In a recent conversation with a relative of mine who is a born-again Southern Baptist Christian, we got into a discussion about the afterlife. My relative insisted that “hell is a real place,” while I pointed out that no one knows anything more about the afterlife than anyone else does. I pointed out that although some people might believe there is a hell, they don’t actually know anything whatsoever about what happens to us after we die. To this observation, my relative had no reply.
That conversation came back to me when I read Erich’s recent post [1] about the importance of false and oxymoronic religious claims. One of the odd religious claims of Christianity is that eternal salvation is achieved solely through “belief” in Jesus Christ. But what, exactly, does the word “belief” mean in that context? Is belief something that can be measured on a discrete (i.e., binary) scale (i.e., you either believe something or you don’t), or is it measured on a continuous scale (i.e., you believe with varying degrees of certainty)? And what happens when we are dealing with belief in the supernatural? If someone says, “I believe I had eggs for breakfast,” in what way is that equivalent to saying, “I believe hell is a real place?” Aren’t these two statements using fundamentally different types or degrees of “belief?”
This raises the question: if eternal salvation is based on “belief” in supernatural beings and supernatural phenomena, then upon which scale (discrete or continuous) can that “belief” be measured? If someone says, “I believe I had eggs for breakfast,” we might understand how that “belief” could be measured on a discrete scale: it should be obvious whether the person had eggs for breakfast or not. But when someone says, “I believe hell is a real place,” “I believe in God,” or “I believe Jesus is Christ the Savior,” then how can that belief possibly be measured on a discrete scale? I don’t see how it can, because it is nothing like the statement, “I believe I had eggs for breakfast.”
This lead to a rather disturbing conclusion: if “belief” in God (or Jesus) cannot be measured on a discrete scale (because belief in the supernatural cannot be as certain as belief in one’s breakfast meal), then the only other option is a continuous scale. But then where along that continuous scale must a person’s “belief” be located to ensure themselves entry into heaven? Assuming “belief” can be measured at all (we must assume God can do this), then God must also necessarily have some (arbitrary) point along that scale, such that a person’s “belief” must exceed that point to gain them entry into heaven. This suggests that “belief” alone is not sufficient to gain entry into heaven, but rather a person must have enough belief to clear God’s threshold.
This raises yet another question: how does a person increase the level of his or her “belief” in supernatural phenomena that cannot be perceived by any of the five senses? I can think of only one method: by actively searching for evidence that confirms ones’ desired religious beliefs and actively ignoring all contrary evidence.
This, of course, brings me back to Erich’s post: the importance of false and oxymoronic religious claims. If we follow the above thinking to its ultimate conclusion, we see that false and oxymoronic religious claims help believers to convince themselves that they are increasing the level of their “belief” along the continuum. Since they cannot rely on rational means (i.e., their five senses) to help them “believe” more strongly in the supernatural, they must rely on the irrational. We would expect, therefore, that false and oxymoronic claims would be an inherent component of any religion that involves judgment in the afterlife by a supernatural being.
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