Having A Hard Time With Religion Because Of People

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So all Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Taoists, Hindus, Atheists, "pagans" and whoever else all are going to hell.


Lovely little situation. "Believe in my set of stipulations that have no mandatory connection to morality or you won't have 'eternal life'". Doesn't matter if they lived a moral life, they don't get eternal life or get the mystical retcon of "purgatory" (a concept that didn't really surface until roughly 1100 AD) where they get a shot at realizing that Jesus is the son of the correct god. Brilliant, a god who sets the odds against humanity...seems to fit with the rest of creation that "it" created.

Some omnipotent being....granting free will to a vast majority to only have them either sent to hell or "die" or be given a chance to say "sorry, you're right" depending on your personal interpretation of that religion. All of which have less than positive implications for said specific deity.

All a sham.

Would it be justice if God FORCED a belief in Him upon those to whom He also granted free will? I mean, either way you look at it, it's an ugly situation. Let's say you believe in God. W00h00!! ! No problem. Eternal life in paradise. Great.

Ok, so let's say you DON'T believe in God given all the info we have available (the Bible, personal experiences of believers). Well, two things follow: 1) You go to Hell. No U-Turns, no second chances. Eternal separation from God. Forever. 2) Annihilation. You simply cease to exist.

Now, you can say that #2 would be preferable to #1. But what if you never heard of God and Jesus? Is it fair to just simply cease to exist? Personally, even if I'd known about Jesus and chose otherwise, I think I'd prefer to at least maintain some form of identity in the afterlife. Simply snuffing me out hardly seems fair. Hell seems to me the most merciful alternative to heaven.

It's actually the most merciful alternative on two levels, the one I've just mentioned. The other level has to do with whether someone who believes otherwise would change their minds anyway, assuming they'd never heard of Jesus. Obviously you've made up your mind, though it could be possible you can still change it. So if you, assuming you've spent a lifetime using whatever means necessary to somehow hold onto and maintain this strict belief that there is and cannot be God and Jesus was just a crazy Jew, died and then met God and Jesus face-to-face, would you really WANT to believe then if you'd spent your whole life in your efforts to avoid any kind of belief in God? I mean, either way, faith is a lot of work. The problem is a lot deeper-seated. It's more than simply "not-believing." It becomes a desire not to believe. You don't WANT to believe. And therein lies the problem. No one with that state of mind could possibly be happy in the presence of God.

So what happens? Well, God COULD just say "Well, I changed my mind. Bring 'em ALL in!" OK, but what about those believers who kept their faith, endured mockery or even harsh persecution, only to find out it never really mattered in the first place? What then? Where would God's justice be? Further, why believe that those who died in their unbelief would necessarily be happy conforming to the kind of person God expects true believers to be? I think the answer here is that someone expecting something other than the Judeo-Christian ideal of paradise would be very unhappy being forced to exist for all eternity in the presence of God. For those people, heaven would just be another kind of hell. Being banished from God's presence is the only merciful act left to God.

One of my faults (of course this can be a good thing) is my obsession over relationships, almost to the point I had to isolate myself in order to stop stalking one particular ex-gf that I was crazy about. The thing is, though, she didn't want to be with me at all, and no amount of loving her would win her back. Even if I somehow could have forced her to stay with me, it's doubtful that I'd have been happy with her because there's no way I can make her want me. Letting go was difficult given my feelings and tendencies towards obsession, but I was forced to move on.

