Should I pretend to believe in God even if I don’t?

Well that depends on how the question is phrased. Is it a Christian god? Any one god? Many gods? Whose god should we pretend to believe in? I’m going to go down the post to talk about each point. If god exists then he created everything and knows everything. It’s an assumption, there aren’t any facts to back up this claim. If a god exists we still can’t know for sure if it created everything and knows everything. If he does not exist: the argument about the universe being accidental or random is a straw man. Or at least and argument from ignorance. Who says the universe is random and accidental? The laws of gravity, motion, and energy work the way they do and therefore allowed galaxies and stars and worlds to form. And just because there is no god does not make us ‘meat puppets’ of any less value to ourselves. Also who says that if there is no god that there is no purpose or meaning in life. I like Carl Sagan’s take on it. We are made up of star stuff, we are the universe understanding itself. So why not pretend? Because religion comes with a lot of baggage on what to believe and how. If you deny Allah then you must be killed. If you deny Jesus as divine then you speak heresy. This isn’t a good thing. Believing in something just because it makes us feel better can lead us down a dark path, as in all the Left’s ideology. (I have no ill will toward any one who believes in a god or follows a religion unless you infringe upon another’s rights)

For me, it’s an either or proposition.
Neither the Name nor the “Belief” is necessarily germane.
I think that either something, in this case, the Universe; Life; Man; All and Everything, is Created or, it’s not.
Ordinary people call things that appear to “just happen” such as lightning strikes or a bird pooping on your head or stubbing your toe or a drive by shooting that hits someone in someplace never intended – as random; without purpose…
We generally call things that are made or created or manufactured as having been made or created by someone or something – whether its a computer chip or a bird’s nest. We tend to call these things “not random.”
So – those are my “definitions.”
I believe that we either live in a Created Universe or we do not – in which case we live in a random; accidental world.
Based on my studies; my experiments; my observations; and my life, I’m pretty sure that we live in a Created Universe.
And, I do not see the benefit of believing that All and Everything is random and/or accidental.
I do see benefit in believing that we live in a G-d Created Universe complete and replete with Laws and rules that apply to Mankind.
That’s all.

To say that either the universe is created or it is not is a black and white fallacy. If the universe always has been then this defeats the argument of only two options. Also I think you are using two definitions of random. One that things happen that appear random because it was unexpected, and the other that appears random because it does not appear organized. Like the bird pooping on your head. If you could calculate all the variables like your position, the height and speed of the bird when it let go etc. then it no longer appears as a random event and becomes something that will definitely happen. If atoms and molecules are governed by the laws of nature then they will behave in certain ways. These behaviors can then be seen to build upon each other until you have the universe as we see it today. Neither of which is random or accidental. It will eventually happen. The only benefits I can see to believing in a universe that is created is to comfort ourselves about our own mortality, and maybe so we can have an authority figure to help us on our way. The benefits to believing in a universe that is not created is that it frees us up to decide our own future, and to discover that future. Of course to each his own.

Indeed.
And that is why I am not arguing for “belief” in anything.
I was asking why not fake it…

That being said – here’s my question for y’all – What is the difference between a human being and an animal?

Speaking in tongues, a gift of the Holy Spirit. 😐
https://youtu.be/bZIrU7m0gx0

Is belief a choice?

There is a member of the Baptist congregation I have settled on after leaving a several Catholic congregations, an Episcopalian congregation (I do like the ceremonies there – and at the time there was great controversy about a man who divorced his wife when he realized he was Gay and was elevated to Bishop … and subsequently divorced the man he had left his wife for – I met a Gay priest who had had lived as a Gay man all his life and opted to serve a congregation that was challenged enough for any sensible Priest to steer clear of the place), and a two United Methodist congregations (the last one hired a Functioning Alcoholic who ceased to Function before our eyes but was not let go by the church because they had so few people still serving in the Ministry).

This guy keeps on getting into earnest, sincere conversations about which of the Old Testament Prophets offers the best PROOF that Jesus is the Son of God, sent by God to fulfill the Prophecies. He also talks A LOT about how Jehovah’s Witnesses pamphlets are chock full of Bad Doctrine.

