What do you have to gain if you are right and what do you have to lose if you are wrong?
Mike
Ah, there lies the crux of the matter, doesn't it, Mike?
Was pondering that very question this week at work prompted by many of the Pascal Wager responses to this thread.
How many believers would still follow the teachings of their faith if all it offered was the command to do right for the sake of doing right?
It seems hard to find a religion that doesn't operate on the carrot and stick principle and many, many of the replies to this thread (and others) show that as a major modus operandi of believers.
A) your life will be 'better' if you follow God (insert proper version). You'll have an eternal afterlife of pleasure in one form or the other.
B) if you don't follow, you will pay eternally in one way or the other (for most American Christians this means eternal torture) and your life in the here and now can't possibly be as good as theirs.
It ain't what you don't know that makes you an idiot...it's what you know for certain, that just ain't so...
Most people don't want to believe the truth~they want the truth to be what they believe.
