THE BEST BET - CATHOLICISM..?
The Roman Catholic Church teaches that if you believe in God and obey him and
join his Catholic Church, even if you are wrong and there is no God you will at
least have lived a righteous life. They say that if you don’t believe you will
be damned in Hell forever. So they conclude that you are better off to believe.
It is the best bet. You have less to lose if you are a believer.
There are several problems with this.
You can do as much good for others with no belief in God as you might with the
belief. The bet insults the goodness of the non-religious. Are we to believe
that God wants us to be insulted?
It accuses unbelievers of being bad or dangerous or having great potential to be
bad. It is only right to do that if there is strong proof.
Is it really best to accuse God of being capable of making us suffer in Hell
forever? Or of being so unattractive at least to some of us that we can stay
there of our own free will forever? Is he that bad at helping us see how
adorable he supposedly is? If he loves all people, would he be pleased if we say
that those people are capable of being so evil that they will face everlasting
suffering and loneliness in Hell forever just because they are too vindictive to
leave? That is a very serious accusation and you would need to be able to visit
Hell and see it for yourself before you would have the right to accuse people.
Plus you would need to keep an eye on it for all eternity!
If it is best to believe in God that still does not mean you can believe in it.
You cannot make yourself believe anything. It has to happen freely. Thus the
best bet thing is irrelevant.
If God has a true Church set up, believing in him may not help you much unless
you join it and obey it as his voice on earth. But such obedience makes babies
of us.
Why should the best bet be about God and Catholicism? Maybe there is a religion
out that that is a better bet!
If you adore God and religion because you fear what punishment will befall you
if you ignore or oppose them that should lead to more fear - fear takes on a
life of its own. It will lead to violence and arrogance.
Also, believing just in case is not believing at all. If you really believed,
the warnings and threats would not motivate you to believe. Belief is separate
from all that. The fear masquerading as belief would be dangerous. It would make
you dangerous too.
The teaching of the Church about the Church and its faith being the best bet is
really a veiled threat. It says, "We believe you will go to Hell if you don't
believe so you should believe even if just in case we are right".
The Roman Catholic Church is not the only religion that makes threats. Islam
says people will be damned forever for deliberately refusing to become Muslim.
You would to try the impossible and believe in every religion that makes threats
to be really safe!
It is evil to believe in Hell just because you are afraid. You need excellent
evidence for such a horrible doctrine before you believe it without detriment to
your dignity.
Another version of the wager claims that if you find the evidence for God and
everlasting life in Heaven and the existence of Hell to be rather weak, believe
anyway for they will be confirmed when you die. This is still saying that it is
safer to believe.
Jesus claimed to be the Truth and Catholicism and Christianity claim to be the
one true faith. They say Jesus commanded we must worship God in truth, that is
by having his truth. So you are not allowed to treat say, your Catholic religion
as probably true or possibly true. You treat it as the truth and as if
everything was proven even when it is not. In other words, you obey the papal
ban on birth-control no matter how evil or absurd this ban seems to you. This is
a very arrogant, stubborn, pig-headed, irresponsible, dangerous and fanatical
example that the Roman Catholic religion is setting.
You are forbidden to argue like Pascal did, "I will follow God's Church in case
it is true. If it is false I will be virtuous because I obeyed. If it is true
and I don't obey, then I will go to Hell forever. So it is safer to follow the
Church." That totally contradicts the insistence of Jesus and his mad apostles
that you put ifs and buts out of your head. For you, the Church and Jesus are
the truth. Period. This shows how the faith is about control over minds and
lives.
The Catholic and Christian religion uses Pascal's argument to get followers for
it ditches honesty and consistency when it wants to get new victims. But what it
is but mere fire insurance against Hell? It thrives on religious fear. It boosts
that fear. It is the fear that leads Catholic to fear the Protestant and Mormon
and Muslim to name a few. It is the fear that makes Catholic families disinherit
and cast off sons or daughters who leave the Church. It is the fear that makes
Catholics vent hatred towards priests who forsake their "vocation" and get
married. It is the fear that is used to bully and frighten and put pressure on
women to avoid getting pregnant out of marriage. It is the fear of giving a "bad
example that draws to sin and Hell" that leads parents to rip the babies from
the arms of their unwed daughters and have the babies sent off to adoptive
parents to keep the "scandalous" knowledge of the births from the neighbours and
the rest of the family. It is the fear that leads a Catholic father to beat up
his son or daughter for doubting the religion or failing to go to Mass or
getting drunk or whatever - all of which Rome considers to be serious sins that
deserve everlasting torment. All it produces is hardship and hypocrisy because
it has people living in fear and only doing good and obeying to avoid Hell. The
good person does good for it is good. Doing it to avoid Hell means you are not
doing good for it is good but to avoid torment. It is begrudged good. Yet the
Church approves of this good for it says God will forgive you in confession
through the priest even if you are only repentant of sin for the sake of
avoiding Hell! Unmarried mothers and gay people, to take two examples, who
support the Church by being classed a member, by going to Mass or by giving
financial support to the Church are betraying themselves and other unmarried
mothers and other gay people. One day the Church could have the power to make
unmarried motherhood and being gay the horrific shame it was able to make it in
the past. And indeed in many parts of the world it has that power. Morality
changes with the fashions. As long as the Church condemns something, it could
get into a position in the future where it can persecute and suppress those who
flout its condemnation.
What a fine preparation for death Christianity is! When you feel death coming
upon you, you are naturally going to accept the Wager as correct and applicable.
It will be irresistible. After all who wants to go to Hell especially when it
could be only a few minutes away. But rejecting sin to avoid punishment is in
reality not rejecting the sin at all but the punishment. It means that because
of your Christian faith, you go out of this world hating punishment and wishing
you could sin all you want without the fear of it hanging over you. It's a
no-win situation. You are damned if you do repent and damned if you don't.