It is impossible to lie to God about your Faith in Him. And I have heard Episcopalian, Catholic and Methodist examples of people basically lying to themselves about having strong Faith.

I knew a woman who ran one of the best Soup Kitchens I have ever served in. When she Prayed, I was drawn into her Prayers. I find myself squirming as I listen to some of the elaborately constructed prayers I have heard. I have felt like I was watching a game of verbal Jenga. And I have drifted off listening to indifferently delivered Boiler Plate. This woman Walked the Walk (she was not even then in the best of health but soldiered on nonetheless) and Talked the Talk. She Believed. I am convinced of that.

As to Faith and Morality, Joe Namath got on the Wagon when he realized his wife was ready to leave him. But whatever his Ghosts were, they were not all in the Bottle, so his wife did Divorce him a few years later. His inspiration having left him he started drinking again. He did manage to get back on hat Wagon again, but only, as he put it, when he realized he was, when he was simply trying to keep his wife in his life, a “Dry Drunk” – same problems just no Booze in the self-destructive mix. He had to address the full mix.

It may, and I suspect does, take Strength from elsewhere rather than just Inside to maintain a solid sense of Morality, an awareness that Morality is not always convenient or self-serving (and it is often both – did Michael Vick become an animal lover or just someone who wanted to maintain his income stream?), but can be damned Inconvenient, and lead one to engage in behavior someone else might even describe as Self-Destructive.

That Morality was certainly dangerous for the people who his Otto Frank and his family. I wonder if whoever reported them to authorities felt that that reward, in those times of deep deprivation, justified turning their neighbors in because they had a family to feed.

I also wonder if people who profess not to Believe but act like Believers are supposed to act are closer to God than they realize. If God chooses not to tell them they are, maybe I should just smile the way in romantic comedies the friends of people who say they are just friends with someone else smile and let them figure it out on their own.

Such a wonderful reminisce by such a young man deserves acknowledgment.
I was a WASPE, born and bred from generations of C of E Anglicans and Episcopalians.
I was, for a time, in a congregation (St. Stephen’s, Milburn, NJ) that was part of the diocese of John Shelby Spong (whom our bible study group called “the Great Satan”), who ordained the first gay Episcopalian priest.
One of my brothers became an Episcopalian minister as a second career (after retiring from being a VP in the Defense Industry), so I kept up with the doings of the gay bishop and divorce and the other sexually ambiguous leadership of the Episcopal church.
A minor reason that I was able to become an Orthodox Jew was that the American Christian churches had lost both their grounding in G-d and/or their use for Christian scholarship and studies.
And, as my Jewish wife and I learned over the years, the Reform movement and the Jewish Conservative synagogues to which we belonged, had also lost their connection to G-d and their grounding in our 3,000 years of Jewish Law…

Gee, there’s a bunch of smart people who congregate here. See what I did there?

Truly, this was a very interesting thread to read and my take is that the people contributing are thoughtful, intelligent and fair-minded. I appreciate that.

As one of my teachers used to drill into us: “You can’t spell ‘belief’ without ‘lie.'” Far better to know for certain, or otherwise admit you don’t know, right?
The problem with Pascal’s Wager is that it only considers two options: the Christian view or the Atheist view. In reality, there are MANY different religions, all with varying weights and payouts that have to be considered, and each with a different form of God, afterlife, moral code, etc. So it would seem that an informed gambler would look at all of them and try to find those commonalities between them instead of just choosing between “The Bible or nothing.”
Me personally, I’m a pagan deist but I also draw a lot from Taoism.

