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It Doesn’t Matter if God Exists — An Idea From Epictetus
Is Living Virtuously the Most Important Thing?
Sometimes you’ll hear an atheist say something like “the way I see it is if God doesn’t exist, he doesn’t exist, and that’s it, and we all die and we vanish into nothingness. But if he does exist, if there is an afterlife, well, he’ll let me into heaven because I’m a good person. If I’m a good person and there is a God he probably won’t care if I believe in him. He’ll just let me into heaven.”
Living “Divinely”
Of course, a lot of religions would disagree with that notion, but what people really mean when they say something like this is that they don’t care if there is a supernatural God. Rather, they believe that the more important thing is to live by “divine” values, or by “God’s nature”. Epictetus had a similar idea:
“The philosophers say that there is a God and that his will directs the universe, but the more important lesson is to discover God’s nature.”
Epictetus
