Godless Ghosts

Yesterday I posted on Pascals wager.  I knew that it was flawed even before I posted it.  Problem is,  that kind of logic might have worked with a lot of Westerners 50 years ago, but now many people believe in an afterlife WITHOUT God.  I myself was one of these.

If one meets someone interested in this kind of discussion, one might tighten the focus and talk about the unique and exclusive claims of Jesus.  All other world-class faiths allow other ways.  If you are a good Christian, you can still reach nirvana, according to the Hindu faith.  The same goes for Islam and Buddhism and countless folk beliefs.

Jesus said however that there is no other way to be happy in the after life except in submission to and trust in himself alone.

So if Jesus is wrong, and you follow him, it doesn't matter whether you follow Christianity or some other faith or even a religion, because the particular tenets are not important to the other faiths but what is important to them is that you are a good person. (Bad people need not apply).

But if Jesus is  right that he alone is God in the flesh and that trusting him is the only way, then it would be stupid to say he was wrong and go off and follow some other faith.

So to update Pascal's wager, if Jesus is wrong and you live a good life, then it wouldn't matter what faith you follow.  And if there were no God it wouldn't matter how you had lived.  But if Jesus' claims are true then it is imperative for your eternal welfare that you allow him to love and forgive you, adopt you as his child into his big family, and surrender to his loving help to live his way.

A Wager of Galactic Proportions

A wise man (Blaise Pascal) once said something like this:

If God doesn't exist, then it doesn't matter how we live.  The only meaningful record of our lives, our memories, would be completely obliterated in death.  

Whether we love or hate Him, pretend He doesn't exist, do good or evil;  

Whether you starve to death at age 2 or live in luxury till 90;

Without a God,

All would be erased when the maggots ate our brains.  

All memory of our lives disappears at death, 

All manner of lives lived, 

All becomes meaningless nothing: we might as well have never existed. 

All disappears exactly as if it had never happened.

However, if I obstinately choose my own selfish way, and He does exist, I will have lost everything for eternity.   

Therefore I will choose to love Him, because if in the end all memory of my life is lost, I would have lost nothing. But if He exists, I gain everything.