Indeed.
That’s why my polemic is NOT “Pascal’s Wager.”
I learned a great deal in my younger days from all sorts of various “pagan” religions and, of course, from Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching (required reading for all us wanna be hippies back in the day). I did indeed spend about a year contemplating the Tao and reading other teachers, in addition to spending about 40 years practicing Tai Chi Chuan; becoming very proficient in the I Ching (I confess that, in spite of its questionable use according to Jewish Law, I still consult the I Ching occasionally).
I also delved deeply into other “Eastern” practices such as Tibetan Buddhism and the various spiritual paths of Yoga.
For me – I advocate that I should delve deeply into Jewish Law and my relationship to G-d when dealing with This World.
However, I am not arguing for acceptance of “the bible.”
I am arguing against the modern day penchant to deny G-d and embrace ONLY hedonism and fantasy.

False dichotomy. It is not a situation of “…deny G-d and embrace ONLY hedonism and fantasy.”

Humans, like every other social species, evolved survival behaviors that facilitate getting along with the group. Behaviors that disrupt the group are selected out by other behaviors that maintain group cohesion.

What fantasy do those who “deny” [presupposes there is a god] engage in?

I was responding to:
“So it would seem that an informed gambler would look at all of them and try to find those commonalities between them instead of just choosing between “The Bible or nothing.””
The “Bible” in that quote would represent G-d to me and the “nothing” for me represents hedonism and fantasy.
The “fantasy” that those who “deny” G-d engage in, in the context of the quote to which I was referring, is that there is only the either or choice that was given.

I was responding to this: “I am arguing against the modern day penchant to deny G-d and embrace ONLY hedonism and fantasy.” Your words.

The actual fantasy is the belief that there are gods. Atheist aren’t fantasizing, theists are.
Are you asserting that those without faith are hedonists by default?

Out of curiosity, why do you censor the word “God”? Do you think that’s what God would want you to do? You think he’s that petty that he actually cares about the letter ‘o’ that much?

in spite of its questionable use according to Jewish Law

Are you referring to prohibitions against divination? Cuz Judaism has the Kabbalah, which is basically a variant of the eastern Chakra system. Jesus himself used divination. In fact, it was chronologically his first lesson to his disciples: “To you is given to know the truth, but to the rest, it shall seem as symbols.” Basically appearing to pull wisdom from the ether – from the Divine – which of course is God. The Lord’s Prayer is also a map of the Chakra system. 🙂

I am arguing against the modern day penchant to deny G-d and embrace ONLY hedonism and fantasy.

The example I often use is this: you can live without your legs more easily than you can live without your head, but in neither case are you whole. In the same way, you can grow spiritually by focusing on higher things to the exclusion of lower ones a lot faster than if you did the reverse; but again, in neither case are you truly whole. God gave us bodies with pleasurable experiences and minds to fantasize with for a reason. The key is knowing their proper role and function.

G-d is an added stringency used by most of those with whom I associate.
We do not use the Hebrew Name of G-d except in prayer or Learning.
We most often use the name Hashem when in writing on Jewish subjects. HaShem means “The Name” in Hebrew.
As the English name of G-d is G-d, there is a Tradition to not spell it out as we would do with English Hebrew words such as Elokhim where we might add a “K” into the word.
There are are some who have additional stringencies such as spelling Allah, All-h or Lord as L-rd. It’s a matter of Tradition and it Not required by Jewish Law.

If by Divination, you mean trying to tell the future, yes. We are enjoined not to use sources outside the Torah (which is more than just the Written Torah and covers a great deal, including Kabbalah) to try and foretell the future.
The I Ching does not “foretell the future” but, it borders on using a source outside of Torah.

As for your last paragraph, I agree.
I was responding to Your contention of “ just choosing between “The Bible or nothing.””

G-d is an added stringency used by most of those with whom I associate.

I know what it is and why people claim to use it (“cuz tradition says God told me so”). I’m asking why do you use it? Have you ever really thought about it in a deeper sense from first principles and whether God would even want that and why?

If by Divination, you mean trying to tell the future, yes. We are enjoined not to use sources outside the Torah (which is more than just the Written Torah and covers a great deal, including Kabbalah) to try and foretell the future.

Again, have you ever really stopped to question why, though? Fundamentally, what is different between me using so-called mystic arts to predict the future and me using a Doppler Radar to forecast the weather next week? Am I not predicting the future using something outside the Torah in that case?
Are you sure God doesn’t want you to be able to do that – given his own Son allegedly did, as did many prophets – or is that just what you’re told God said?