Another relationship which lasted a few years was with a girl who seemed crazy about me, and I felt the same way about her. Things were really great for a while. But after about 2 or 3 years, her attitude became increasingly negative to the point she was constantly starting fights with me, insulting me, and especially making fun of me when she was around her friends. Well, I was in love and obsessed with keeping the relationship together, so I put up with it for a long time. I came to the ugly realization that kind of treatment just isn't appropriate for something long term. So I cut her loose. It wasn't that I didn't love her. I did. But I knew I couldn't spend the rest of my life with someone who couldn't express her feelings for me in any recognizably positive way. I mean, there were SOME good times and a few of them were actually GREAT. But I had to accept that though she wanted someone to pay attention to her, the focus wasn't on the "togetherness" of the relationship. Rather, it was her every whim and her own desperation of being in a relationship. It was "being in love with love." And as patient as I was with her and as much as I tried to communicate that what she was doing was hurtful, we reached a point that, for me, was a point of no return. I didn't WANT to break up with her. I'd just simply gone with her as far as I possibly could go. And though she paid lip service to being dedicated to me (indeed, she never cheated on me or anything like that), those things she did with me were horrible enough to be counted as rejection. I'm just not the sort of person who can be molded by another person.

Likewise, God cannot be molded to what human beings want. I think God wants all to come to Him, but like the first example, He won't MAKE us do it. Neither will God conform to what we want or expect. When we reach that point at which we will just never "get it," we leave God little choice but to simply let go. I think God wants us to say, "Thy will be done," and really live out the meaning of that statement. But to those who reject God, He says, "THY will be done."

So forcing unbelievers to reside in heaven is just another kind of hell, regardless, and eternal separation is more merciful and appropriate than either heaven or annihilation.

Free will is deciding if I want to do 1,000 different things on a Saturday morning or go out in field service. I choose, of my own free will, to go out in service because I love Jehovah and my fellow humans.

My problem is that it's inherently a coin flip/craps shot in how its described against the evidence for/against. The best shot you have is basically indoctrination from birth by society and your parents and even then, you get the people like me who despite that, still finds the evidence wanting and says "no". I'm not inherently a bad person but your god would send me to hell for not believing the less than convincing argument from its followers? That's entirely a probabilistic anomaly than anything that can be shown with scientific rigor.

The problem in your statement here is that we are free to explore other religions or reject God/gods altogether in a free society. You yourself are evidence of that because you've examined the evidence (though I might speculate that your actual examination of the evidence could very well have been lacking) and rejected it.

Scientific rigor? Maybe, maybe not. I think of it more on logical grounds. I see it this way:

1. God created man for God's purpose, as a companion and image-bearer.
2. Man rejected God for selfish reasons, introducing sin (including arrogance and pride) into a perfect creation.
3. Therefore, there cannot exist anything in a fallen creation that is good.

What that basically means is that being a "good person" is not, on it's face, a bad thing. According to Paul's letter to the Romans, the Greeks had the Law written on their hearts EVEN THOUGH God only gave the written Law to the Jews. That basically means we all have a sense of what God wants, the distinction between right and wrong, good and evil, even if we never even heard of Yahweh of the Bible or even Jesus. It only becomes worthless when our actions are inspired by self-seeking motives. I'm not saying that we are all trying to be deceitful or anything more horrible than that but along those lines. Some people do good things because it makes them "feel good about themselves." They do good things because they get what I like to call the "warm-and-fuzzies." Well, we believers get "warm-and-fuzzies," too, so what's the difference? The question is whether we get this feeling because we are doing something that makes us feel better about ourselves or look good in our own eyes or because "being a good person" is an outpouring of God's love for His creation. If we're just trying to feel good about ourselves, then our actions serve us in no better way than the fig leaves served Adam and Eve. We're just covering up inward sin by the outward veneer of goodness. Motivations that put God at the center of our actions overcome our sinful nature, and thus our "sacrifices" and good works become pleasing to God. And the only way a sinful person can be justified is through faith in Jesus. "Good works," then, become irrelevant (there cannot exist anything good in a fallen creation). What IS relevant, however, is that God uses those who believe in Him to do good for those who don't believe or have never heard of Jesus. As long as we are motivated to glorify God through our deeds, we speak the truth to a fallen world and seek to win that world over through the Gospel of Jesus.

Now, I can't FORCE you or anyone else to convert. History shows that doing so does no good if there is no real faith. If you don't think the evidence that God has given for Himself is adequate, you make the choice to reject God. If you don't want God, why would you want to spend an eternity in heaven?

