Another Visit with Pascal

Dear Internet Diary,

Annoying Question Number 1:
What if you're wrong? If I, a theist, am wrong, nothing happens I have nothing to lose. If you are wrong, however, you have everything to lose! Wouldn't it be safer to just believe?

You know, you're absolutely right. It would be much safer to be an a-one, righteous, fearing believer! So, if you don't mind, I'll hitch a ride with you to the local Temple, where we both must begin our conversion process to be able to enter the world of Orthodox Judaism. You'd better take a bath, and get ready spiritually, because you're going to have to get circumcized. If you're already circumcized, you're not off the hook. The ceremony of Hatafat Dam Brit is required--they need your blood. Then you'll need the mikveh, during the tevillah., and then...well, our Rabbi will be able to tell us.

After that, in the spirit of safety, we should consider Mormonism. You never know. God might live in Salt Lake City! It might be a fucking second alto in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir! To be safe, you should consider wearing the underwear in the shower.

We have absolutely no goddamned idea of who god is, and what it wants. According to the agnostics, we can't ever know what it wants with us. So, your next conversion, in my opinion, should be Santeria. It couldn't hurt to slit a few chicken throats just in case Ogun wants blood. If you've ever read the King James bible, you should know that gods tend to like the smell of dead animals.

Finally, we should both get out our checkbooks and prepare to schedule a few sessions with the old E-Meter aty our local Church of Scientology. It's a possiblity that the only way to escape our fate is with a few hundred thousand dollars towards the ability to leave our very bodies, just like L Ron Hubbard did. Who knows? You might be able to hang out with Kirstie Alley and some loudmouth manic depressive whose name escapes me.

You didn't actually assume that your particular religion was the default one, did you? After all, there are thousands of religions out there--not to mention the denominations of Protestantism, all declaring that their practices are the one true religion. And there you are, a complacent monotheist. I always thought monotheism was a stupid position: after all, you couldn't possibly be omniscient. Have you looked all over the universe in case there might be more gods out there, with all manner of idiosynchracies? How much chance do you have just believing to "be safe" when even the nice people in your wonderful book had to scramble to trick the Angel of Death every other Friday night, whom had a proclivity for young boys, ? And are you eating hamburgers on Friday? Should you eat hamburgers at all? Are they blessed?

I have another proposition for you. You can live in fear that you're pleasing all the right gods with your obsessive-compulsive practices, worrying that Jehovah or Ogun or the Angel of Death is hiding behind the next corner, or you can throw it all in the dustbin and be a normal human being who lives by the laws of causality just like everything else in the universe. If it turns out you only have one chance at life, I'm betting on the second choice.