Yes to both your questions of “why.”
I have been “investigating” the “why” of things for the last 55 years or so and, investigating the “why” of Jewish things for the last 30 years or so…
I can tell you where to study these things but, a forum/ blog like this is not conducive to answering in the detail that you appear to want…

There are only two options, and only the two, believe there are gods/deities or not believe. You can color a god any way you wish, and attribute any qualities to it you choose, it either exists or it does not. Embellishing the concept to create another variety of gods does not increase the likelihood that any one of them exists.

Sure, but there’s also a difference between God and god and gods and no gods at all. And even within the same number of deities, that doesn’t mean you got the right attributes to guarantee you happiness. So no, it’s really more than just a simple binary choice.
Even something like deism throws a wrench into this. “God was, but now is no more.” That’s neither theism nor atheism, really.

In reality a thing exists or it does not exist (despite having been given a name).
Example: Unicorns, Garuda, zombies.
These are all fantasy, imaginary things that do not exist in the real world, never did. The concepts exist but the things do not. Existence is binary, a thing exists or it does not. Being and not being are not the same thing at all.
All versions of gods are things given names but which do not exist in reality. And really, only in the human mind can there even be a binary on this concept [light on. light off]. It is really only a single point of truth–gods do not exist. Imagining that they do does not give them existence. It creates nouns.

Unicorns exist. They’re just grey and we call them rhinos. 😛
Same with zombies, we just call them brain-dead couch potatoes.

I saw this piece by Robert Arvay at American Thinker this morning, and wondered if he gets at the idea of what you had in mind – belief in the possibility of God – that is, the advantage of agnosticism vs atheism:
“It has been said by Voltaire, no less, that if there were no God, it would be necessary to invent Him.
“Another way of saying this is that, what is important is not so much whether we believe in God, but more so, whether we live as if we believe He exists…
“A secular society accepts the God axiom, and then does its imperfect best to work from there.  An atheist society rejects God entirely, with all that that implies.
“Without God, there is neither right nor wrong, unless one considers one’s personal opinion of those things to be infallible.  Absent God, there is neither good nor evil.  Without God, there are no inalienable human rights.  Without God, there is no empirical reason to regard humans as anything but objects, to be used when needed, discarded when not, and destroyed when they become a liability.  Raw nature is the ultimate sociopath.
None of this, of course, proves the existence or nonexistence of God.  It simply maps out for us our future course, depending on which path we choose to follow—faith in God, or atheism…”
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/02/yes_there_is_a_god.html
It’s worth taking the time to read the whole thing.

Re: The quote in your comment.

All claims that “without God, there can be no X,” whatever X is, are demonstrably false. (Also, why that particular god? There are thousands of them.) I follow a perfectly objective morality that needs no god to exist to justify it. It has an unshakably solid base that cannot be denied. That base can be seen right here in the world as we know it – no supernatural anything required. So, why would I add in anything unnecessary?

I’m no philosopher, so bear with me, but how is any human standard anything more than opinion? To apply the question to a concrete example, my understanding of the reason the founders attributed our unalienable rights to a Creator was that if those rights came from man, man could take them away. What makes your reason the ultimate unshakably solid base? Your objective morality the standard over postmodernists’ subjectivism and moral relativism? If your question was asked with the intent of trying to change my belief, you probably won’t find this worth your time, but if you were asking a sincere question in expectation of a response, Andrew Klavan has a better answer than anything I could come up with. Setting aside whether or not you agree with his argument, he’s delightful to listen to: https://www.acton.org/video/andrew-klavan-reintroducing-our-culture-truth

I never try to change anyone’s belief. I’ve never had any interest in that. I’m just explaining my own views.

The basis of my morality is life. Life exists, it’s observable, it’s universal, it’s not an opinion. The good is what serves to maintain and improve life, the evil is what impedes and impairs life.

