Pascal's Wager Revisited

[Jenny A]

I gather it's a little stranger and a little harder than that. I think the OP's idea is to behave as if you are the sort of person who deserves and would make good use of an afterlife. He's sure that just behaving morally isn't enough. The problems are, of course, the same as the problem of choosing a god in Pascal's Wager:

1. If there is an afterlife, we have no idea what it is like, or what the requirements for it might be. The afterlife's suggested by various religions are diverse, and the means of deserving them vary widely. In fact they are often contradictory. Many of them are supposed to happen whether you believe or not. Many religions suggest that entrance to an afterlife requires actual belief, not just behavior.

2. The odds of there being an afterlife, let alone the one the OP imagines, are not 50%. There is only scant and extremely weak evidence of an afterlife and tons of evidence linking conscientiousness and the mind to the body.

3. Choosing to behave as if there is a higher power is not free. It requires time and commitment.