Now, as far as the probability of coin flips and crap shots is concerned: It's a matter of God allowing the greatest amount of people to willingly believe in Him and to dedicate themselves to doing His will. That kind of person won't really make any kind of changes between death and their entry into heaven. I believe that for those of us who have put our faith in Jesus, we are in heaven already--no need to wait until death to figure out what it all means. While we are still living an earthly existence, we have the opportunity to invite others into the kingdom. But the unfortunate truth is simply that in order to make sure that an optimal number of people WILL choose God and enter the kingdom, there will also be a great number of those who, probabilistically, will make the conscious choice to reject God, relying solely on their own ability to "be a good person." So yeah, it is a sort of crap shoot because it is dependent upon the individual as to what that person's ultimate destiny will be. I think the Bible is opposed to gambling in part because God isn't a gambler. The problem, as I see it, is an imperfect world which exists as a creation of man and not God will always be a world of risk. Thus God will only do the best with what we give Him, directly intervening when necessary. So as long as we impose our will upon the world and even upon God (or at least try to), eternal destiny will necessarily be left up to chance. But not because God has abandoned us, rather the opposite. The claims of Jesus Christ are such that I feel no need to fear that I am wrong.

If I am, it follows someone else must be right. If Buddhism/Hinduism are true, then I've got all eternity to get it figured out. Believing in Jesus has cost me nothing here. If the atheists are right and there is no God or afterlife, then I simply fade into nothing. In my final moment of life, I can reflect back on all the good things I've done in the name of God and be happy, sleeping eternally in the peace that comes from that knowledge. But if the God of the Bible is true, and if believing in Jesus grants me the right to eternal life with God, then I'll never fear facing eternal separation from God had I rejected God in favor of some "evidence-based" approach that turned out to be empty in the end. It's Pascal's Wager. I'd never suggest that someone actually use Pascal's Wager as justification for faith in Jesus. It's merely a point of meditation, a risk/benefit analysis. It shows that if we are taking a risk, the teachings of Jesus can be found to be far superior to claims others have made.

see, this is why some people think that atheists just hate god. i like to say that atheists realize that if we're wrong and god exists, he's apparently a dick.

how kind of him to make eternal life in hell available to those of us who can't tell the difference between him and zeus.

how terrible it would be if i had to accept mortality.

Quite simply, it just proves my point. If you don't want God, you won't get God. I think that's perfectly reasonable, don't you?

if you're an automobile manufacturer and you release a line of cars that, after about 20,000 miles, ALWAYS starts on fire, you, as the manufacturer, are probably responsible.
if you're an existence manufacturer and you release a line of organisms that, after about 5 minutes, ALWAYS sins, you, as the manufacturer, are probably responsible.

"if you don't want god, you won't get god" seems perfectly reasonable until you try to turn it around to say "if you want god, you get god."
while it is reasonable for me to say "if you don't want a magical flying rocking-chair, you won't get a magical flying rocking-chair," it is not reasonable for me to say "if you want a magical flying rocking-chair, you get a magical flying rocking-chair."

you can want that damn chair as hard as you want. if the chair doesn't exist, wanting it isn't going to make it exist. da vinci wanted a flying machine. he wanted it really hard. he believed it was possible but he never quite got it right. we've since done much better at making flying machines and we now use them all the time.


want a god? make one. want a heaven? make one. want a cookie? want it really hard. see how that works out for you.

Not really. How about if I don't want YOUR god but I want another one? Say if I want Bacchus instead of Yahweh. Do I get Bacchus? It's not reasonable and it doesn't prove a point other than some people have trouble with logic.

I see your point. I'm well familiar with ancient Greek cults, but for the sake of argument, let me ask this: Why Bacchus? In other words, why should I believe that Bacchanalian faith is superior to that of Yahweh? Personally, that seems self-destructive. So, logically speaking, it would appear to me that if you desire self-destruction, then Yahweh certainly would not keep you from it if you persist in doing so.