This could turn into a long discussion, so I’ll refer you to a comment conversation I had last month on another post, where I explain in detail how and why this basis works, whether or not a god exists. It’s here.

While I’m not disputing that your basis is a sound one, it’s still your opinion based on your values, right? Let’s say another accepts your opinion that cognition places a higher value on human life over other lifeforms, then what resolves the conflict if he or she believes maintaining and improving life demands resources must be diverted from the feeble, aged, and those of limited cognition in order to better serve those better able to improve life? Aren’t the incapacitated a burden that impedes improvement? And, if maintaining and improving human life is the highest goal, why shouldn’t more resources be allocated to those best able to serve humanity through their superior cognition? What resolves the conflict with those who believe consolidation of power best serves the maintenance and improvement of human life?

[After I wrote this comment, I created a forum post to continue in. It’s here .]

While I’m not disputing that your basis is a sound one, it’s still your opinion based on your values, right?

No, that’s backwards. I determine my values based on the same objective information I base my morals on. The morals come first, though, because I can’t judge the rightness of the values I choose until I have something to judge them against.

Let’s say another accepts your opinion that cognition places a higher value on human life over other lifeforms…

I didn’t say that. All I said was that life is the objective basis for my morality.

…then what resolves the conflict if he or she believes maintaining and improving life demands resources must be diverted from the feeble, aged, and those of limited cognition in order to better serve those better able to improve life?

Then he or she would be advocating immorality. First of all, in the world I advocate there would be no generalized, sort of floating around resources – everything would be owned by someone. So that question would never come up. Also, and independent of my idealized world, no one has the right to demand someone else’s resources be used for anything; that’s calling for theft. And who is “better able to improve life” is a complex question, starting with asking “Whose life? and “Improved how?” and “Who decides what constitutes improvement?” Generally, that should be left to the individual seeking improvement of his own life, or to those he has designated as his representatives if he cannot make (or hasn’t made) his wishes known. See also my response at the end of this comment.

Rights never conflict. Every time someone says they do, they’re making a mistake. This can also get complicated but in general it’s not difficult. One example: The perceived conflict between property rights and the right to self-defense, in a case where a store owner doesn’t want to allow guns on his property. He has that right (stupid as it is to do that) as it’s his property. Yet his customers have the right to arm themselves for self-defense. The answer to the apparent conflict is that by disallowing guns on his property, he must accept responsibility for the defense of his customers. (Note that present law doesn’t acknowledge this, but it follows naturally from the nature of those two rights.) So, no conflict.

If a customer still doesn’t want to accept the terms under which the owner allows him into the store, he must then not enter the store. The customer doesn’t have a right to use anyone else’s property without permission. He might be unhappy about that, but how one feels has no bearing on exercising and enforcing rights. And the store owner might be happy about it, until either the added cost of adequately defending his customers becomes prohibitive or he loses enough customers to negatively impact his business.

Aren’t the incapacitated a burden that impedes improvement?

No. No one has a duty to do anything about them. That won’t stop people from helping, especially here in the most benevolently generous population the world has ever seen, and those who help surely won’t see it as impeding the improvement of their lives (unless they’re some kind of masochist, and even then they’ll take pleasure from being impeded).

And, if maintaining and improving human life is the highest goal, why shouldn’t more resources be allocated to those best able to serve humanity through their superior cognition? What resolves the conflict with those who believe consolidation of power best serves the maintenance and improvement of human life?

It’s individual rights that prevent the injustices you mention. My answer above about the allocation of resources applies here as well. And improving human life isn’t some kind of collectivist notion of the greatest good for the greatest number or improving the life of humanity or something. Instead, to over-emphasize the point, it’s about individually improving individual lives, as individuals.

