BELIEF is not complicated. (Introduction)

by Cary Cook , Thursday, May 29, 2008, 02:11 (6023 days ago) @ dhw

>If the only concrete evidence we have concerning God's justice is close to zero, and if the odds for/against an afterlife can't be judged, how can there be a degree of probability to justify belief type 1)? - There's not. I do not think(believe-1) that a just God is probable.
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>If it is a matter of belief type 2), then that is clearly in conflict with belief type 1). - Correct.
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>So where does the "commitment" come from? - My will.
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>I don't see how you can bet everything you have on a scenario that you yourself find improbable. - Here's how. Life sucks ... at least that's my experience of it on this planet. If this life is all there is, then the creator of it is worthy of every curse I could imagine, if I did nothing but think of curses. If I knew that this life is all there is, then the most sensible course of action would be to spend my resources on immediate pleasures, and suicide out before the karma catches up. But I don't know that this life is all there is. A just afterlife may exist ... probably not, but it might. Therefore I have 2 choices, the one I just mentioned, or to bet on a just afterlife in the same sense that a person may reasonably buy a lottery ticket if the jackpot appears high enough. - If I lose, then I have wasted this life. But then, if there is nothing but this life, then nihilism is true. NOTHING matters. The fact that I was a damn fool for wasting my life betting on a lie doesn't matter any more than anything else.
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>So where does the theists' and the atheists' "emotional, motivational commitment" come from? - My emotional, motivational commitment is based mostly on fear of suicide. That kept me alive long enough to figure out the above rationale. - I feel qualified to speak on the atheists' emotional, motivational commitment because I was one for about a decade. That commitment, in my opinion, comes from distaste for Scriptural absurdities, or less honorably from Scripture's ethical restraints.