I mean, eternal torture is pretty frickin’ bad. I think in the end, I’d convert. And I’d also try to convert as many other people as possible, because I suspect I’d need to be cruel to fewer people if fewer people went against Christianity.
This is a very good point, and I believe I’ll point it out to my rather fundamentalist sibling when next we talk about this: if I really, truly believed that every non-Christian was doomed to eternal damnation, you can bet I’d be an evangelist!
Extreme Altruism
While I might not donate all my money to save 10, I think I value billions of lives more than my own life. Do I value it more than my own happiness? This is an extremely painful question for me to think about, so I stop thinking about it.
I definitely don’t value those billions of lives more than my own happiness, or more than the happiness of those I know and love. However, I would seriously consider giving all of my wealth if Omega assured me that me and mine would be able to continue to be reasonably happy after doing so, even if it meant severe lifestyle changes.
If I really, truly believed that every non-Christian was doomed to eternal damnation, I’d donate to a charity that distributes condoms to people in Africa. The key here is to minimize the number of non-Christians, not to make more people Christian.
This is a very good point, and I believe I’ll point it out to my rather fundamentalist sibling when next we talk about this: if I really, truly believed that every non-Christian was doomed to eternal damnation, you can bet I’d be an evangelist!
Extreme Altruism
I definitely don’t value those billions of lives more than my own happiness, or more than the happiness of those I know and love. However, I would seriously consider giving all of my wealth if Omega assured me that me and mine would be able to continue to be reasonably happy after doing so, even if it meant severe lifestyle changes.
If I really, truly believed that every non-Christian was doomed to eternal damnation, I’d donate to a charity that distributes condoms to people in Africa. The key here is to minimize the number of non-Christians, not to make more people Christian.