this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2026
425 points (98.4% liked)

News

34129 readers
4473 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (2 children)

That’s Pascal’s Wager, taken to the logical conclusion. Pascal’s Wager is basically the idea that debating whether or not God exists is meaningless; If you simply live life as if God does exist, then there are no downsides. Just be someone who God would want in heaven, and the actual belief doesn’t really matter.

But then when you take that to a logical conclusion, it basically turns into “there’s no downside if I’m wrong, and repenting on my deathbed means all my previous sins are forgiven. So why not repent right before dying, so my previous sins are forgiven and I’m dying with a clean slate?”

Different denominations have different opinions on it. Baptists tend to take the “fire and brimstone unless you repent, but you’re all golden after repentance” stance. So they would tend to agree with this scenario. This is also why southern baptists tend to be such cunts, because they tell themselves that their actions are righteous and backed by God, because they have repented. Basically, justifying evil is easy when you change the question from “is this morally evil” to “is this backed by my god?”

Catholics used to have a very hard “baptism washes away (almost) all sins” stance, but have recently adopted a more fluid “how you act in life is just as important as what you believe” stance. So older Catholics would have likely agreed, but modern Catholics would tend to disagree.

The more liberal denominations (like United Methodists) would scoff and say that faith without works is dead.

[–] imsufferableninja@sh.itjust.works 4 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

If he's a pascal's wager guy, I hope he died in battle just in case the Norse are correct. And his deeds in life kept his heart lighter than a feather, in case the Egyptians got it right. Etc.

I hope he died in battle just in case the Norse are correct

He did, he died battling cancer.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 1 points 13 hours ago

pascals wager is incredibly stupid and illogical. What about other 10 billion religions? What if accepting jesus now puts you down with 9,999,999,999 other religions?