nonviolent bent and the belief that God could speak to anyone at anytime, not just to prophets.
Eventually I somehow formed the impression that God, if He were as kind and all-loving as I was told, would surely judge nonbelievers and believers in other faiths based on their actions. I don’t know how heretical this would be—it may have helped that our Quaker meeting was and is a rather laid-back place that seems willing to accept atheism and progressive things—I once prepared to give a speech on why gay marriage should be allowed only to find everyone there was cool with it.
When I started to move towards agnosticism, I had the same thought: A kind god, if he really exists, as unlikely as any particular god seems, will understand and judge me by my actions. A cruel judgemental god might send me to hell, but I consider such a hypothetical figure’s decisions not worth respecting, and within the probability-space of that god’s existance, there is the chance that hell, run by a devil who rebelled against such a god, is full of cool people and not so bad. And if hell in such a world is eternal torture… well, then we live in a crapsack world and are powerless to do anything about it (looking back at these thoughts now, I wonder if life extension could be seen as giving the finger to a judgemental but non-interventionist god—if you would have us go to hell, then we’re staying here!). I rated the probability of that rather low, though.
Since then, my expected probability for any kind of god relatable to by humans has only dropped until I consider it more appropriate to say I am an atheist than an agnostic.
In retrospect, and given our belief franework at the time, that was pretty reckless. Suppose a Yahwé style God with a Muslim-style Hell (the Gospel doesn’t develop the concept as much) was the actual God, and that we had incontrovertible evidence of it. Wouldn’t humans forgive each other for obeying his cruel instructions, if it will save suffering for everyone involved in the long run?
Then again, htat hypothesis kind of screws with everything, since Belief and Faith are a prime part of classic!God’s evaluation system.
The most likely explanation in retrospect is that on some level we already knew our worldview was worth crap, but were too afraid of the unknown that an actually Atheist viewpoint seemed to offer. Did you get it, that feeling of complete wasteland and desolation, that loneliness and cold, when you were having your first true battles with Doubt? Or did it feel different for you?