Let me amend my statement: the afterlives as described by the world’s major religions almost certainly do not exist, and it is foolish to act as though they do.
As for other possibilities, I can address them with the “which God” objection to Pascal’s Wager; I have no evidence about how or if my actions while alive affect whatever supernatural afterlife I may or may not experience after death, so I shouldn’t base my actions today on the possibility.
There is no reason to live in fear of the Christian God or any other traditional gods. However, there is perhaps a reason to live in fear of some identical things:
We live in a simulation run by a Christian, Muslim, Jew, etc., and he has decided to make his religion true in his simulation. There are a lot of religious people—if people or organisations gain the ability to run such simulations, there’s a good chance that many of these organisations will be religious, and their simulations influenced by this fact.
And the following situation seems more likely and has a somewhat similar result:
We develop some kind of aligned AI. This AI decides that humans should be rewarded according to how they conducted themselves in their lives.
Let me amend my statement: the afterlives as described by the world’s major religions almost certainly do not exist, and it is foolish to act as though they do.
As for other possibilities, I can address them with the “which God” objection to Pascal’s Wager; I have no evidence about how or if my actions while alive affect whatever supernatural afterlife I may or may not experience after death, so I shouldn’t base my actions today on the possibility.
My thoughts:
There is no reason to live in fear of the Christian God or any other traditional gods. However, there is perhaps a reason to live in fear of some identical things:
We live in a simulation run by a Christian, Muslim, Jew, etc., and he has decided to make his religion true in his simulation. There are a lot of religious people—if people or organisations gain the ability to run such simulations, there’s a good chance that many of these organisations will be religious, and their simulations influenced by this fact.
And the following situation seems more likely and has a somewhat similar result:
We develop some kind of aligned AI. This AI decides that humans should be rewarded according to how they conducted themselves in their lives.