Believing in God Has The Same Expected Utility As Not Believing in God

My aim is to address the argument for betting on God.
The Argument for Betting on God
(BG1) One should always choose the option with the greatest expected utility (BG2) Believing in God has a greater expected utility than not believing in God (BG3) So you should believe in God

Here’s the idea behind the first premise of the argument. Suppose you’re a competitive athlete and have a race coming up. You have one week left of practice and you really want to do well at your race. At the same time, you don’t know if the training is worth it, because your chances of winning are not that high. So, you have two options: train hard and compete with a possibility of getting a podium, or don’t compete and avoid all the wasted energy and stress. If you choose to train and compete, you will either win and your hard work will pay off, or you will lose. If you choose to not compete at all, you won’t need to go through strenuous training but lose every possibility of getting a podium. But by choosing to train for your race, you have absolutely nothing to lose. Even if you don’t win, you still gain the experience and preparation for your next race, which you wouldn’t get otherwise. So, you should choose the option to train hard and compete, because it has the greatest expected utility. It’s in one’s favour to always choose the option that will benefit them the most. Suffering is unpleasant, which is why everyone prefers to take actions that have a positive outcome on them. It doesn’t make sense to ever choose an option that will cause you more harm than the other option would.

The idea behind the second premise of the argument is that you receive more benefits from believing in God than not believing in God. In other words, you’ve got absolutely nothing to lose by believing in God. You can only gain the best possible outcome. That is because if you believe in God and God turns out to exist, the expected utility is infinite. You will go to heaven and experience the best possible afterlife you can. And then, if you believe in God and God turns out to not exist, you still haven’t lost anything. Not believing in God, on the other hand, might result in the same or lower gain of benefits. If you don’t believe in God and God turns out to not exist, that’s great, you proved believers wrong, but still didn’t gain anything that will benefit you. If you don’t believe in God and God turns out to exist, that’s when you lose, because you will not get the benefits that God gives to believers (heaven). Here’s the probability matrix the author uses to justify BG2:

   

My plan is to challenge premise BG2 by showing that disbelief in God has the same expected utility as belief in God. Specifically, I will show that disbelievers will not be deprived of heaven and other potential benefits of the afterlife and will receive the same outcomes as believers, in case God exists. In section two I will present my criticism for BG2 and then in section three I will anticipate and address an objection to my criticism.

My Defence Against The Argument for Betting on God

Belief in God doesn’t have a greater expected utility than disbelief in God. Even if God turns out to exist, believers and disbelievers get the same outcome. That is because God loves unconditionally all of his creations no matter if they have faith in Him or not. It’s similar to the way a parent loves their child. No matter how many times you disrespect or disappoint your parents, they still love you. Maybe they don’t like you or respect you, but they always love you, because it’s in their nature. Even if a human doesn’t believe in God, they are still God’s creation. One’s faith doesn’t change their nature and what God has prepared for them in the afterlife. Instead, the criteria for entering either heaven or hell are based on one’s character throughout their life.

I would argue that everyone goes to heaven, since God’s love is unconditional. But God cannot be that generous. And since religion is based on both a heaven and a hell, there must be some criteria for hell too. That’s why my argument is premised under the assumption that good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell.

Regarding that this assumption is true, being good doesn’t refer to believers and being bad doesn’t refer to disbelievers. There can still be bad believers and good disbelievers, which is why faith cannot determine one’s consequence after they die. For example, between a believer that has committed murder and a disbeliever that spent their life doing community service, the disbeliever deserves to enter heaven, not the believer. Of course, there can still be good believers and bad disbelievers, but that would just be a coincidence with no correlation whatsoever.

Furthermore, the author says that you’ve got nothing to lose by believing in God. However, the author also failed to take into account that belief is a huge commitment that involves devotion. A person that is devoted to God spends most of their life going to church, praying, avoiding committing sins, and following religious principles. Even though every religious person offers a different amount of time to God, it is still some part of their time that they ‘lose’. Whether it’s praying three hours a day or one hour a week, it’s still wasted time. What a disappointment it would be for a believer to finally get to heaven and realize how many disbelievers are also there, even though they didn’t go to church every Sunday.

