I guess the simple answer is: no. This doesn’t mean that I’m completely unsympathetic towards the view. Much like wanting super strength, super speed, or any super power, this certainly alone does not entail belief.
Wanting or hoping for something does not necessarily mean that something is warranted. When someone says that I should believe in Jesus, I don’t even really know how to respond- it does not make sense. This notion that I should “let God into my heart” sounds like a parent trying to indoctrinate his child. What exercises or practices would I have to do to “let God into my heart?”
Am I supposed to surround myself with God believing people, go to church, pray and think about the sorts of revelations I presume I would have if I were to “let God into my heart?” And what if I do all of these things? Does it guarantee that I will believe or will I just end up like Mother Teresa, constantly going through the motions yet doubting constantly? The word “believe” seems to have taken on a strange connotation, which sort of implies an irrational belief that is non-evidential.
Though I may not believe in the existence of God, it is still possible that I may want for such a thing to be true. I suppose when we talk about God or the concept of God, we tend to think of God as something worthy of worshiping. Taking only the attributes of God from scripture, the Christian God is perhaps the most unpleasant character in all fiction. As Richard Dawkins put it, God is “jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” Floods, plagues, sterilization, murder, rape, incest, out right misogyny and death after death, people still have the nerve to say, “but He loves you.” I hope I don’t have to explain why I do not hope this God exists.
I know many Christians have a juvenile free will argument ready at a moment’s notice to be conjured up from the depths of your Sunday School education, but it is a very weak argument. It does not make sense to have both an omnipotent and benevolent God- something has to give. If it is the case that God is either malevolent or not omnipotent, it really doesn’t seem like something for me to wish for. In fact, God sounds like a senile delinquent: powerful but mean, or nice but cosmically useless. It could be possible that God cannot be conceived (undoubtedly a cop-out answer that should be taken as seriously as the “devil’s work” claim) but if this is true, I don’t see why I would wish this to be the case. It would seem kind of strange to want, wish, or hope that something unconceivable exists. There may be such things, and I assume that this universe is filled with an innumerous number of propositions that really are inconceivable, but I certainly do not fill my desires by wishing it were the case. I enjoy knowledge.
In terms of an afterlife, I would not wish it to be the case for several reasons. Nobody knows what the afterlife would be like- it may be a terrible place. People have speculations about the afterlife but nobody has ever seen it and considering all of the bad possibilities, it really isn’t something I would like to gamble. The life I live right now is quite lucky, considering I get to go to college and be surrounded by so many intelligent professors. I could entertain the possibility of living somewhere else, at some other time, in some other circumstance, but I think the probability of living a more privileged life is infinitesimal to all of the possibilities of living a less fortunate life, not to mention real people actually living in those circumstances. Not exactly a wager I would cast at the moment.
This concept of heaven and hell seems awfully specific and it is arrogant to claim such specific properties of an afterlife when one does not know if an afterlife exists at all. I guess there is some part of me that wishes that bad people in life would get punished, but I certainly do not want somebody to be burning for eternity, especially for something they did in a finite life. Even if I were in heaven, it would be a personal hell, knowing that there were a large number of people constantly tortured for eternity, and unable to do anything about it. I think my humanity for my species outweighs whatever vengeance I feel for a select few.
The afterlife is the ultimate insult to the value of one’s life. It expresses the notion that our life is just some trivial tribulation, something to be endured on the way to our ultimate, eternal destination. I’d like to think that my life is not some test, given by a narcissistic proctor, but something to be enjoyed to the fullest extent. I think in a way, death is an integral part of giving value to one’s life, something that is precious and finite, important, worth changing and worth protecting. As Nietzsche put it, “There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit us to give any of it away to imaginary beings.”
Ken Ueda is a senior math, physics, and philsophy triple major. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].
