I have no idea whether I believe in God or not. :|

[Gymnophoria]

I'm mostly just posting this to see if anyone else feels the same way I do or if anyone can offer any advice to get me out of this circle.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what I believe and I just keep going around and around the same two things:
- I'm scared not to believe in God/religion in case it's real and I'm stuck with eternal punishment or whatever.
Maybe it's just the catholic part of me that's saying this (my parents have raised me as catholic all my life) but if I go my whole life not believing in God and then he's real and turns out to hate me for not believing in him, no matter how good a life I lived, according to what I've been taught I'll basically live in eternal punishment when I die. Doesn't sound like a very fun afterlife. In which case, I actually believe in reincarnation but that's for another time.

- I don't want to just believe in God/religion because I'm afraid to, I want to believe in it because I want to.
I don't like the idea of only believing or going along with something because of fear of the consequences of not believing. If I'm going to follow a religion or whatever, I want to do it because I believe it and honestly agree with what it teaches instead of just pretending to so I'm not damned to Hell or something.

Does anyone else feel this way about religion and is there any way around it? I don't like arguing with myself.

[TheNumber42]

Originally Posted by Gymnophoria

- I'm scared not to believe in God/religion in case it's real and I'm stuck with eternal punishment or whatever.

This is known as Pascal's Wager. The idea that it's better to be safe and believe, just in case. Unfortunately, it's a load of bullshit. Think about it, there have been thousands of religions in the world. If you really wanted to be safe, you'd have to believe in all of them (which is just silly and impossible). Even if some deity did exist, the chance of you picking the right religion to believe in that would appease him would be extremely low.

Of course if you do truly believe, then have at it. But if you're believing just because you feel like it's the safe choice, don't waste your time, you're probably wrong anyway.

Originally Posted by Gymnophoria

- I don't want to just believe in God/religion because I'm afraid to, I want to believe in it because I want to.

I think I mostly addressed this in response to the last point. Basically, there's no reason to believe in something just out of fear, because most likely you'd believe in the wrong thing (assuming there was a right choice) and you'd be fucked anyway.

Again, if you believe, that's cool and have fun, but there is no point in believing out of fear, it's just wasting your time that could be better spent on enriching your life rather than appeasing some vengeful dude in the sky.

[Xujhan]

Originally Posted by Gymnophoria

I'm mostly just posting this to see if anyone else feels the same way I do or if anyone can offer any advice to get me out of this circle.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what I believe and I just keep going around and around the same two things:
- I'm scared not to believe in God/religion in case it's real and I'm stuck with eternal punishment or whatever.
Maybe it's just the catholic part of me that's saying this (my parents have raised me as catholic all my life) but if I go my whole life not believing in God and then he's real and turns out to hate me for not believing in him, no matter how good a life I lived, according to what I've been taught I'll basically live in eternal punishment when I die. Doesn't sound like a very fun afterlife. In which case, I actually believe in reincarnation but that's for another time.

- I don't want to just believe in God/religion because I'm afraid to, I want to believe in it because I want to.
I don't like the idea of only believing or going along with something because of fear of the consequences of not believing. If I'm going to follow a religion or whatever, I want to do it because I believe it and honestly agree with what it teaches instead of just pretending to so I'm not damned to Hell or something.

Does anyone else feel this way about religion and is there any way around it? I don't like arguing with myself.

Like Cody said, this is Pascal's Wager, and the good news for you is that it's one of the most easily refuted arguments in the history of philosophy.

For one, as Cody said, humans have dreamed up thousands of gods; believing in one is no guarantee to save you from the wrath of another one.

For two, the number of gods thought up by humans is an infinitessimally insignificant sliver of a fraction of all the possible gods that might exist. Even if you bet on one god just for the sake of it, you're betting against infinity.

For three, many of these possible gods will actually reward you more (or punish you less) for believing in no god. In another thread a few weeks ago I drew up a god who only allowed atheists in to heaven, so betting on a god isn't even necessarily safer than betting on no gods.

For four, most gods that people dream up are supposed to be omniscient, or at least pretty damn smart. If the only reason you believe in a god is just on the off chance that it saves you from hell, I don't think many gods would be impressed by that. That's not true belief, as you say, so you'd probably get punished in any event.

For five, do you honestly want to believe in a god who punishes people merely for guessing wrong? Imagine what the world would be like if humans acted this way. We'd have to throw children in jail for getting math questions wrong. Voting for the losing candidate in a presidential race would be punishable by death. Even as a miniscule civilization trapped on one tiny backwater planet, we know better than this. On what grounds do we think that heaven is so childish that it cannot bear even that people think it not to exist?

Consider this for a moment: how do you feel toward Zeus? Do you hate him? Look down on him? Scorn him? Mock him? No, I'd wager; you probably just don't think he exists. That's not an insult, it's an opinion. Even an insult would not be grounds for eternal punishment, so disbelief clearly cannot be. If such a jealous, childish, miserable god really exists, no one should want to worship it in any event. I would say that if there is a god, and that god does punish people with eternal suffering merely for the non-crime of disbelief, then support of that god is no more conscionable than support of any other tyrant throughout history.

Thank goodness he doesn't actually exist, eh?