Addressing an Objection to My Criticism

A possible objection to my argument might be that it is unfair for believers to get the same outcome as disbelievers. Part of my argument is the exact reason why: believers devoted a significant amount of time and energy throughout their life to praise God. God could not possibly ever disregard all the prayers, church visits, and dependency that so many humans went through only for Him. Disbelievers did nothing to deserve an afterlife of happiness. Even if a disbeliever is a good person, this doesn’t change the fact that by not believing they showed doubt and disrespect toward God.

My reply to that objection would be that God doesn’t want our belief to be formed out of
fear. Faith doesn’t serve as a way of “giving back” so that God will reward us with heaven and not send us to Hell. Since God doesn’t want us to be afraid, He also doesn’t expect us to be devoted to Him, which shows that he is not expecting anything more from disbelievers and excuses them for not having faith. Believing in God or not is your free decision. Sending disbelievers to hell for choosing not to have faith in God is basically punishing a person for having free will.

Conclusion

I have argued that believing in God and not believing in God have the same expected utility. I defended the idea that God loves all humans and doesn’t send unfaithful humans to hell. I then showed that the criteria for heaven are based on one’s character and not on one’s faith. And I also showed that you have something to lose by believing in God and God turns out to not exist. Lastly, I addressed possible objections to my argument by saying that God respects our decisions and doesn’t want us to believe out of fear.

What makes one a psychopath- "YOU" Series

After watching the first two seasons of “You” on Netflix I am speechless. There’s not enough time or space to analyse the whole series. I would love to focus my attention on the main character, however. Joe Goldberg is the best example of a person that has countless mental health issues but aren’t visible at first sight. He reminds me of Ted Bundy, but Joe’s story has a different specialty.

Most people would call Joe a psychopath, or even a sociopath. However, I think his mental health is much more complicated than that. For starters, he constantly has the need to be obsessed over someone. He craves to be involved in someone’s life and make them love him. Being independent is unknown to Joe, because he can’t deal with himself if he is not sharing his self with someone. He wants to feel valued, respected, honored, loved. Joe is severely co-dependent of his partner, which is why he is always in control of the women he’s dating. He feels insecure not knowing what his partner is doing, not because of lack of trust, but because of lack of independence.

Now, why was he a murderer? Or wasn’t he? Does killing make you a killer necessarily? After every murder he committed he would say “This is not me. I am not a killer” and then he would go and kill again. This is a clear sign of split personality disorder, as Dr. Nicky mentioned in the series. There is a part of Joe that is loving and caring and seeks good for others, but there’s also a part of Joe that seeks revenge through murder. Revenge for everything that went wrong in his childhood and isn’t his fault. Here is where Joe’s childhood PTSD steps in and shows that it’s the main reason Joe is capable of killing.

He grew up with an abusive father and a completely unstable mother. After leaving his father with his mom, he had to watch his mother being beaten many times by her boyfriends. Hiding in a closet every day, all he could feel was abandonment. He was never loved and never taken care of. All he knew was that he had to protect himself and his mom cause that was all he had. That’s when he committed his first crime, to protect the one person he craved care from. Once he pulled that bullet at the age of nine there was no coming back. That was now his way of defending his ground.

Later on his adolescence, it was no better when he lived with that bookstore guy. He was too strict on Joe, locked him up in a cage for hours, beat him, and burned him with his cigarettes. This is not exactly an image of a good childhood. Joe never in his life was loved by someone else. He felt as his existence was something random, that it would make no difference to anyone if he hadn’t been alive.

It turns out that the way this person was raised influenced his whole life. Had he been born in another environment with better circumstances he most probably wouldn’t have committed all those murders. It was all a reaction to his disturbed past.

Knowledge: what if we used the 100% of our brain?

There are many things I understand now that I couldn't when I was younger. For example, I have better managed the concept of time, and the passing of time. I have become more aware of death, disease, and generally danger and emergency. And there are many more things I'll probably understand later in life that I don't have the wisdom yet to understand now. The more I see,feel, and discover emotions and new states of mind, the more knowledge I gain.

