gjm comments on Is Spirituality Irrational? - Less Wrong

5 Post author: lisper 09 February 2016 01:42AM

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Comment author: gjm 22 March 2016 04:22:00PM 1 point [-]

It could be that (1) if you are ignorant of Christianity you can escape damnation by living a good life, but (2) living a good enough life is really hard, especially if you don't know it's necessary to escape damnation, and that (3) for that reason, those who are aware of Christianity have better prospects than those who aren't.

(Given that the fraction of people aware of Christianity who accept it isn't terribly high, that would require God to be pretty nasty, but so does the whole idea of damnation as commonly understood among Christians. And it probably sounded better back when the great majority of people who knew of Christianity were Christians at least in name.)

Comment author: Jiro 22 March 2016 07:54:44PM 0 points [-]

I don't think that you are, in a practical sense, disagreeing with me or lisper, even if on some abstract level Christianity lets some nonbeliever be saved.

Comment author: gjm 22 March 2016 11:38:16PM 0 points [-]

The only thing I'm disagreeing with you about here is the following claim: that from "nonbelievers can be saved" or even "nonbelievers can be saved, and a substantial number will be" you can infer "proselytizing is bad for the people it's aimed at because it makes them more likely to be damned".