fubarobfusco comments on Existential Risk and Existential Hope: Definitions - Less Wrong

7 Post author: owencb 10 January 2015 07:09PM

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Comment author: fubarobfusco 13 January 2015 10:11:41PM 0 points [-]

I had a college roommate who went through a phase where he wanted to die and go to heaven as soon as possible, but believed that committing suicide was a mortal sin.

So he would do dangerous things — like take walks in the middle of the (ill-lit, semi-rural) road from campus to town, wearing dark clothing, at night — to increase (or so he said) his chances of being accidentally killed.

Most Christians don't do that sort of thing. Most Christians behave approximately as sensibly as *humanists do with regard to obvious risks to life. This suggests that they actually do possess values very similar to *humanist values, and that their assertions otherwise are tribal cheering.

(It may be that my roommate was just signaling extreme devotion in a misguided attempt to impress his crush, who was the leader of the college Christian club.)

Comment author: JoshuaZ 14 January 2015 01:36:16AM 0 points [-]

Note that one can be a religious Christian and still act that way. Catholics consider taking deliberately risky behavior like that to itself be sinful for example.