As we grow older, we understand more things about the world. We gain consciousness. We become alert. The more we experience, the more knowledge we have about existence.
But some questions are never going to be answered. No matter how many things I experience, my brain will never be able to understand everything that exists, everything that "is". That is why we don't use our brain on its full capacity. It's nature's way of protecting us from realizing truths that would make us crazy. I've analyzed this further enough at my other article, though. The basic point I'm trying to reach here is: what would happen if we could use our brain to its full capacity?
What inspired me to think about this is the movie "Lucy" with Scarlet Johansson and Morgan Freeman. What happens in the movie is that the main character Lucy is injected with a performance-enhancing drug called CPH4 which basically causes some chemical reactions that somehow result in her using her brain on its full capacity. Of course, this kind of science is not proven legitimate and may lack many explanations, but it's very interesting to give it the benefit of the doubt and think what would happen if it was true.
Once the drug kicks in, Lucy is able to understand and control everything that exists. As she uses more and more of her brain's capacity, she moves from one dimension to the other. In the beginning, she starts to feel everything around her. She can feel space, the air, the vibrations, the people, the gravity, the rotation of the earth. She feels the heat leaving her body and the blood in her vains. She can access the deepest parts of her memory and remember feelings of touch, taste, and pain from when she was younger than one years old. As her usage of brain capacity increases, she is able to feel other people's bodies, thoughts, to identify diseases. She is able to access every single computer and control every source of electricity. Her brain absorbs every single piece of information that exists in the world. She reaches a point where she can travel in time. She goes back to the beginning of time, to the beginning of matter, where the first ever cell existed. Imagine being able to understand EVERYTHING. All that "is". She "unlocked" everything about existence.
So, after I watched the movie and let all of this kick in, I decided to conclude my brainstorming with a very simple yet disturbing idea: time is the only true unit of measure. There are no numbers. There is no 1+1= 2. We have codified our existence to bring it down to human size to make it comprehensible. We've created a scale so we can forget its unfathomable scale. Imagine a car speeding down the road. Imagine it going faster and faster and faster. Now, speed up this image infinitely and you'll notice that the car eventually disappears. So, what proof do you have of its existence? Time gives legitimacy to its existence. We all exist because of time. Time gives proof to the existence of matter.
I know, kind of scary and crazy. Thinking about stuff like this is just a reminder of how powerful and extraordinary life is.

Insomnia

We have all heard about the case of a patient who collapsed four years ago after overdosing on hypnotic pills. His family thought it was a suicide attempt, but when the patient came back he said he just wanted to sleep. Shan, 37, is one of the first doctors at Beijing University Hospital to specialize in psychiatric treatments and mainly insomnia. Medicine for the treatment of insomnia appeared in China in the 1980s.

Before then, all this was considered superfluous. In today's China, however, sleep disorders are common and widely researched. A study conducted by the Medical Committee on Sleep Medicine of the Chinese Medical Association ahead of the 18th World Sleep Day shows that over 60% of the adult population worldwide are not sleeping well.

Especially young Chinese sleep very little. About 75% of people under the age of 30 suffer from sleep disorders due to depression, nervousness and anxiety. Stress at work, obesity, and poor nutrition can also affect sleep quality. Another major cause of insomnia is the use of smartphones, computers, and other electronic devices, as the screens emit a blue light that stimulates the optic nerve, leading to a significant decrease in melatonin, a hormone that regulates sleep. Those who suffer the most from insomnia, according to the survey, are media workers, IT developers, and e-commerce professionals.

A Chinese sleep research company released a report last year showing that 93.8% of young Chinese spend a lot of time online before going to bed. It is ironic, however, that these young people often turn to the Internet to combat insomnia. A report that came to light last December showed that nearly 79% of people who click the word "insomnia" to buy related products on the Alibaba platform are between 18 and 35 years old. The most popular products are tranquilizers and massage machines. In 2012, approximately 23.8 million people made online purchases between 11 pm and 5 am.

Wang Weidong, a leading sleep expert, has developed a mobile app that provides online diagnostics, medical advice, and traditional Chinese medical treatments. Since its launch in 2017, more than 30,000 users have subscribed and received information. In addition to conventional medicines, traditional recipes such as lavender oil for massage, recipes, and exercises are available online.

"Our generation is more susceptible to insomnia and we care about sleep more than our predecessors," says Match, the founder of the online group: "Sleep Bar - Say Goodbye to Insomnia", created in 2010 and has over 20,000 members. Match was always troubled from insomnia when he realized that constantly complaining about the problem was not the solution. He then began reading books on sleep medicine and sharing this knowledge online.

"Scientific methods are the key to improving sleep quality. Ultimately, the cure is inside the individual himself,” he says.