Rights aren’t based on someone’s current condition. They’re based on the requirements and capabilities of a completely healthy and fully functioning adult. But rights don’t then only apply to that abstraction or only to those who match it’s characteristics, they apply to all humans, from the fertilized egg to the oldest of us, no matter our condition. The abstraction’s only purpose is to serve as a model to determine the full possible range of rights that humans – all of them – have. Once determined, rights apply to each distinct, individual human, one by one. Abstractions such as some designated group of humans, (e.g. left-handed French waitresses) don’t have rights, only their individual members do. And those members don’t gain any additional rights by being members of the group. So your individual right to live as you choose as long as you don’t violate the rights of others precludes any kind of government that violates that right you possess. (That such governments do exist doesn’t change that fact, it only shows that we have free will and can choose to violate others’ rights.)

Pal Balog said below that he might create a forum topic to discuss this further. Blog comments are no good for this. Going forward, if you want to continue, I’ll be in his thread over there (or in one I create if he hasn’t yet).

Lovin’ the Klavan. He and Bill Whittle are the only two I listen to nowadays. Annoyed at the Klavan for his now once a week…

I miss his daily show too, but am happy for him having the chance to use his abilities as he best sees fit. To quote the late, great John Lee Hooker from his song Boogie Chillen, “It’s in him, and it got to come out.”

There are viable exceptions. And “moral” could be one such. As at least by some definitions it is directly tied to god.
Dennis Prager has a number of videos on that, explaining in length. IMO it is pure sophism and I see no practical aspect, but formally it is correct.
“I follow a perfectly objective morality that needs no god to exist to justify it.” here we go :). What you call “perfectly objective morality” is what other people call either god or mere bullshit (if/when at scrutiny it proves to be actually subjective).
Unfortunately we have that Babel thingy, for some people jthe term “god” invokes that white beraded fellow sitting on the cloud, or one in nice armor with a hammer or one holding lightning, or be omni*.*. All of what is irrelevant in this context.

See my response to Allison, above. There’s nothing subjective or relative about my morality.

I’ll probably create a forum topic on this later, as this format sucks for discussion. 🙂 And it is an interesting topic.
My preliminary take is you match my previous pattern. Though it is not yet clear whether you actually believe that a bunch of subjective terms are actually objective, or use a different definition of “objective”, i.e making it mean stuff not you thought up personally and that’s it. (I.e. include subjective thoughts of other people in.)
Just to comment on the recent input, we don’t have an objective definition on what “life” is. Even in the discipline that studies it — biology. And not just in general, but particularly we don’t have that even for human life. In either biology, medicine or law. Just a bag of arbitrary criteria to resolve cases.
The quality of life is an even more moot concept — and we should know that to evaluate what improves is or does the opposite. Before going into the weeds, do you claim that you can sort out all the trolley problem cases? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
If anything, I thought that is quite universally accepted that those don’t have a solution we could call objective.
Fun version here:
https://www.moralmachine.net/

[After I wrote this comment, I created a forum post to continue in. It’s here .]

My preliminary take is you match my previous pattern. Though it is not yet clear whether you actually believe that a bunch of subjective terms are actually objective, or use a different definition of “objective”, i.e making it mean stuff not you thought up personally and that’s it. (I.e. include subjective thoughts of other people in.)

No, although I don’t know your definition of objective” either It’s not the case that the only alternatives are that morality comes from “God” or that it’s subjective. Unless you think science and reason aren’t objective, in which case we’ll have great difficulty proceeding.

The trolley problems are irrelevant to normal morality because they are emergency situations, in which the only goal should be to return to normalcy, where normal morality once again applies. For example, it can be moral (or not) to push away someone who is trying to climb into your already full lifeboat if allowing them to get in would jeopardize the survival of those already on board. But if it were not an emergency, that would be a different matter. The ethics of emergencies is different than that which guides normal behavior.

You’re right, the forum would be better for this discussion.

Can you explain more of your “objective morality?”

I took it to the member forum but it seems you’ve already found it there.

Thank you

Fellowship

Where is the virtue in being inauthentic? And why would you think it reasonable to ask people to be that? What kind of people would go along with you? You would gather liars and frauds to yourself to what, assuage some perverse need you have? I’m sure such a god would be very pleased with such a ploy. And again, if so, unworthy of whoreship.

I was not discussing virtue. Nor was I discussing authenticity.
I was discussing what might be useful.

