High there

[Father Herman]

you're under the impression that they’re “all fiction.” And indeed, all but one are fiction. So while there are many that you could believe in, there’s only one you should believe in.

Can you justify your use of the word "should" in that statement, without resorting to special pleading and/or Pascal's Wager? What happens if I don't believe in this god of which you speak?

What bet could possibly be relevant to the propriety of believing what is true? It's right to believe what’s true just because it's true, not because of any bet.

downbeatplumb made a mistake. He thought that all deities are fictional. Fine; people make mistakes. But there is one Deity that’s real. So the proposition there is no God is false and its opposite is true. It should be obvious that you should believe that which is true.

What if our humble planet really is a sphere. “Should” you believe that it's a cube? Should you believe that it's flat? No. You "should" believe that it's a sphere—just because it's true, and for no other reason than that. It has nothing to do with any “special pleading” or with any kind of bet.

The traditional formula involves the phrase “reasonable and responsible belief.”

What happens if I don't believe in this god of which you speak?

Atheism depends on keeping people confused. I’ll have many opportunities to point this out …
(all sing) As time goes on …

To avoid confusion, you need to be attentive to the difference between “god” and “God.” The uncapitalized word refers to the fictional gods of paganism. I pointed this out in an earlier post in this thread, so try to keep up. I'm not speaking of any pagan “god.”

“Eschew obfuscation.”

The intelligent question is: What happens if I don't believe in God?

My hunch is that you're asking What happens on the day of judgment? But I'm not God, so of course I wouldn’t know.

But maybe you're asking What happens here and now? What happens here and now is that you continue confusing and misleading yourself and others. You continue to waste your life imagining that the universe “created itself” or that it's “beginningless;” that life arose by the Chance of the Gaps.

It means you continue living in a dream world.

Good luck with that.

H