nor do they generally mistake their polytheistic "gods" for what the Christian intends by "God".
If that's the case, why does the idolater worship false gods? Nobody who acts rationally chooses to give himself to that-which-he-thinks-is-inferior over that-which-he-thinks-is-superior.
Fistly, human beings don't always, or even generally, act "rationally" or according to presumed rules of what a "rational" person "should" or "shouldn't" not do, even if what is truly "rational" could be determined in the first place.
Secondly, he may supplicate himself to a creature he considers inferior to
himself, and certainly to one inferior to God but superior to himself in some regard, believing he will get something from it.
Thirdly, one might be mistaking the nature of the pagan's worship as having the character of latria. The confusion is quite apparent in the supposed mutual exclusivity of monotheism and polytheism in the minds of Western theologians, or more to the point, mistaking the nature of many polytheisms. An illustrative example of the point would be Vodou, in which a supreme God-like being,
Bondye, is believed in and worshipped, but a series of lesser spirits created by him, the
Loa, including the demiurge
Damballa , are also worshipped, even sacrificed to, along with human ancestors being venerated, indeed, sometimes even becoming important Loa themselves - this is how the practices, like those of other African diasporic religions, exist in a dangerous synchretism with Catholicism. Or, among the "higher" religions, there is Zoroastrianism, generally called "monotheistic", but in which veneration of the angel-like Amesha Spenta and various Yazatas, pre-Zoroastrian Persian deities incorporated into the religion, takes place, without anyone confusing them with the supreme Ahura Mazda, or in Zurvanism, with Zurvan and Ahura Mazda as demiurge. These situations are more in line with the cosmology of Neoplatonism, where the One, a demiurge, "the gods", angels and daimons can all exist side-by-side. But we know that even the veneration of saints and holy angels can cross the line into idolatry.
Finally, he may mistakenly regard some creature as the superlative being in some sense without regarding it as "God" in the Christian's sense of that transcendental source of being.
So, why does he do it? Why do people always expect to find a general answer for why billions of individual human beings behave in some way? Enculturation, habit, real or perceived reward, ignorance, madness or just plain enjoyment, and who knows what else, even whimsy, could lead him to act as he does.
That's pretty much what I was saying: there must exist something analogous to the "stem cells", and that something is called "faith". (The man with faith can see Truth whereas the blind man without faith cannot.) But that's not what Habitual_Ritual is saying.
Habitual ritual regards virtues as habits; I regard them as real energies eternally emanating from the Trinity, and from the sanctified man through the Holy Spirit within him, which help form habits.
But man's end is not heaven per se; man's end is to serve God.
And God wills that we serve him because he loves us. We can go around in circles, and even with God acting for his own self-glorification before himself, with God being essentially love, it's the same thing. But serving God to the point of that quasi-unification with him
is Heaven or the mediate source of it.
This is why I don't like Pascal's argument: it's selfish. It says that man ought to sacrifice Truth in order to attain heaven, when, in fact, it's the complete opposite.
I don't like it either. But I'm not making it as such. I'm suggesting one can and has to take a leap to find the truth
in this life.
By the way, that's not selfishness but self-interestedness.
Also, truth has no ultimate value in a world with no God, so an obsessive will-to-truth for its own sake appears irrational in an atheistic world, as does stubborn adherence to any principle. Nieztsche was quite right about this.
Some people serve God in heaven while others serve God in hell. Man must never forsake Truth, even if it means going to hell.
You're confusing a demand for absolute certainty with truth.
And this "I would serve God even if it means going to Hell" is not a Christian mindset; it's batshit insanity, the sort of thing a rabid Calvinist would say but probably not mean if push came to shove.
Until the intellect knows the right choice, the will ought not to choose at all.
Are you absolutely certain of that? As for me, I'm not sure whether truth values are assignable to an "ought", taken not as a command and without the nature of a conditional.
Nobody lives like this anyhow. It's impossible to do.
And while this volitional restraint will not get us to heaven, we can only hope that God will give us the requisite certainty needed in order to make the right choices which will bring us to heaven. If God fails to give us the certainty then it only means one thing: God wills our damnation.
God doesn't will anyone's damnation. And since this certainty of which you speak is not demanded of God nor required to attain Heaven, it's nothing but a self-imposed constraint of a tripping ego.
And if that be the case, we must accept our damnation, for our damnation is the means by which God wills that we serve Him.
Damnation is the natural consequence of one separating oneself from the divinity.
You see, I cannot follow this religion of yours. This "God" of whom you speak is a monster, one who sets up Hell as a looming threat of punishment to extort service from human beings, even if it's "for their own good". Who would even trust such a being? The line above about accepting ones damnation is just loony, I'm sorry to say; it takes masochism to a another level, and the spirit behind it the antithesis of the virtues of faith, hope and charity: faithlessness in God's love and mercy, hopelessness for salvation, and devoid not only of love for onself but also of the love for God which makes one yearn for union with him. No, nobody who loves God would resign himself damnation any more than a man in love would accept his wife running off with another man.
But to do the opposite--to choose to do that-which-might-be-evil--is to turn your back on God. The man who holds that that-which-might-be-false is true doesn't care about Truth... he's only interested in his selfish pursuit for heaven, willing to sacrifice Truth to get to heaven.
And this, folks, is where the
religion of Aristotelian-inspired scholastic philosophy and its
worship of "reason" can get you.
Such a man is not worthy of heaven.
There's one of your problems: you don't
understand grace, or you wouldn't say something like that. Nobody is, in himself, "worthy" of Heaven, as it isn't something natural to him.
And no person in his right mind would serve a deity who does not reward, or so deny himself that he cares not whether he ends up in eternal bliss or evelasting suffering for the sake of an irrational loyalty to "truth".