If your god exists and if it is omniscient as is claimed, and if it knows your thoughts and feelings then any pretence of believing would be a known insincerity to this god. Shouldn’t that be an offense, a sin? Or is your god so insecure and egoistic that it is pleased by the flattery of a lie, and so stupid that it can’t tell the difference? If the latter then it is unworthy of whorship. The only ones being duped by your pretence are other, easily duped humans. Of what value would that be? False prophets anyone?
This is not a novel idea, It is called Pascal’s wager and it was invalid when he proposed it just as it is when you do.
Thou shalt not bear false witness <—mean anything to you Judeo-Christians?
Faith is not a pretence. I will not expend my life energy to maintain a facade as a fraud. I don’t owe that to anyone and you will not get it from me.

“Shouldn’t that be an offense, a sin?”
I would suggest that my views on “sin”; “false witness”; “faith”; and “pretense”, and other of your “Judeo-Christian” concepts might be quite different than yours – particularly in light of the fact that I mentioned none of these things.

Can you then describe the parameters of which concepts and idea sources we are permitted to draw from in order to participate in this discussion?

JudeoChristianity isn’t mine. It is a pervasive under girding in the culture in which I was raised and with which I have the most familiarity. I would be a fraud if I presumed to speak from a place I have never been.

I would suggest taking what I wrote in context and, if interested, ask me specifically on the meaning or context of the words that I wrote…

That is what I just did. I asked you where you erect the walls on context. You rejected mention of Catholic-xtian ideas. And other than a smattering of Hinduism and Buddhism, and Scientology I got nothin’ else.

Frankly the Hindu gods and stories are way more exciting than anything in the bible.

Of course you should not pretend. Also you should not go to forums where people spread bad advice.
And if you so much want to pretend, maybe start with living by the ten commandments skipping the first — and there is the one about you shall not lie.

Why not? Can you give us an example of any possible good that can come from being able to successfully lie to ourselves? I don’t mean positive thinking like, “despite my doubts or the huge odds against me, just maybe I can succeed at (insert aspiration here),” I mean delusion and the loss of one’s integrity. If God is the ultimate truth he tells us he is, how does one simultaneously believe in the ultimate truth while basing that belief on a lie? Not saying it isn’t possible, I’m genuinely asking because I can’t fathom how.

Yes.
Functional people successfully pretend to “believe” everyday.
In light of Bill Whittle’s current crusade, we pretend to believe that those with whom with disagree are not evil immoral hateful idiots – whether it be your Congresscritter; you local official; your boss; your coworker; your nice neighbor; or your relative…

Thanks for responding.

This makes me think of a joke.
A man dies and goes to Heaven. St. Peter is giving him the grand tour. He wonders about this, surely St. Peter has lots of demands on his time, but Peter explains that time is an illusion, and that because he’s in Heaven, he has the option to make time for everybody, no matter how many billions… so he does. He personally gives the grand tour to every single person.
So he’s showing the guy around… shows him the Catholic Quarter, the Protestant Quarter, the Muslim Quarter…
“Wait, the Muslim Quarter?”
“Certainly. They’re all God’s children. Surely you didn’t think the all-loving God would condemn people to eternal hellfire basically just for getting his name wrong, did you?”
The Hindu Quarter, the Wiccan Quarter, the atheist Quarter…
“Wait, what? Atheists? They don’t even believe in God.”
“We know, but that doesn’t matter. God believes in them.”
And all through this he keeps seeing a section of the Holy City that is walled off from the rest. Finally out of curiosity he walks over and thumps on the wall, saying, “What’s behind here?”
“Shhhh…” says St. Peter. “That’s where the Baptists live, they think they’re the only ones here.“

I don’t know who he was quoting (probably Jung) but here is another Jordan Peterson observation that seems pretty relevant: “you believe how you act”. If you act in a moral way in the world then you believe in moral truth. G-d could reasonably defined as the ultimate source of moral truth or the creator of moral truth.

Pascal’s Wager? Seriously?

