= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Scottbert comments on Mere Messiahs - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (83)
Back when I was a Muslim, in my final stage right before stumbling on this place, which was the final catalyst for me turning Atheist, I had decided to disregard Sharia and even direct Qranic law in every point in which it conflicted with my consciousness. My reasoning was that either God would understand that due to the social and intellectual progress since the times of Muhammad and would accept my behaviour as obeying the spirit of the Law rather than the dead letter, OR that he was more similar to that Jehovah prick than I thought, which meant I didn't care if such a despicable being would want to punish me eternally for this.
Of course, there isn't anything heroic about that. It would just have meant disobeying Him in fairly standard ways that are already practiced by most alledged Muslims, such as not flaying adulterers, not cutting thieves' hands, not forcing your wife to be an eternal minor under male tutelage, and so on. Except I had though about it and deliberately decided to violate God and the Prophet's commands, unlike what other people did, which was merely Not Thinking About It.
Then I read Religion's Claim To Be Non Disprovable among other things and thought: "If I'm going to favour my own principles AND empirical evidence OVER Word Of God, I might as well give up on religion entirely and save myslef much guilt and fear."
So it's a year-old comment that finally gets me to say something here.
This is how I felt too -- I was raised Christian -- specifically Quaker, a branch of Christianity with a nonviolent bent and the belief that God could speak to anyone at anytime, not just to prophets.
Eventually I somehow formed the impression that God, if He were as kind and all-loving as I was told, would surely judge nonbelievers and believers in other faiths based on their actions. I don't know how heretical this would be -- it may have helped that our Quaker meeting was and is a rather laid-back place that seems willing to accept atheism and progressive things -- I once prepared to give a speech on why gay marriage should be allowed only to find everyone there was cool with it.
When I started to move towards agnosticism, I had the same thought: A kind god, if he really exists, as unlikely as any particular god seems, will understand and judge me by my actions. A cruel judgemental god might send me to hell, but I consider such a hypothetical figure's decisions not worth respecting, and within the probability-space of that god's existance, there is the chance that hell, run by a devil who rebelled against such a god, is full of cool people and not so bad. And if hell in such a world is eternal torture... well, then we live in a crapsack world and are powerless to do anything about it (looking back at these thoughts now, I wonder if life extension could be seen as giving the finger to a judgemental but non-interventionist god -- if you would have us go to hell, then we're staying here!). I rated the probability of that rather low, though.
Since then, my expected probability for any kind of god relatable to by humans has only dropped until I consider it more appropriate to say I am an atheist than an agnostic.
In retrospect, and given our belief franework at the time, that was pretty reckless. Suppose a Yahwé style God with a Muslim-style Hell (the Gospel doesn't develop the concept as much) was the actual God, and that we had incontrovertible evidence of it. Wouldn't humans forgive each other for obeying his cruel instructions, if it will save suffering for everyone involved in the long run?
Then again, htat hypothesis kind of screws with everything, since Belief and Faith are a prime part of classic!God's evaluation system.
The most likely explanation in retrospect is that on some level we already knew our worldview was worth crap, but were too afraid of the unknown that an actually Atheist viewpoint seemed to offer. Did you get it, that feeling of complete wasteland and desolation, that loneliness and cold, when you were having your first true battles with Doubt? Or did it feel different for you?