Criminal Psychology: Ted Bundy

A person who has the ability to kill another human being is not someone mentally okay. Almost all serial killers have a past that has caused them to become crazy. Take, for example, the case of Ted Bundy, a man who managed to kidnap, rape, and murder more than 30 young women. Bundy would grow up believing that his mother was his sister, and his grandparents were his mother and father. His maternal grandfather who at first raised him was racist, misogynistic, and altogether abusive. Bundy spent his adolescence across the country, removed from all he’d known as a child, raised by a stepfather who he felt no connection to.

When reviewing how troubled and disturbing Bundy’s childhood was, it’s no surprise that he turned out to be mentally sick. What is so interesting in his story is that he didn’t look nor act like someone who is a serial killer, and that’s how he covered up for his murders for about 7 years. He was tall, attractive, and generally good looking. However, what made him a great serial killer is that he was a genius.

He was so intelligent that took his appearance to his advantage and never failed to impress women. Women would trust him because he was charming. But isn’t that how society works anyway? Our reactions are not the same to every new person we meet. Take a homeless, old man and a young, attractive man in a suit. They both approach you and ask for your help with carrying something from their car. Who would you trust? The correct answer would be no one. Just because someone is attractive and is formally dressed does not mean that he is not a serial killer. Ted Bundy was so smart that he knew he was charming and he knew women would trust him because of his appearance.

But what was going on inside this man’s mind? He was not just a regular serial killer. He had no motive and no desire for revenge. He was just mentally sick and addicted. It’s like his mind was infected and felt like he would get satisfaction by killing. Like a smoker, his cigarettes were his murders. Every time he thought it would be his last one, he ended up having the need again. The creepiest fact in his case is that he only killed certain kinds of women. All of his victims were women, with long, dark hair parted in the middle. All of them were raped, before and after they were

killed.

 

So, after researching his story and past, it’s very interesting to find how many mental illnesses this person had: antisocial personality disorder, psychopathy, narcissistic personality disorder, bipolar personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, schizoid personality disorder, addictive disorder, and Machiavellianism. Imagine how hard was plain thinking for this person. When your mind is constantly kicked by so many anomalies, how are you supposed to act right? It’s scary to think how a monster can be created just from genetics.

The psychology that hides behind this story is fascinating. How a person can become inhumane after being raised abnormally, how our mind only can turn into a weapon without us realizing it, how we make instant conclusions based on what we see rather on what we know. Being a criminal is not a label for a person. It’s an identity for his/her mind.

The scary theory of solipsism

Solipsism: the theory that my mind is the only conscious mind that exists. My self is the only thing that is real and everything else, including other people, is an illusion of my mind. Crazy and unbelievable, right?

Think about this. Everything that you know is a result of your brain receiving messages. All of your senses, what you see, what you hear, what you feel, is information that has been sent to your brain to help you perceive the world around you. But what if this information is just an illusion that your mind has created? What if everything that you see does not really exist, but is something created inside your brain? This is not totally impossible if you think about it. You don’t have any proof that everything you touch is real, because you only know what your brain receives. The scariest part comes when thinking about the existence of other people. If nothing exists, and it’s just your brain creating illusions, then no other conscious minds exist either. This is your reality, your world. Everything that happens and everything that you know is real is happening inside your own mind. There’s no material world, only the idea of it.

Now, the reason why this theory is scary: it cannot be proven wrong. You are alone, living your own life with your own mind, and there’s no proof that all other minds and lives are real.  How can you be sure? You can’t. The only thing you can be sure of is that you exist. Everything else is open to doubt. 

I would advise you to not further analyse this theory because you’ll probably get crazy.  Just keep it in mind though, there’s a chance that you are the creator of this world, your own God, and the only thing that is real.

Brain in a box

What if there is no material world? We don’t have direct access with reality, so we can’t really trust if anything exists. We absorb visual images with our eyes. We acknowledge sound through our ears. We touch objects and feel them through sensory messages sent to our brain. How do we know that all that we sense actually exists and it’s not just our brain talking?

We have no proof that there is material world. It’s more likely that we’re just a brain in a box. There is no universe and world, but only our mind that creates every single illusion. Descartes worried if what he sees is real or fake and concluded “I think therefore I am” but was always worried whether the real world was there. How can we be sure that we are not just a brain being fed false electrical signals by evil scientists? This sounds like a movie, maybe “The Matrix”, but you can’t be sure that the scientists controlling you are not already hundreds of years into the future.

Technology evolves so fast and so unexpectedly, that something like this will be possible in the future, some scientists claim. Maybe you’re one of these future experiments and you just don’t know it yet. 😉