Haha (as opposed to LOL which is three syllables and is a freaking abbreviation for… “Haha.”)

Sincerely, though, which of the thousands of gods should I bet on?

The one(s) that offer you the most in pursuing the Higher Values of Life such as Justice and self control.

Why should I choose those?

Also, you said in your post that one should pretend to believe in one specific god. Why that one?

Finally, see Gallstones’s comment, above. Wouldn’t a god know that you’re pretending?

You “should choose those” because you asked me.
Why believe in One G-d? Because there is Only One!!
(And He doesn’t even require your Head.)
Again – “Why that one?” Because you asked me.
And, of course G-d would know you are pretending, So what? Why would that make any difference whatsoever in my answer?

I should choose those aims because I asked you about them? That makes no sense.

Believe in the god you recommend because it’s the only one? Billions of people throughout history have said there are others. What makes you’re the right one? And again, choose that one because I asked you? Makes no more sense than the first time.

Assuming for the moment that you god exists (in reality it doesn’t), it would know that you’re pretending. That you’re lying about believing. That’s supposed to be a sin, according to that god. It’s not going to be happy with you lying to it.

As to what difference any of this would make to your answer, I’d say none. But this isn’t about your specific answer, the words you chose or how you arranged them. It’s about what you’re advocating here, examining that at a conceptual level.

I think you answered your question here “Look – if there is G-d, then He is the Creator of All and Everything and is Great enough that He knows YOU personally better than you know yourself.”
I believe if you have strong ethical & moral values, you will get into God’s Kingdom through Jesus after death by being judged.
People who follow Biblical Christianity, believe in God and will get to God’s Kingdom by accepting Jesus as our savior.

An excellent observation.

Jordan Peterson had my most interesting take on it in the three way interview with he, Dave Rubin and Ben Shapiro on Dave’s show. His explanation of the existence of God is that there is NOTHING random in physical nature. The laws of physics exist from the very largest to the very smallest scale and there is no layer of randomness in that range of scales. There is an order that may not be dismissed or ignored.

Did he actually say that? Absolutely not like hon to go out and make obviously BS statements. Our accepted best random generators are based on laws of physics and use radioactive decay.

Even so, inserting something that doesn’t have to be there doesn’t give anything to this order that isn’t already, simply, just there. Gods are human addendums to the universal machinery.

This is probably the most common mistake people, including many if not most scientists, make. There are no “laws of physics” underlying existence that everything must follow. That’s a belief that ultimately derives from Plato and his Forms, possibly the biggest mistake ever made in philosophy.

Reality does what it does. We notice regularities and come up with mathematics that describe those regularities. The “laws” are ideas that we derive in order to understand what we observe according to our human intelligence. If there were no humans, those “laws” wouldn’t exist, yet existence would keep right on doing exactly what it’s doing.

It’s quite possible, even highly likely, that a different kind of intelligent being out there somewhere would have entirely different “laws” that describe reality in a way that suits their intelligence. Yet the universe behaves the same for them as it does for us.

The “laws of physics” follow from reality, they don’t govern reality. Reality was here, getting along just fine without them, for a pretty long time before we showed up. And it’ll keep getting along without them after we’re gone.

If somebody says “God Bless You” to me, an agnostic, I take it in the spirit intended. If in the course of casual conversation the other person says something like “Good Lord willing, I do not tell them I don not believe there is one, I accept the turn of phrase as the comment was intended, that you don’t know what comes next. If somebody thanks their God in response to me saying that no harm befell me as a result of (insert minor catastrophe here), I do not tell them that their imaginary (in my mind) God had nothing to do with it, I accept it in the spirit intended. I wish people a Merry Christmas, unless I know they are not Christian, and even then will if I know they enjoy the secular nature of the celebration.

I am not technically pretending to believe in a God, I am simply not making an issue over someone else’s assumptions.

I don’t pretend to know why one person is lead to believe while another does not. I know that belief can change once or twice throughout a long life. However, that does not change a good person being a good person.

Some of the change is developmental and having the fortune of being exposed to different and broader ideas of reality.

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