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Silmarien

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There have always been Jewish sects that obeyed the commandments despite a lack of belief in any afterlife. Greek and Roman piety towards the gods was independent of any hope for eternal rewards, so I think it's quite clear that religious expession is not automatically tied to eternal rewards and punishments.

My answer at this point would still be "no," but that is more because I have a pretty visceral negative reaction to divine command theory and biblicism in general than specifically because of the eternal life issue. The God you're positing is one I'd want nothing to do with.

Most might answer 'no'. In such a case, it may be fairly safe to surmise such an answer indicates 'selfishness', as the choice means that without the result of a reward or punishment, the effort to follow such a known agent becomes superfluous.

I don't think it's safe to surmise that at all, since your hypothetical has serious implications for theology concerning the nature of God in general. I am far from convinced that a deity who would create conscious beings and then condemn them to non-existence is worthy of worship at all. I can hold that while simultaneously echoing Rabi'a al Basri in saying:

O my Lord, if I worship you from fear of hell, burn me in hell.
If I worship you from hope of Paradise, bar me from its gates.
But if I worship you for yourself alone, grant me then the beauty of your Face.
 
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Quid est Veritas?

In Memoriam to CS Lewis
Feb 27, 2016
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This modern belief that man only acts from selfish reasons, that he only acts to accrue pleasure or escape pain, or from the demands of 'selfish genes' is utterly facile.

CS Lewis covered this nicely in Pilgrim's Regress, where the maiden Reason faces the Spirit of the Age. She asks him three riddles: What is the colour of innards you cannot see? If an enemy is pursueing you, must your wife destroy the bridge you must cross to stop the enemy, or leave it standing for you? By what means can you tell an original from a perfect copy?
For instead of following what people give as their reasoned answers, there is always an attempt to 'get behind' what they are saying - trying to decide what the reason is they are thinking in this manner, in which way there is pontificating on inner workings not clearly visible. It is not a man, but an abstraction of man then, like a corpse cut open to expose his innards is not the same as a living person.
In like manner, as per riddle two, the position that they aren't selfish is dismissed as merely wish-fulfillment or what they desire to be the case - but the same is true of those that demand that all is 'selfish' and altruism an ulterior motive. They are just seeking to justify different positions.
So the third riddle, that all 'good things' are always thought to be copies of 'bad' ones. Honour is merely seeking fame, Love merely seeking lust, etc. Why not the reverse? That the virtues are primary and the other copies?

You can always find some 'self-interest' in any action, but that is because you are assuming the doctrine before-hand and then deciding what appropriate base motive to apply 'subconsciously' or not, to someone else. So Love of God is just fear of hell or expectation of heaven. Certainly either of these can follow, but they need not necessarily be the primary cause. It is merely a priori assumption to say so. Saints are merely sinners chasing a different kind of 'high' to such people, Religion an opiate.

This pseudo-scientific Total Depravity of denying goodness as a concept really has little grounds to do so beyond conjecture. It is because the modern world is so jaded, that all noble actions are treated as suspect. Regulus returned to captivity and death out of honour, or after Poitiers Edward III released many French captives knowing they would go home and send their ransoms back to him, or Jean II returning voluntarily to captivity when France reneged on the terms of his ransom. Today all kinds of other motives, social pressure or whatnot, are placed here - which may be the case in many, but certainly need not be universal.
I spent last night nursing my sick daughter, and it can always be said to be Oxytocin or my Selfish Genes at play - for Familial Love is such an abhorrent concept to be beyond the pale. No, we must lay open everyone and assume the inner workings of all their actions without evidence beyond conjecture. They are merely masses of hormones and nerve depolarisations, not reasoning creatures - merely automata lumbering forth at the whims of a selfish cascade of self-continuity - that nothing greater than base instinctual concepts dressed in moral window dressing exists.

Men and women have been sacrificing themselves for ideals and others for millenia, but now we get to pour slime on their examples and drag them down to our level. That is merely wish-fulfillment in my mind. Why are we so much more clear-headed than they?
Love of God is even more at play here. Many groups Loved God or their form of the divine, with no hope of reward or punishment - such as the Sadducees in Judaism, Hypsistarians or philosophic schools in Greco-Roman culture, or certain Bhakti cults in Hinduism. Sufi saints or flagellants, those suffering with Christ as the early Church taught, certainly gained nothing but beatific visions and ideals. You can certainly denigrate that too, if you wish, creating some facade to justify it, but that remains at heart a presumed doctrine built on the axiomatic assumptions. As long as you are presuming others' motives, you can always presume until it fits whatever framework you want.

Ps: You can change the thread title by using the edit thread tool above the OP, if you want to correct the typo.
 
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