NoBull.ws - If I live my life believing and obeying a fictitious god, what have I lost?

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What Have I Lost?

I've been asked essentially the same question twice in recent months, and I think this is a good place and time to answer it.

The question is almost one half of Pascal's Wager, but with a difference. Pascal asserted that if you incorrectly believe God exists "you lose nothing." The current question, in slight contrast, is "What have I lost?" The following question was taken verbatim from an email recently addressed to me through a mailing list:

Question: “Just for thought's sake, let's say that I am wrong. Let's say there is even one contradiction/mistake in the Bible. If one part of the Bible is a lie (wrong), it is ALL a lie. A person can't have it both ways (accept part of it and reject part of it). If I am wrong, and I chose to live my life in respect to what I believe to be the truth (The Bible), what have I lost?”

Clarification: First, while keeping the original above, let me try to clarify your question a little bit. As I understand it, you are saying this:

If any part of the Bible is wrong, then it is ALL a lie. Nevertheless, even if the Bible were all a lie, and if I choose to live my life believing and obeying it anyway, what have I lost?”

Answer: First, let's discuss your question briefly. Then I'll give you several answers.

You say that if any part of the Bible is wrong, then it is ALL a lie. I've heard that all my life, but I don't understand why anybody would say it.

It seems to me there's a lot of good poetry, important history and mythology, some great stories, and even some good advice in the Bible. Just because I don't believe it's "the infallible Word of God" doesn't mean I think it's totally useless or that "it is ALL a lie."

No other book is God's word, either; but I have several hundred of them in my personal library, because they have a lot of value to me.

On the other hand, I reject ALL of the Bible as God's word, if that's what you mean. Since I believe there is no evidence that any god exists, then neither is there likely to be any "word of god."

Anyway, let's leave the commentary and get to the heart of your question: “If I am wrong, and I chose to live my life in respect to what I believe to be the truth (The Bible), what have I lost?”

In other words, "even if the Bible were all a lie, and if I choose to live my life believing and obeying it anyway, what have I lost?”

Since everybody interprets the Bible differently -- even those who claim not to interpret it at all -- it's impossible to say exactly what you personally will lose by relying on it. It depends not only on what the Bible says, but equally on how you interpret it.

As you said, we are assuming here that you are wrong about the Bible, and that it is NOT God's word (or revelation to humankind).

Since this is an assumption for this particular article, I am making no attempt to explain here why I think it is a correct assumption. I've already done that in other articles on this site. For examples see Contradictions in the Bible, Saved in the Nick of Time!, and others.

There are a few answers that will apply to many people with positions similar to yours. Exactly how they apply and how much they matter will depend on your specific interests and beliefs, of course.

Because I know you personally, I am aware that some of these probably don't apply to you, and others may not matter to you; but I include them here because they will all apply to many people who believe that every word of the Bible is literally true. And at least some of them probably apply to you personally, and are important to you.

You WILL lose the truth. If you are wrong and you continue to believe and act on your misinformation, then your whole life will be based on an untruth. Some of us yearn for real knowledge, or at least the best information we can get, and we are learning a great deal of it through The Scientific Method. (Those of us not directly involved in science learn from those who are, of course.)
You WILL PROBABLY lose a lot of joy and peace from "knowing" that a huge part of the world's population is going to be tortured in eternal fire. Even worse, this may include some of your kids, grand-kids, other relatives, and/or friends. Probably a cousin or two.

If this does NOT cost you a lot of joy and peace, then it has already cost you something even far more important: empathy and kindness. (See next point.)

Alternatively, you MAY lose your ability to empathize with people who don't believe as you do, and not be terribly concerned about the everlasting torture you believe is in store for them.
You WILL lose your freedom to think and act in your own best interest and that of your family and others, by making yourself the slave of an imaginary deity. Do you really want that? Personally, I had way too much of it for way too long.
You WILL lose your ability to decide what's good and what's bad based on actual human experience and knowledge. Instead, you'll be trying to make sense of the irrational and contradictory ramblings of a discombobulated group of people of all educational levels and many occupations and points of view, writing in several different languages between about 1,900 and 3,500 years ago. (Why is it that nearly every superstition seems to depend on ancient "knowledge?")
You MAY lose your ability to understand even some of the most basic principles of such fields as math, biology, astronomy, cosmology, geography, psychology, and human nature, since they can all be considered to conflict with a literal reading of different parts of the Bible.
You MAY lose your ability to learn and understand the principles of modern medicine, which depend more and more on the theories and facts of evolution.
You MAY lose your horror of such things as mass murder, genocide, theft, slavery, and stealing new territory by warfare; since your imaginary god often ordered people to commit such atrocities in the Old Testament times.
You MAY lose your understanding of the need to preserve our environment and natural resources, since you probably expect Jesus to "come back" very soon and create a paradise on earth. If enough people believe that way and act and vote accordingly, our great grandchildren will live in a desolate world in another century or less. If they survive the inevitable resource wars that will be caused by this kind of thinking by too many people.
You MAY lose a great deal of money in the form of tithes and offerings that should have gone to pay for a better life for yourself and your family, a college education for your kids, or that could have been donated to something actually useful. Like the Cancer Society or National Geographic, for example. Or maybe even the No Bull Website. (hint, hint )
You MAY become fatalistic about such things as death, believing that your god will not let you die until it is "your time." If so, you'll probably be equally fatalistic about the life and death of your loved ones and other people. If your god is not real, as we're assuming here, then you and others may lose any number of years of life by depending on this superstition for safety.
You WILL NOT lose your emotional addiction to a lot of feel-good bull.

These are a few things I can think of right now, and I feel sure there are many others. Watch for additions to this list from time to time.

As Sam Harris said in a recent editorial, "The truth is, there is not a person on Earth who has a good reason to believe that Jesus rose from the dead or that Muhammad spoke to the angel Gabriel in a cave. And yet billions of people claim to be certain about such things. As a result, Iron Age ideas about everything high and low — sex, cosmology, gender equality, immortal souls, the end of the world, the validity of prophecy, etc. — continue to divide our world and subvert our national discourse. Many of these ideas, by their very nature, hobble science, inflame human conflict and squander scarce resources."

This page was last updated 08/21/09 06:14 PM.

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