It’s been a while since I’ve blogged anything substantial, so I figured I’d jump back on the godless train. A widely accepted argument for God goes as follows:

If you erroneously believe in God, you lose nothing, whereas if you correctly believe in God, you gain everything. But if you correctly disbelieve in God, you gain nothing, whereas if you erroneously disbelieve in God, you lose everything.

The wager basically instructs one to play it safe by sucking up to God. If you’re right, you spend eternity in heaven and if you were wrong, you didn’t lose anything.

First of all, this argument only accounts for two scenarios: either the Christian god exists, or conversely, it does not. It fails to recognize there have been countless gods in all human history defined as omnipotent creators. As a rule, these gods are incompatible and don’t take kindly to each other.

Since there are too many gods to count, if someone “plays it safe” believing in the wrong invisible man in the sky, she’s just as screwed as the atheist.

The opposing “Atheist’s Wager” is more tangible and lays out a basic ground rule for secular ethics.

It is better to live your life as if there are no gods, and try to make the world a better place for your being in it. If there is no god, you have lost nothing and will be remembered fondly by those you left behind. If there is a benevolent god, he will judge you on your merits and not just on whether or not you believed in him.

Believing in every god society has invented is impossible. The best plan is go to about life assuming there is no God. If you live a good life and contribute to society, you’ll be respected by society and accepted by a loving god. If one is damned for trying to make the world a better place, the god is probably not worthy of worship in the first place.