When I buy a lottery ticket, I start dreaming big. What would I do with the money? I draft intricate plans, usually focusing on making sure my family is well cared for, and that my friends are helped on their way to accomplishing their dreams. Then I think about the great things I’d do for society. I’d advance scientific pursuits; I’d create grants and other charities for people who prize living life rationality over mythologically. I’d be charitable, wise, and happy, and I’d do my best to help others accomplish the same.
And when I lose (I always lose), I am utterly disappointed, and my plans dissolve with the ripped-up ticket. But what happens next is what analogously distinguishes me from religious believers — reality hits me. I realize that to accomplish anything but a life in some gutter, I will have to keep working. I have to wake every morning, go to my job, make money, and feed it to the system in which I belong. Essentially, I have to live my life as if I will never win the lottery.
Any achievements I ever make will be based solely on my merit, not on some chance, not on some luck. If luck should hit, I’ll happily observe the hard life in hindsight, but I cannot live as if that will happen, else I will not be living, I’ll be daydreaming. I like daydreaming, but I cannot live in it as a reality. And I accept this, because I know that no amount of hope, fortune telling, praying, or persistence will make me win the lottery. So, I live my life in the here and now, and I do the best I can with that knowledge.
When Christians hope for heaven, it’s as if they buy a lottery ticket and immediately quit their jobs and responsibilities before the numbers are pulled. In other words, it’s a psychological anticipatory abandonment of this mortal coil with an expectation of a spiritual life afterward. Believers follow what they believe is a strict doctrine that guarantees their ascension, or at least significantly increases their chance at eternal bliss, and in doing so, they reject anything that could conflict with their foundations that have established such a quid pro quo system. In the process, they rationalize the necessity to do that which I already do (e.g., work for a living), but simultaneously they find reasons to oppose the things that make this life more pleasurable, more long-lasting, and more worthwhile, like sexual liberty, scientific advancements, and the quest for knowledge, in hopes that by doing so, they increase the likelihood that their numbers will fall in exactly the right places.
This myopic wager ignores the fact that few, if any, of the numbers chosen by believers are identical to those of other believers. If the biblical god is so absolute and specific that it should be a one-way ticket to hell to commit sodomy, then what of the believer who, by toiling at work in overtime on a beautiful Saturday, considers herself safe from eternal damnation by the mere fact that she protests the former? These are the wagers that the believers make, and the stakes are the essences of their lives, and the lives of those whom they affect.
Although there is certainly a glimmer of that daydream hope that both the Christians and I share when I buy a lottery ticket and the Christians pray, I get to check my numbers and check myself back in to reality. Christians deny themselves that bereavement, and thus they deny themselves that which they claim God has given them — life.
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This article is featured as an Editor’s Pick at Daylight Atheism’s Carnival of the Godless #113
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Addendum:
Some readers (or people who just read the title and not the entire post) have expressed difficulty seeing the analogy. As not to disturb the free flow of the original article (and to be not disingenuous toward the Carnival), I’m just going to add a clarification here.
I’m not talking about the religious playing the actual lottery. I’m not making a distinction between religious people who work and those who don’t. I’m foremost saying that when I buy a lottery ticket, I make a choice whether to convince myself that I will win (or I have a great chance of winning), or continue with my life as if I will not win (because evidence shows that I have a 1 in multi-million chance of winning, and regardless of how much “effort” I put into “playing,” it will never increase those chances), unlike religious people who play the “lottery” of religion — they choose a religion (essentially indirectly by having it chosen for them by where they are born, but perpetuating it anyway in light of evidence otherwise) and they “bet” on their interpretation being correct so that they can “win” that religious lottery and go to heaven.
So, I’m saying that in order to be an atheist, one must abandon that hopeful afterlife bet (that would otherwise result in a life of hypocrisy and self-abuse) in the same manner that someone who plays the lottery shouldn’t “bet the house.”
And to respond to the idea of “but you could still win the lottery” :
Yes, I could still win the lottery, but I do not LIVE as if I WILL win (I live as if I won’t, despite there being an abysmal chance I could win).
Christians (and other religious people) LIVE as if they WILL go to heaven (or wherever), despite there being an abysmal chance that they will.
That’s something I had to give up in order to be an atheist.
Tags: atheist, ban, biblical, Christ, doctrine, family, foundation, god, Logic, rational, sex, Sodom, spirit, theist, war
So so true!
Yes!
But let me anticipate the Pascal's Wager response: "you've got to be in it to win it". Yes, that's how they suck people into habitually buying lottery tickets too. The parallels keep on coming.
