Tamanaha on Araujo on Eschatology & Public Policy

Over at Balkinization, Brian Tamanaha responds to Robert Araujo's recent post of a hypothetical conversation between a believer and nonbeliever about eternity.  Fr. Araujo wrote:

Let me offer a humble and modest suggestion by posing a question for the secularist who has at least an equal share in the direction of public policy as does the theist: have you thought about the future? The secularist may dismiss the direction in which my inquiry is going, i.e., in an eschatological path. All I can do then is to propose that the secularist reflect on something that he or she may have never considered. And how might I do this?

Let me offer the following illustration: I could say, “You may be right, Secularist, that it is all over when we die. But I ask you to consider the following: we both will die (however that happens), and this event is inevitable. You may look at me and say, ‘see I (the Secularist) was right. You have wasted a lifetime.’ But, my suggestion to you is this: But if I (the theist) am right, I will not have wasted a lifetime, but you will have wasted an eternity.”

An excerpt from Brian's response:

[F]or the broader issue of the relevance of religious views in political decisions, there is a notable asymmetry in the consequences that follow from these two positions. If non-believers make political decisions by the lights of their best moral judgments, the fact that they wrongly do not believe in the Christian story does not prevent Christians from enjoying eternal salvation. No harm done to them, at least with respect to the hereafter.

However, if Christians make political decisions by the lights of Christian doctrine, and it turns out that there is no God or that Christianity is wrong about the nature of things (two distinct possibilities), then Christians will have inflicted their false religious beliefs on others, with immediate consequences.