Crapshoot

The idea of one's afterlife being determined by what one does in life bothers me. It seems quite unreasonable to judge a person by what he has done in life, particularly since there is no clear set of rules. Oh, there are rules, but these are set by other people. There does not seem to be a compelling reason for me to believe that what everybody else in society is telling me accurately reflects the standards by which I will be judged in the hereafter.

We are told from youth that there are a great number of rules that we must follow, if we desire to attain rewards and avoid punishment. I'm not going to bother now with the rules that govern social behaviour exclusively. I doubt that table manners will be a major factor in the judgement of my immortal soul. There are many rules regarding social behaviour that may be considered to involve morality as well. Going about slaughtering human beings on sight will get you arrested and thrown in prison. This particular consequence is an attempt by society to regulate its members and ensure that nobody runs around killing its productive citizens. Murder also may be considered to have moral consequences. It seems clear that we are taught that to kill another human is an immoral act. The more religious would call it a sin, or something to that effect. The question is, who decided that it is a sin to kill human beings?

Certainly it is clearly prohibited in the Bible, and many other religious texts, but these are suspect as representations of the word of God, or whichever deity is relevant. The authenticity of a historical text may be verified to some extent, but the authenticity of a religious text cannot. At least in our modern understanding of religion. Deities are transcendental beings, beyond the human experience. So most humans will never have a direct interaction with a deity. As such, any religious text must be taken on faith. Faith is tremendously problematic, and I'll get to it in a little bit.

I think it's fairly clear that innate moral objections to acts such murder are definitely not innate. Mass murderers and serial killers are human, despite what popular culture and overwrought family members of victims may claim, and they have no compunction over murder. Soldiers in war kill, and are able to justify their actions by pointing to a flag. Move back just a little bit in human history, and we find many paragons of virtue who would not blink at the wholesale slaughter of their enemies. The killing of another human being is not something that runs counter to innate human sentiment. Moral objections to such acts are cultural and social. We are told that certain acts are bad, and after a while, we start to believe it. Guilt is not something that we are born with.

So there is nothing encoded in us that tells us, in detail what to do. That would appear to be the best method for a deity to give people a set of rules, short of personally appearing and giving a briefing every now and then. If we know what we should, without any input from society, then chances we would go and do it. And if we choose not to, then we willingly decide to go against divine will. As things stand, we do not know. I personally have no idea if theft or adultery or murder is going to count against me in the afterlife, assuming that one exists. So the only reason I do not do these things is because of the social conditioning that I have been subject to my entire life. This is a good thing, don't get me wrong. I believe that restricting the behaviour of the masses is crucial to maintaining the kind of society I like. This does not aid me in deciding whether I will go to Heaven or Hell. If I believe that the Bible is accurate, then they will. But I cannot say with any real conviction that the Bible is definitely, without a doubt, completely accurate. What if the whole gig has been a scam by the Devil? Heretical, I know, but not impossible. After all, the documents upon which the Bible was based were not written by Christ himself. Humans wrote them. And we don't exactly have a great track record with resisting the machinations of demons. So perhaps the entire premise of much of Christian regulation of human behaviour has been wrong. Maybe we were encoded with the right thing to do all along, and we are supposed to be raping and stealing and fighting and all that. Maybe we have been manipulated into thinking that resisting the natural impulses to do what is divinely encoded into our souls is the way to ascend to Heaven, when in fact it is the exact opposite.

Now, I don't actually believe that the Bible was written as a joke. I don't. So don't send me emails highlighting your failure to read what I typed.

Without a known code to govern my behaviour, it seems unfair and unreasonable to either reward or punish me for actions that I did not know were approved of or not. While ignorance of the law is not an excuse, at least the information is freely available to anyone who cares to find out. In the matter of judging my life, I have no means of learning what the true code of conduct is. I can guess at which one of the offerings is right, if any at all. So what we have is a system where you are hauled into court for wrongdoings under a legal code that is only known to the judge. Sounds a bit arbitrary to me. Similarly, it seems unfair to receive a reward for accidentally stumbling into the right thing to do.

An identical problem arises with choosing a religion. Assuming that there is some deity or deities, and we are answerable to them, how do we know which one is real? Let's say that believing in the right god will get you into heaven, and believing in the wrong one will land you in hell. Hypothetically speaking, if the true god is some pagan god that has been eliminated by Christianity, then we're all going to hell. In a more contemporary consideration, if the true god is among the ones in current worship, then how does a person discover this? If a person does end up choosing a religion, then this chosen religion will most likely either be the one that his parents or friends believe in, or the one with the most persuasive recruiters.

In the former case, I would be condemned to eternal agony because I happened to be born in a family with the wrong religion. Seems to me that the problem there lies in the god, for placing me there, and not in myself, who has no choice in the matter.

In the latter case, the problem is that it is impossible to choose a belief. You cannot sit down and decide to believe something else, since you would then not truly believe it. So if you are persuaded and charmed by an emissary of a false god, and the recruiters for the true god are simply not capable, then you are condemned because of the competence, or incompetence of others. This is eminently unfair.

Of course, the reverse also applies for rewards.

So we find that our eternal afterlife is a complete crapshoot. Great.