At least when someone wins the lottery there is proof that they won. And even better, the prize is money. Christians win an eternity with a vengeful, jealous dictator. I'll take the consolation prize thank you.
Great blog by the way. I've added it to my blogroll.
Thank you kindly! Ditto.
It's more like a rigged lottery where everyone loses and they surgically remove your organs to sell on the black market.
I understand the analogy you're using here with the lottery however it seems you play it more towards those who are religious and "work" rather than those who are religious and play the lottery. Most of the religious people I know are very hard workers at whatever their individual job is. Some of them play the lottery, and they mainly lose, or they win a few dollars here and there (this includes scratch off tickets) but they don't quit their day job just because they think, "This time I'm going to win", or they actually win a few dollars. Perhaps you've known religious people who are like that but I haven't. If you kept the analogy solely to playing the lottery, the hopes of winning yet for most never winning, or for some who only get a few dollars and then it's gone, and they may never win again, that'd I could understand — the work aspect I can't. From my understanding of lottery winners in my State, a lot of them keep their day jobs even after they win millions. It's been in the news here before about things like that happening. They've worked all their lives, and the day where they can stop working by winning the lottery, it seems that they can't 'cause they are so used to the one, and not the other.
I'm not talking about the religious playing the actual lottery. I'm not making a distinction between religious people who work and those who don't. I'm foremost saying that when I buy a lottery ticket, I make a choice whether to convince myself that I will win (or I have a great chance of winning), or continue with my life as if I will not win (because evidence shows that I have a 1 in multi-million chance of winning, and regardless of how much "effort" I put into "playing," it will never increase those chances), unlike religious people who play the "lottery" of religion — they choose a religion (essentially indirectly by having it chosen for them by where they are born, but perpetuating it anyway in light of evidence otherwise) and they "bet" on their interpretation being correct so that they can "win" that religious lottery and go to heaven.
So, I'm saying that in order to be an atheist, one must abandon that hopeful afterlife bet (that would otherwise result in a life of hypocrisy and self-abuse) in the same manner that someone who plays the lottery shouldn't "bet the house."
I'm going to try to clarify, because I think the idea of "but you could still win the lottery" is clouding my meaning.
Yes, I could still win the lottery, but I do not LIVE as if I WILL win (I live as if I won't, despite there being an abysmal chance I could win).
Christians (and other religious people) LIVE as if they WILL go to heaven (or wherever), despite there being an abysmal chance that they will.
That's something I had to give up in order to be an atheist.
Most Christians live under the guidance of "prosperity gospel". Although riches are promised in heaven, they live as though riches will come to them here and now on earth. I don't have the reference at the moment, but this "prosperity gospel" is one angle on the current financial crisis, especially for sub-prime borrowers who are more often lower-wage earners and are more likely to actively participate in their religion.
I do not mean to cloud the other end of the earthly vs heavenly argument on this subject. It does appear that the overall thrust of the article has been skewed by those who intertwine the value of the lottery against the hard-earned dollar. The point isn't so much the amount of dollars you will earn or even that you will earn any at all, but the expectation that the winnings will occur on earth as in heaven. For fundies to play the lottery shows their ignorance of the science of statistics for they deem that prosperity gospel will soon come their way no matter what.
Well said, and an enjoyable read. Kudos.
Good analogy. What's even stranger about theists is that we can actually observe other people winning the lottery, while they have no knowledge of anyone actually meeting their deity or experiencing an afterlife.
I once heard someone say "your chances of winning the lottery are only slightly improved by buying a ticket"
Pretty much! That's the classic Pascal's Wager comeback — I only make bets on that which I have at least some evidence exists. And when the bible thumper responds, "But you're risking your eternal soul!", I must respond, "No shit, that's why I'm not going to throw it away on your puritanical nonsense."
I would also add that the odds of me winning the lottery are MUCH better than the odds of a supernatural deity existing.
A great way of looking at it. Suddenly I have the urge to buy lottery tickets though!
Why can you play the lottery and hope for a win and keep going to work, but to hope for heaven is equivalent to quitting your job?
You can hope for an afterlife and still make the most of this one.
The analogy seems a little skewed.
So… wait. We should join a religion so we’ll be part of a lottery sweepstakes?
No, I’m not up for that. I’m an agnostic atheist, but I figure that if there is a God, He’s much better than the puny humans say he is, and he’s not going to destroy or keep you based on the equivalent of a luck drawing.