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You presume that by believing in a God you're not living life in the best way you can, but is there really an objective (non-religious) "best way" to live life?

by clmul 7y ago

You presume that by believing in a God you're not living life in the best way you can, but is there really an objective (non-religious) "best way" to live life? I would assume that for the average religious person, the way they live their life feels just about right (barring any intrinsic human shortcomings).

scotty79 7y ago
The best way to live your life is highly subjective and personal. By allowing people to instruct you on how to live your life based not on knowledge but on centuries old guesses almost inevitably prevents you from having best possible life regardless of what it might mean for you. Relying on old guesses instead of knowledge gives you objectively worse results in any kind of activity. It's not a stretch to assume it also has the same effect on your life as a whole.
- em-bee 7y ago
  indeed, that's why it is necessary to check whether what they say still makes any sense. independent investigation (and not letting others tell you) is the only way to find out.
  - scotty79 7y ago
    > indeed, that's why it is necessary to check whether what they say still makes any sense. The never did make any sense. It's just that now we can use knowledge to point out many specific places that we know are wrong. > independent investigation (and not letting others tell you) is the only way to find out. You definitely should let others tell you about the world we are living in. But those others should be the ones that posess knowledge. And since science is the only way to get actual knowledge about reality then you should probably stick to what science says and ignore everything else. If you want to investigate religions be my guest. Just start with atheism. It will save you a lot of time and a lot of mistakes.
    - em-bee 7y ago
      You definitely should let others tell you about the world we are living in oh sure, but every individual still needs to judge for themselves what they learn. science doesn't help us solve our social problems. and as far as i can tell, neither does atheism. none of the mainstream religions are capable of that either, but the answer is out there. i'll leave it at that because i don't want to promote a particular belief here. that's a topic for another time and place.
Retric 7y ago
If following a religion has zero downsides in life, then it needs no justification. However, the act of trying to justify religion suggests it’s not inherently optimal. So, the actual counter argument to Pascal’s wager is this. If there are some true god(s) that care they might have an actual objective scale, but as it’s unknowable any sacrifices for a specific religion are unwise. In other words we don’t know if the objective scale is a specific belief, doing charitable works, sacrifices on a dark alter, or even maximizing the number of times we say purple on a given day. Further, without specific information you are equally likely to get the scale reversed as correct, possibly both suffering great long term harm as well as sacrifices in life. Thus, with the sum of all possible outcomes averaging to zero, the only net expected result is the sacrifice in life. PS: I am positing this as a flaw in a logical argument, don’t take it out of that context.
- rubinelli 7y ago
  We promote and justify all kinds of actions and attitudes that are not immediately beneficial, like eating properly and exercising. For the religious person, a virtuous life is in itself a reward.
  - Retric 7y ago
    That’s orthogonal to Pascal’s wager. Various religions all have tangible costs and rewards. Pascal’s wager is essentially trying to decide how valuable the rewards after death offered by each religion are when you can’t verify if they exist. My point is the availability heuristic makes biases people to overestimate how likely each religion is to be true. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic) The set of all possible religions would first need to be limited before that specific line of thinking becomes relevant. Which essentially means the argument is meaningless as you must first assume a religion is likely before it would tell you to follow it.
    - em-bee 7y ago
      or rather, you need to investigate for yourself if a religion makes sense before you decide to follow it.

em-bee 7y ago

If following a religion has zero downsides in life, then it needs no justification. However, the act of trying to justify religion suggests it’s not inherently optimal. let me rephrase that: If following civil laws has zero downsides in life, then they need no justification. However, the act of trying to justify certain laws suggests that they are not inherently optimal life with zero downsides does not exist. we need to make some compromises if we want to live together as a society. be those civil laws or a religion is a matter of choice, but we can't opt out. the need to justify religion does not invalidate religion any more than the need to justify laws invalidates those. as a society we still need to decide which laws we want to implement. and as an individual everyone needs to investigate for themselves which religion (if any) to follow.

Retric 7y ago
That’s not really what I saying I should have added net downside. Anyway, you don’t need to opt out of religion, that’s the default state. To use an obvious example, at birth people don’t have a codified view of what happens after death. People can and often are biased based on their upbringing, but that in effect takes effort from an existing believer to communicate their beliefs directly or via artifacts like books. Without that, nothing forces you to form an option.
- em-bee 7y ago
  could you expand on the whole phrase with net downside please? i don't get what you mean here.
  - Retric 7y ago
    Basically, using whatever measurement system you choose their is the best possible outcome after cost benefit analysis. Aka if religion Alpha offers the best possible tangible outcomes using whatever metrics you are bashing this choice on and it also offers the best possible unknowable outcomes then their is little reason to pick anything else. By tangible rewards/costs I mean things that could be theoretically verified like joy, physical fitness, social acceptance, positive legacy etc. and by intangible rewards/costs I mean what the gods / spirits / whatever think of you, what happens in the afterlife etc. Essentially it’s only if you rank religions by tangible rewards and intangible rewards separately and end up with a different first place that the intangible rewards become an issue.
scotty79 7y ago
> and as an individual everyone needs to investigate for themselves which religion (if any) to follow I disagree. Nobody needs to investigate any religions. There's no knowledge based reason to do that. You might want to join religion for the community but even then there rarely any investigation necessary. It's sufficient to just follow their practices.
- em-bee 7y ago
  It's sufficient to just follow their practices if you just want to join a community, and don't actually care what the community stands for, sure. but we are discussing pascal's wager. if god exists, you want to do what god asks for. that requires that you investigate what god is really asking for. joining a random community and just following their practices will help you do that. you have to investigate and figure out whether these practices make any sense. you may or may not find an answer. either way it's up to you to keep searching (maybe there is a better answer). sure, you can take pascals wager on blind faith. but that would be a pure gamble. i prefer to make an educated guess. and that requires investigation.
  - scotty79 7y ago
    > sure, you can take pascals wager on blind faith. but that would be a pure gamble. It's always a pure gamble since there is no knowledge about which god is more real. > i prefer to make an educated guess. and that requires investigation. Your guess will not be anymore educated regardless of how much you investigate. Because the only way to investigate claim of some god's existence is to ask people who can't know either. No matter how smart you are, garbage in, garbage out.