I think it's a completely valid criticism of belief though, and I think it's provable in that people choose their religions. Even within Christianity, you choose which denomination you want to follow and associate with.
Try this thought experiment...
Is there anything within your faith that you "wish" to not be true? Is there something you "wish" were different?
While I do agree that it can be true for non-belief, most people I know who are non-believers tend to say "I wish there was a God and a Heaven, but I just don't see evidence for it."
I don't think it's to the same degree, because if you asked most non-believers if they "wished" that it was all over after you die, I'd assume most of them would say no, and that it would be great to have a relaxing eternal paradise.
If God doesn’t exist, you can do whatever you want.
Well, this is a great theory, but it's just not true. It might make sense in a classroom (just like the welfare state is SUPPOSED to help the poor), but it doesn't in real life.
Human solidarity and a respect for others is not something that is unique to theism, and like I said, the incarceration rate is highest among believers. People tend to do bad things and hurt people regardless of whether they believer there's a God. Fear of eternal punishment or violating God's law is no more a deterrent than earthly laws and justice and one's own individual conscience, and this is just a 100% proven statistical fact.
But if God does exist, we all will be held accountable by a judge who has control over everything.
Also a great theory, but even Christians don't have a 100% objective idea of God's law. Some Christians think non-religious dancing, alcohol, tobacco, gambling, watching R-Rated movies, and whatever else are sins.
You can pretend that there is a known 100% objective law from God, but the reality is that there's mostly disagreement on a lot of vices, and that the serious crimes are already accepted as such by non-theistic societies and people.
I don't murder because I'm against hurting other people, and would not want to be murdered myself. Confucius spoke the "Golden Rule" a couple of hundred years before Christ, and had no knowledge of the God of Abraham. This gives you an idea that the virtue of not hurting people is somewhat ingrained into us as advanced (but flawed) primates. Societies and cultures that are founded upon murder, rape, torture, and slavery tend to die out, and don't stick around long enough to populate the gene pool and evolve.
I don’t intend to force anything onto you so forgive me if my comments made you feel that way. I had hoped to be of service to you and to learn from you as well, based on your initiation of our talk in post #281.
Again, I’m not referring to whether or not believers/nonbelievers engage in certain behaviors. It’s not the topic here. We’re speaking of psychological motivation to believe. Whether or not belief then motivates behavioral constraint is an entirely separate question which has no bearing on whether or not there exists a psychological motivation to believe. (The question therein would be something like how much influence does belief have on behavior.)
Atheists/agnostics choose their belief based on weighing a worldly existence against a Godly one. How much do people enjoy money, alcohol, drugs, sex, the self in general, and even relationships with other people? These things and more are what Christ tells us to give up in order to follow him.
And the pleasures on this list are held in such high regard that the motive to convince oneself that God doesn’t exist is as psychologically powerful as any other psychological phenomenon, including the motive to desire eternal life. And worldly pleasures have the additional motive that they are available in the here and now, appealing to the universal human trait of impatience.
If there is no God, everything is permissible goes the Dostoyevsky quote. Sartre took it a step further, making the conscious decision to believe there is no God in order to believe he was free to choose his experiences and thus his form of existence.
Atheists have no more or less physical evidence, and no more or less juice in their IQ than theists. This is very difficulty for some atheists to accept, but the question of God’s existence is not a test of intellect. It’s a test of passion, emotion, will, volition, desire—you get the concept.