What if you were wrong?

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You don't seem to really grasp the issue. You don't think that Biblical scholars debate over the conditions of salvation. I mean, seriously, y'know that division between Catholicism and Protestantism? "Conditions of salvation" is actually a MAJOR issue in that dispute. So... yeah...

Now, you can say "I read the Bible and see this", but frankly, wikipedia is a lot quicker than reading the Bible, and this issue is in less dispute.


We can't universally agree on the existence of God, the kind of God that exists, the method by which this God will save people, and so on and so forth. So, your own criteria don't work for your position. Now, you may say "No, it really is possible that all will agree", but the only point I can see you going back to is logically possible. And it is equally logically possible that all people will agree on intellectual honesty, or come closer to expressing similar ideas.

As for the "standard of completely eliminating all bias", come on, I think it is rather obvious that if we are talking about "intellectual honesty" as a virtue, we don't have to hold to its perfect expression if we can say "salvation is by sufficient expression". You've turned something that can be handled reasonably into something utterly unreasonable.


Right.... and in that spirit, you have seen fit to strain at a gnat, to swallow a camel, in these intellectual terms.

I use wikipedia all the time. It's great entertainment and a decent initial source for fact-finding. But the issue is how well wikipedia represents the "stuff" of the Bible. Wikipedia can distill a source into much of it's relevant components, but it doesn't present all of its subjects in their fullness and entirety. I'm finding that actually reading ALL the Bible opens more windows into the Christian faith and what it actually is than any Sunday School lesson or sermon about it.

FYI: Just finished Ezekiel.



If intellectual honesty is the sole virtue by which all may be accepted, then you raise more questions. I disagree here (of course). I say we DO have to hold to its perfect expression.

Take what you said: "We don't have to hold to its perfect expression if we can say 'salvation is by sufficient expression'." The key word is "sufficient." By what/whose standard may we determine what is "sufficient"? Ours? No, because we can't all agree on what that is in any consistent way, else we lower our standards. By God's standard? Why would a perfect God feel or see a need to lower a standard? God COULD lower His standards, but that indicates that God is permissive. The Bible tells us that God is NOT permissive. As I mentioned, I just finished Ezekiel, and I can tell you that, while God is patient, God can reach the end of His patience and subject His people to harsh punishment if it means that they will eventually see the error of their ways and wholeheartedly rededicate their hearts, minds, and lives to Him. If God intended to lower His standards and allow permissiveness to rule His people, why would He have established law and order beginning with Moses? God cannot elevate a single group of people to a representative status and let them off the hook "just because." That sends mixed signals to the rest of humanity. The Bible tells us that God punishes those who do not follow Him, even using His own people to exact His vengeance on sinners, and using sinners to punish those who belong to Him when they fail.

So if God doesn't lower standards, moral or (we assume) intellectual, then how are we to know what those standards are? Does the Bible indicate what intellectual standards are? Well, somewhat... By memorizing the Law and educating one's mind to the writings and the prophets and applying those things to daily life, one has a good start. But it is impossible to keep the commands perfectly.

But what about sufficiently? OK, so how are we to know what sufficient even means? By our own standards? No, because the Bible tells us we are all sinners. By God's standards? Sure, but what does God tell us is sufficient? From what I've read, there IS no such thing as sufficient. It's all or nothing. No amount of virtuosity, whether intellectual honesty or otherwise, can possibly be sufficient!

Sacrifices, in part, are a means through which a sinner lays his blame on God, admitting that he has lived according to the Law to the very best of his ability and still failed. Faith in God alone, not sacrifices, rescues the sinner. And through the universal atonement on the part of Christ, repeated sacrifices are no longer necessary. There is no need to guess at what and how much of virtue must be attained for sufficiency and subsequent salvation. Our blame is already on our Savior, we are already forgiven, and through faith we are already perfect and fit for the Kingdom. All that remains is for a person to accept it, and it is done. This can't happen by following "rules" of academic/intellectual honesty or "being good." It can only come about as a result of God's actions, not our own.

Well, I wasn't referring to Christian theology, I was referring to intellectual honesty.


I've already addressed that though. If God can set his own standards, then who are you to say that God has to set perfect standards.


First off: "Why would a perfect God see or feel a need to lower a standard" is an irrelevant question, AngelRho. Are you saying that you are an expert in divine psychologies? No? Then don't pretend that you are one. Secondly, if we hold that God is a teleological agent, then guess what? A perfect God could see or feel a need to lower a standard for his reasons.

Further, how about this then: How can a perfect God accept an imperfect faith as sufficient? I mean, certainly you can't say that anything that a person might label "faith" is sufficient, but at the same time, you can't say that you or anybody else has perfect faith. So, why should God accept this middle ground? It is not clear that a perfect God would or should have low standards for this.

As for "The Bible"???? Dude, you can't be thinking straight if you are attacking the idea of another hypothetical God using the Bible. You might as well have just said "The God of the Bible is true because the Bible says so", which UTTERLY destroys the notion of using Pascal's wager to prove that it is rational to believe the God of the Bible.


I am not taking your method seriously. The Bible isn't relevant to objections about Pascal's wager, particularly not against the "plurality of hypothetical gods" argument.

That's because wikipedia is not a religious site and it tries to be impartial, if it presents all of "its subjects in their fullness and entirety" it would just not be.


Begging the question, I believe you use an assumption of something in which there was never an agreement or consideration to be the case in the first place or that it hasn't been justified, so I highly doubt the argument goes somewhere other than showing your belief, but without a proper justification or that the other side can understand, which it doesn't.

I mean, first, a proper justification of the existence of God, although you already used Pascal's wager for that, even though it was rejected, but also the lack of justification of the Bible and why one needs to read it and how to prove it is the source of truth rather than a book of a mixture of fiction and reality, and a justification of your particular theology, those are things that seem to be missing when you use them in your arguments, so it seems the problem of begging the question, as one side makes the assumption of the conclusion to justify other things, but the other doesn't.

The problem of putting human reason to lower standards, in which that seems inconsistent with the idea of people being able to recognize God and his demands and properly write them down to a collection of books.

And the problem of appealing to mere faith, which does nothing.

I don't believe you. No one is completely neutral about changing their beliefs or ideas. I am averse to changing my beliefs because I am attached and committed to them to some extent. Given enough reason to do so and some amount of time to internalize new ideas, I can sometimes change my ideas, but switching beliefs is something that humans in general are strongly averse to, myself included.

While I am reluctant to disavow ideas and principles that have served me well, in the end I must yield to facts. Facts rule. Theories and beliefs serve (sometimes). The only abstract apriori principle I hold is the Law of Non-Contradiction. All the others are either conventions or suppositions that have been so far supported by the facts that I happen to know.

ruveyn