That's just using the example YOU provided. You can insert the name of any supposed divinity and get similar results. In a lot of ways, a comparison of other religions with Yahweh/Yeshua worship shows that the latter tends to make more sense than the former. And I'm strictly speaking from a purely Biblical point of reference unconcerned with theological variations among major Christian movements, e.g. Catholicism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, etc. The Bible, for instance says nothing about Catholics vs. Calvinists. If we're going to talk about Bacchanalian worship vs. Yahweh worship, we have to keep it about the basics.

It was a throw away choice and you can insert any other god you want. How about Eros? A god of love and beauty. My point still remains.

i know i'm quite often very abrasive on this subject, so i want to preface this by saying this is not a mocking attack on you or your faith, but rather an important aspect of my perspective and that of many other atheists/agnostics that is often ignored or overlooked:
we believe deities are fictional characters, created by mortal humans.

it's not surprising, to us, that modern christianity, as a religious culture, is superior to many other religions. it's been updated quite a bit. this does not prove, to us, the correctness of your doctrine. i'm a frank herbert fan. i think the "dune" series was a lot better than "harry potter," for instance, but i see them both as fiction. the diversity of modern christianity is something to be concerned about, if you're concerned with truth and you believe christianity to be correct. catholocism and lutheranism have quite a few differences that american christians in my former congregations and those i encounter in my daily life are quite willing to overlook for the sake of christian solidarity. can you reconcile mormonism with the rest of christianity?

on a completely unrelated sidenote, i'm an atheist and i find it insulting to christians that scientology uses a cross in it's symbol. how do christians (or failing that, how do you) feel about that?

i think it's easier to poke holes in mormonism and scientology because their authors lived much more recently (and publicly) than the authors of older religions. when we do the same with older religions, based on either historical records of the time or the religious texts the religions consider historically accurate, is it really much different?

i like different perspectives and i think you might be able to provide an interesting one.

Eros worship has ties with the Eleusinian mysteries. A major feature of the mysteries is the initiation of a proselyte into certain rites associated with representative deities. I was initiated into a fraternity that, while not being religious in nature, maintained elements of Greek ritual and may have had some Freemason influence. So, sure, I gained certain knowledge that others won't have. But having gone through that ritual only sets me apart from others in the sense that I share an ideology with my "brothers." These ideals are unique to us and not free for the general public. My understanding is that college fraternities in general follow a similar pattern, though the actual initiation involved varies from frat to frat. The Eleusinians would have had no different understanding. The difference is that what they practiced WAS a religion, certain aspects of which were ONLY available to those they considered acceptable to the cult--and even then, not all levels within the cult gave a complete revelation of its mystery. This was something to be worked for, to be gained over a long time of devotion to the Mysteries.

Yahweh, on the other hand, has NEVER been secret. Jesus never taught anything in secret that He didn't intend to be revealed at the appropriate time. "What is whispered to you, you must shout from the housetops." Thus, salvation is free to all. Worshiping Eros, especially in the context of the Mysteries, is something done in secret only by those deemed "worthy." In worshiping the God of the Bible, it is understood that we are all unworthy, yet by God's grace we may freely come to Him. No one stands at the door with a sword with a challenge/response. Simply open the door and enter.

Use as many throwaways as you like, but my point stands also. It makes better sense to worship God than anyone else.

Prove it.

OK.

Matthew 10:26-27--Therefore, don't be afraid of them, since there is nothing covered that won't be uncovered, and nothing hidden that won't be made known. What I tell you in the dark, speak in the light. What you hear in a whisper, proclaim on the housetops.

Other passages mention Jesus prior to His trials in which He described Himself as teaching openly, asking the question about why He wasn't arrested then. It's obvious from scripture that anything Jesus told the disciples in secret was never intended to be kept secret from other believers. I doubt when John asked Jesus who it was that would betray Him that He shouted out to everyone present that it would be Judas. Jesus, instead, gave a signal as to how they would know, and this was verified in the actions of Judas.

No secrets.