This is a summary of a paper written by Dr. Eric Sampson of Purdue University. The summary itself is also written by Eric Sampson. The full paper, with more thorough objections and rebuttals is linked here.

3 Goals in the Paper:

1. Identify a “new” catastrophic risk EAs have entirely neglected.

• Religious Catastrophe: Trillions of people (or more) go to hell (or something hell-like) for all  eternity for rejecting the one true God or religion.

2. Argue that, even by secular EA lights, religious catastrophe is at least as bad, at least as probable, and  therefore at least as important as the standard EA catastrophic risks.

3. Argue that EAs (who want to live consistent with their beliefs and values) face a dilemma.

• The Dilemma: Either adopt religious catastrophe as an EA cause or ignore religious catastrophe  but also ignore catastrophic risks whose mitigation has a similar or lower expected value (i.e., most  or all of them). Business as usual—ignoring religious catastrophe while championing the usual EA  causes—is inconsistent with secular longtermist principles.

The Threat: Religious Catastrophe

Here’s Jesus:

“When the Son of Man comes into his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his  glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right,  but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, “Come you who are blessed  by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was  hungry and you gave me food…

Then he will say to those on his left [the goats], Depart from me you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared  for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food…Truly, I say to you, as you  did not do it to one of the least of these you did not do it to me. And these will go away into eternal  punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (Matt 25:31-46)

Here’s the Quran:

“And if you are in doubt about what We have revealed to Our servant, then produce a chapter  like these, and call your witnesses apart from Allah, if you are truthful. But if you do not—and  you will not—then beware the Fire whose fuel is people and stones, prepared for the disbelievers.” (2:23-24).

“Those who reject Our revelations—We will scorch them in a Fire. Every time their skins are cooked,  We will replace them with other skins, so they will experience the suffering. Allah is Most Powerful, Most  Wise. As for those who believe and do good deeds, We will admit them into Gardens beneath  which rivers flow, abiding therein forever…” (4:56-57).

“As for those who disbelieve, garments of fire will be tailored for them, and scalding water will be poured  over their heads, melting their insides and their skins. And they will have maces of iron. Whenever they  try to escape the gloom, they will be driven back to it: ‘Taste the suffering of burning.’ But Allah  will admit those who believe and do good deeds into Gardens beneath which rivers flow”  (22:19-23).

Religious Catastrophe’s Evaluative and Probabilistic Similarity to Standard Longermist Causes Badness: Religious catastrophe is at least as bad as the worst catastrophic risks

• One-Shot Argument: Finite vs. Infinite
  • Each catastrophic risk is finitely bad since a finite number of people will die and be prevented  from enjoying a valuable life. (The universe must die a “heat death” eventually.)
  • Religious catastrophe’s disvalue is either infinite or finite but ever-increasing (because it lasts  for eternity). So, its disvalue far exceeds the disvalue of any catastrophic threat.
• Piecemeal Argument: Which is worse?
  • Eternal hell for trillions (or more) or catastrophic climate change and extinction? o Eternal hell for trillions (or more) or nuclear war and extinction?
  • Eternal hell for trillions (or more) or killer AI and extinction?
  • And so on…

Probability: Religious catastrophe’s probability is at least comparable to standard EA causes’ probability. _________________________________________________________________

 Existential Catastrophe via                                 Chance within next 100 years

Asteroid or comet impact                                 ~ 1 in 1,000,000

Supervolcanic eruption                                      ~ 1 in 10,000

Stellar explosion                                                 ~ 1 in 1,000,000,000

Total natural Risk                                             ~ 1 in 10,000

Nuclear war                                                             ~ 1 in 1,000

Climate Change                                                      ~ 1 in 1,000

Other environmental damage                          ~ 1 in 1,000

“Naturally” arising pandemics                        ~ 1 in 10,000

Engineered pandemics                                        ~ 1 in 30

Unaligned artificial intelligence                       ~ 1 in 10

Unforeseen anthropogenic risks                      ~ 1 in 30

Other anthropogenic risks                                 ~ 1 in 50

Total anthropogenic risks                                   ~ 1 in 6

Total existential risk                                            ~ 1 in 6

_________________________________________________________________

Considerations Bearing on Religious Catastrophe’s Evidential Probability

1. Standard arguments from natural theology (e.g., Fine-tuning, Kalam, Contingency, Ontological,  Resurrection, Moral Knowledge, Psychophysical Harmony).

