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Shii

Avatar: 23167 2010-01-24 16:31:18 -0500
27

[Phantasmagoric Spl-
endor
]

Level 35 Emo Kid

I haven't seen a bad idea that I didn't like.

SoronTheBeast Posted:

I want to share this logic with you all since it was one of the major reasons why I become agnostic in the first place. If your reading this thread and don’t know what Pascal’s Wager is, well, this argument is a modification of it. In it, I make some bumumptions about God that others might not agree with. I except that, but it was my thinking at the time. I know the “you need faith to get into heaven” part of scriptures, but what are you going to do?

bumumptions:

1) God is all knowing.

2) People that do what God wants get into heaven.

3) God wants you to be good ONLY for the sake of being good.

Based on this, I knew that if I believed in God I would be good knowing that I would get into heaven. God would know this too. In fact, even if I thought I was good for the sake of doing good, GOD would know if I, subconsciously or otherwise, was really doing it to get into heaven. God would know better than I myself would know why I was doing what I was doing.

The only solution I saw to this dilemma was to really and truly stop believing in heaven. But even than, I would still be doing good because God wanted it. So, the only solution I saw was to also stop believing in God.

At which point I convinced myself to being a good person for Humanist reasons. I know this is flawed because I still might subconsciously believe in God. I have spend most of my life after that point embracing materialism, so at this point I really don’t care what God thinks, because I don’t believe in Him.

Also, I hate when theists try to use Pascal’s Wager.

Anyway, at this point in my life I have a plethora of reasons to be agnostic and not a theist of any kind, but this is how I started down that road.

Soron’s Wager: To be a good Christian, you have to not believe in God.

Edit: Hmm… now that I’ve written it out, it does look a little circular….. Well, not the not believing in God part, the still being a good person part.

Simple refutation of your entire point.

One cannot be good, no matter how hard one tries. To put such a degree of emphasis on good works with the expectation that one will “get into heaven” as a result is not doctrinally sound within the vast majority of Christian denominations.

Isaiah 64:6 – All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.

All righteous acts have no inherent worth to them in and of themselves. The entirety of your argument is approximately thus: I see a child in a burning building. I am afraid that my motive to save the child is not for morality’s sake, but because I secretly want to be seen as a hero. Therefore, I will not save the child, and this is the “better” choice.

In summation, there’s no need to go to such extreme lengths to get “motives” correct when you’re sinful by default anyway according to Scriptures.

So your dilemma is moot.

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