The Agnostic’s Exit Strategy (Agnosticism)

by Cary Cook , Thursday, June 19, 2008, 09:33 (6003 days ago)

I'm sure DHW can help me with this. It's an effort to formulate a definitive final statement of spiritual location for agnostics ... updateable of course. - Given the uncertainty of afterlife and all that God business, what are the possibilities, probabilities, and how much of life's resources should be bet on each? - Possibility 1: no afterlife
Whoever dies with the most toys wins. Or possibly whoever had the most loving relationships, if you're into that warm fuzzy stuff. In any case, whoever had the greatest ratio of happiness over unhappiness for the duration is the winner. (My money on Heff) But nobody will know who won, or have reason to care, including the winner. Besides winning, the question, "Was it worth it?" comes to mind. But after the fact, even that won't matter. - Possibility 2: afterlife
More questions arise:
Reincarnation or some kind of eternal body? Since an eternally living body is hard to imagine, I bet on reincarnation. Agree?
Reincarnation here, or some other planet? No way to judge probabilities. - Worthwhile or not? What determines whether it's worthwhile or not? How worthwhile or not will it be? And what determines that? No way to judge probabilities.
I propose we assume worthwhile life is possible, and ask what criteria determine who gets what?
Possibilities:
___1. luck
___2. judgment - If luck, there's no point in investing any present-life resources in the outcome.
If judgment, then on what is it based?
___1. kissing the Judge's ass
___2. justice
If kissing the Judge's ass, who's the Judge? One of the Earth-religion guys? If so, which one? If not, why care until you get there? (Pascal goes here, but I don't buy his argument, see essay: www.sanityquestpublishing.com/essays/afterPascal.html ). - If justice, then it makes sense to do enough good stuff to outweigh your bad stuff. In fact, it would make sense to invest as much as you can afford ... if you knew there was justice. But since you can't know, comfort zone becomes relevant. - If you don't do enough good stuff, there's always Jesus, if you don't mind living forever with a bunch of Christians... IF Christianity is true, which you don't know. But then if Christianity is true, it wouldn't matter how much good stuff you do, because Christianity says everybody's bad and deserves hell, but just worship Jesus forever, and you're forgiven ... which throws it back into the ass-kissing category. - Fair analysis?