either God does not exist or the Catholics are right about absolutely everything.
Then I would definitely and swiftly become an atheist, and I maintain that this is by far the most rational choice for everybody else as well. My prior belief in God not existing is relatively high (let’s say 50⁄50), but my prior belief in all of Catholicism being the absolute truth is pretty much nil. And if you’re using anything vaguely resembling consistent priors, it has to near-nil for you too, because the beliefs of Catholicism are just so incredibly specific. They narrow down the space of possible God-like beings to a very narrow slice of the type-of-God space.
Or do you admit that even if believing something makes you happier, you still don’t want to believe it unless it’s true?
More like: Believing something may make you happier but you can’t easily force yourself to believe something is true. Placebos have the same problem. You give someone a placebo and tell them it’s a happy pill, and it will make them happy. But you can’t do that trick on yourself. The placebo won’t work.
Still, I’ve seen people force themselves (over time) to believe in religion so I’m not saying it’s impossible.
I think your third example (charity) best illustrates your point, but the proposed world is still not optimally inconvenient, because someone could counter by saying that if they invest their money they can make even more in the future and donate much more money. So, increasing the level of inconvenience, the question you have to answer is: “Assuming you have the most money you will ever have, and assuming your charity money will be used honestly, would you donate?” I don’t have the answer to that question.
Then I would definitely and swiftly become an atheist, and I maintain that this is by far the most rational choice for everybody else as well. My prior belief in God not existing is relatively high (let’s say 50⁄50), but my prior belief in all of Catholicism being the absolute truth is pretty much nil. And if you’re using anything vaguely resembling consistent priors, it has to near-nil for you too, because the beliefs of Catholicism are just so incredibly specific. They narrow down the space of possible God-like beings to a very narrow slice of the type-of-God space.
More like: Believing something may make you happier but you can’t easily force yourself to believe something is true. Placebos have the same problem. You give someone a placebo and tell them it’s a happy pill, and it will make them happy. But you can’t do that trick on yourself. The placebo won’t work.
Still, I’ve seen people force themselves (over time) to believe in religion so I’m not saying it’s impossible.
I think your third example (charity) best illustrates your point, but the proposed world is still not optimally inconvenient, because someone could counter by saying that if they invest their money they can make even more in the future and donate much more money. So, increasing the level of inconvenience, the question you have to answer is: “Assuming you have the most money you will ever have, and assuming your charity money will be used honestly, would you donate?” I don’t have the answer to that question.