2. At least 57% of humans on this planet believe in a heaven-and-hell-type-stakes religion (33%  Christianity, 24.1% Islam).

3. Literally millions of people, over the ages, have claimed to have religious experiences associated with  these religions.

4. Professional philosophers are among the most educated and skeptical people on the planet. Yet,  according to the 2020 PhilPapers survey, 18.83% of them accept or lean toward theism (too low due  to selection effects?). 7.21% were agnostic. If we play it safe and suppose that only a third of the theist  philosophers believe in hell, that’s about 6%. Thus, (on a very conservative estimate) about 6% of the  most skeptical people on the planet believe in hell.

5. 77.77% of respondents specializing in Philosophy of Religion were theists. So, among the population  most acquainted with the arguments for and against God’s existence, 3 out of 4 believe in God.

6. What could justify assigning a zero (or near-zero) probability to every heaven-and-hell -stakes religion?

• Philosophical arguments (e.g., Evil, Hiddenness, Evil God challenge, Religious diversity)? Are  these atheological arguments that much better than the theistic ones? Are they evidently decisive? o Commitment to metaphysical naturalism?
• In what other context do philosophers think that philosophical arguments provide justified certainty (or near-certainty) that a widely believed philosophical thesis is false?

Objections to Pascal’s Wager I can Easily Sidestep:

• Impossible: I can’t voluntarily believe in God—it’s literally impossible!
• Morally Bad: It’s morally wrong to believe in God just for heavenly goodies!
• Ineffective: Believing in God for the goodies won’t work. He doesn’t accept for-profit belief!
• Reply-to-All: I’m not suggesting that anyone ought to believe, or get themselves to believe, in God.

Objections Meriting a Response:

“I’m an annihilationist. I don’t believe in eternal hell.”

• Doesn’t matter.
  • If you’re not justifiably certain there’s no eternal hell, you face this problem.
  • Even on annihilationism, an infinite (or indefinitely large) amount of value is lost for each  person who experiences religious catastrophe.

“A good God wouldn’t send people to eternal hell, so we don’t have to worry about it.”

• Again: If you’re not justifiably certain there’s no eternal hell, you face this problem.
• The argument doesn’t depend on an Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT) conception of hell
  • Could be: ECT, C.S. Lewis-like view, Eastern Orthodox view, eternal disappointment, etc.
  • For each conception of hell, you can’t be justifiably certain God wouldn’t “send” people there.

Many-Gods Objection: Each religion has infinite stakes, so the expected (dis)value of each is equal.

• Suppose I offer you one of two lottery tickets with the same payoff:

Ticket 1: Provides a 1/10,000 probability of infinite bliss, or

Ticket 2: Provides a 1/3 probability of infinite bliss.

• The expected value of selecting each ticket is infinite (therefore, equal). Are you indifferent? No.
  • Lesson: When payoffs are equal, choose the most probable option.
• EAs already do this with catastrophic risks. They prioritize based on probabilities.
• Practical Upshot: Devote resources to religions in proportion to probabilities. Most resources to  most probably religion, second-most resources to second-most probable religion, etc.

Pascal’s Mugger: I’m being held hostage to infinite (dis)utilities!

• Bostrom’s Lesson: You can rationally ignore threats with vanishingly small probabilities.
  • Lesson doesn’t apply to Religious Catastrophe. The probability isn’t vanishingly small.
  • If you ignore Religious Catastrophe, you must ignore all EA causes whose mitigation has a  similar or lower probability (e.g., nuclear war, runaway climate change, pandemics, killer AI).
• Greaves’s Lesson: You should pay the mugger.
  • Upshot for us: You should devote resources to mitigating the risk of Religious Catastrophe.
• General Lesson: Whatever you say about Pascal’s Mugger is what you’ll need to say about Religious  Catastrophe and the standard EA catastrophic risks. You can’t rationally treat them differently.

The Dilemma: Either adopt Religious Catastrophe as an EA cause or ignore Religious Catastrophe but also  ignore catastrophic risks whose mitigation has a similar or lower expected value (i.e., most or all of them).  Business as usual—ignoring religious catastrophe while championing the usual EA causes—is inconsistent with  secular longtermist principles.

Conclusion: By secular EA’s own lights, they ought to devote resources to mitigating the risk of Religious  Catastrophe (e.g., giving money to missionaries to convert people to some religion). Again, the full paper, with more thorough objections and rebuttals is linked here.