Replacing Religious Morality

[henryp]

Is that my fault, or His? Particularly when he could have just popped his head in a window like he used to do for the old-timey folks and say "Nope, I'm real. Sorry for the confusion."

It would be your fault, because He did come into human history to "say hi".

To be fair, we have a very old second hand account of him coming to say hi. From a time when people's understanding of things was a little sketchy, and attributing things that probably should be attributed to the supernatural to the supernatural was very common.

Even if I were going the agnostic route, we both agree it's an impossible position to take. There is no 'maybe there is a God' way to live.

I cannot say that I agree, because I don't really understand what you mean. Could you expand on this idea a bit.

There's loving and serving God from a position of humility and thankfulness. (existence with God)

There's being self-serving. (existence without God)

Nothing else really makes sense since hedging your bets against eternal damnation is really just a variation on the self-serving life. (which is what I think ryantology mistakes for motivation)

I know the church line is 'you have faith.' But I think what that really boils down to is guessing. And you have to do it, because there are only two ways to live. And I'm not sure you can really believe based on a guess.

What it reminds me of, is when people get cancer. And even though the prognosis is 50/50, they fully believe they are going to live. And for some, that's just a thing they can do. But if I was told I had a 50/50 chance of living, I would think I had a 50/50 chance of living.

Is "in the event God happens to exist" I love him above all else a thing?
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The importance of the dichotomy of the two existences, is that the idea of "well you lived a good life, and were a nice person...so we'll let you into heaven anyway" goes out the window. Because if you don't believe in God and live a life with weird made up morals that sync up mostly with Christian ones, that (in our opinion) is just being silly, right?

So to restate, for many of us, we get a 15-80 year life on earth in which we must make a guess with very incomplete information that might doom us for eternity. It's a off-the-wall setup.