My naive questions

[DeistPaladin]

Let`s assume you become convinced there has to be a God who watches over everything you do. Before you choose your faith, wouldn`t it be reasonable to research every single belief in the world before choosing?

Which assumes that God even wants to be worshiped at all.

Maybe God is like the one depicted in Monte Python's The Holy Grail. "That's why I can't stand coming to earth anymore. All I hear is 'forgive me this' and 'forgive me that' and 'I'm not worthy'..."





Actually, that sounds like a really cool god I wouldn't mind hanging out with in Heaven but I digress. The point is maybe God doesn't want to be worshiped at all. Maybe we're supposed to do the best we can, follow our conscience and contribute a bit to making the world a better place before we die.

Or maybe the correct religion is not one thought of by humans at all. Maybe the Fnorbians on the planet Znutnar have figured it out. I just made that up but it's got as much evidence as any religion on this earth.

Or maybe the Devil is really the good guy. Hey, we never hear his side of the story, do we? Maybe the Devil is leading a rag-tag rebellion against a celestial tyrant, and all we hear about is the propaganda of said tyrant, bad mouthing the Devil and making him out to be evil when in fact he's a valiant rebel who's really trying to help us (a kind of Robin Hood of the Heavens). Hey, if our only source of information on Han Solo and Luke Skywalker was the propaganda of The Empire, we'd think they were the bad guys too, right? Frankly, that story would make a lot more sense than the one Christians tell us.

Or maybe there is a personal god who watches over us but there's no afterlife. Read the OT of the Bible. The ancient Hebrews rejected the idea of an afterlife, at least at first.

Psalm 115:17 The dead praise not the LORD, neither any that go down into silence.

Ecclesiastes 9:5 The dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward.

Isaiah 38:18 For the grave cannot praise thee, death can not celebrate thee: they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth.

There's a great video series on the subject of the Old Testament and the "afterlife" and here's a link to the first one in the series:





So maybe God gives us one shot at the brass ring and then it's fade to black and credits roll.

To underscore the myriad of possibilities, I'm a deist who believes (Nature's) God created a strictly natural universe and am skeptical of any claims of an afterlife or consciousness without a brain. My wife is an atheist who believes in ghosts.