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It makes you a great bunch of hypocrites

"I can't follow all these laws, BUT IF YOU DON'T YOU'RE GONNA GO TO HELL!"

Why bother? If God does not exist it is a waste of time. And if He does exist we can do nothing about Him.

ruveyn

Circular reasoning is a Theists favorite tool. "Circular reasoning (also known as paradoxical thinking or circular logic), is a logical fallacy in which "the reasoner begins with what he or she is trying to end up with".[1] A circular argument will always be logically valid because if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true, and will not lack relevance. Circular logic cannot prove a conclusion because, if the conclusion it doubted, the premise which leads to it will also be doubted.[2]" Wiki

Anyway how about Intelligent design? the world is so complex that it could not occur randomly from nothing. so it must have been designed by God. So something would need to be at least as complex as what it created. Yet where did God come from if something so complex cannot occur from nothing and has to be created by some intelligent being. who created God... Oh wait," In the beginning Man Created God"

Petito principii is the technical term. It means begging the question.

ruveyn

Yeah that is on Wiki too but this seems to be the common term and I think more conceptually visual for me at least...

I see you mean like God cannot do miracles because He does not exist.

I have no problems with God for the same reason I have no problems with pink fluffy unicorns.

Pink fluffy unicorns killed my father

Not true genocides happened under stalin a atheist and pol pot and mao geneocide would happen even if their was no religion.

How so because we follow the laws that are the most important like the ten commandents or becasue you seem to have thsi idea that we should follow them all. And those laws are for the religious you don't have to follow then Abacacus because your a non theist which is fine it only makes the faithful more faithful when people don't believe in God.

In a similar kind of way, you have those people who ask "If God exists, how do I know the Christian God is the right one?" The foundation of Christianity is idea that all are born into sin and are in need of atonement. Grace cannot be earned but must be accepted as a gift. Suppose this whole Jesus thing was a fake the whole time and we've all been misled. EVEN IF Christ was not the Messiah and His sacrifice had no redeeming effect, it still makes better sense that God would want salvation to be open to all people rather than making redemption exclusive and that the only perfect redeeming sacrifice would be one that God alone can make. Even if Jesus was a fake (and proven to be a fake), believers can still hold onto the promise of what God WILL do in the future on our behalf. Faith alone is credited to righteousness.

If a person's unbelief prevents them from viewing Jesus as Savior (for whatever reason--being mistreated in a destructive cult, abuse within the church, fanatical/hypocritical parents, whatever...)--I don't think that it's a stretch for someone to come before God praying for the Truth to be revealed somehow. If you WANT to believe that God's grace is sufficient for salvation, you WILL believe. As long as one trusts God, whether one can say he personally knows Jesus or not, then one can arrive at the conclusion that either: Jesus paid the penalty for our unrighteousness; or God is already at work in His plan of redemption.

I think that would take exceptional circumstances, though. I find it difficult to imagine that God would turn away the non-evangelized who have lived a life waiting on God. The people who would have a problem finding their salvation would be the ones not seeking God at all. This would be a problem for a society in which pagan or "spiritual" practices are so ingrained into the culture that coming to a proper understanding of God's work would effectively destroy the culture if it were near-universally accepted. We've seen this happen with Greece and Rome, though I've heard from time to time of Orphic revivals. What happens is you have some cultures, like the ancient Greeks, that are receptive to new ideas and more willing to give up a cultural identity in favor of a new one embracing a different religion. And then you have other cultures so steeped in their native religions that would rather die than abandon their faith.

When that happens, I think we'd like to believe that because they didn't know God the way we (Christians) do and hadn't heard the gospel, God in His goodness gives them a free pass. But you also have to ask whether those people would have accepted Jesus as Savior EVEN IF they'd heard the gospel. It's highly likely, in my opinion, that they would NOT have accepted Jesus even if they'd known that they had a choice. I really don't like being pessimistic here, but I don't think it would matter if cultures were converted by will or by force. With forced conversion, you get a large number of people paying lip-service to a religion, but you find (the hard way as the Catholics did) that it is impossible to force anyone to believe something. You can't even reach their children because it is unrealistic to think that parents are going to teach their children at home something they themselves don't believe. Once professing faith becomes a means of survival, you've lost the culture. A more just way of getting conversions is by getting the message out and letting people decide for themselves. And while you may have cultures that are more open and receptive than others, you still can't force all people to believe. And thus not hearing the word cannot be an excuse.

If you KNEW that all those people would have willingly accepted Christ had they heard the gospel, then you'd have a case for those people being saved. That would also nullify the Great Commission--if people are saved through ignorance, then the best thing to do is keep them ignorant--NOT preach to them. If you preach to them, then they have a decision to make, which means preaching to them puts them in danger of eternal separation. The Bible says that ALL people are in need of salvation and that the gospel message must be spread to ALL people. The idea that one can be saved apart from God and Jesus is unbiblical. A better point to ponder would be whether someone CAN come to faith without hearing the gospel, e.g. through reasoning.


I agree wholeheartedly with your last sentence here.

I disagree that anyone at all has a "right" to be in heaven--not even believers. Heaven is a gift we can accept or reject. I think more "devout" Christians will be shocked to find themselves in hell. The thing about living a good life and practicing basic morality it is as sure path to failure for us today as it was to the Israelites. True righteousness depends on perfect obedience to God's will. If it doesn't, then exactly what standard is there to determine righteousness? Is it only the top 10% of the good guys that get in? Is it only the average? How wide a margin are we talking here? Are there people on the fringe that told just one little white lie too many to get disqualified? Is there some point of no return beyond which you're unredeemable? It makes more sense to understand "goodness" as illusory in human experience and the sole standard of true righteousness as being God Himself. We cannot equal or rise above God, so we are condemned. No human standard of good can possibly be good enough. Since we are already condemned, no matter who we are or what we've done, and since we still have hope, the gift of grace doesn't depend on your record--whether you're above reproach or on death row. The only "right" we have to the kingdom of heaven is the right we have as co-heirs with Jesus. It may seem unfortunate, but the only way of accepting God's gift of salvation is through Jesus. "Good enough" just doesn't cut it.

Which laws did Jesus supposedly say we had to follow? That's what I'm having difficulty understanding.

Jesus at times abolished laws concerning Jewish identity and ceremonial cleanliness. For example, purity laws would have prevented Jews from taking the gospel to the Gentiles. Dietary laws established Jewish identity. Death on the cross abolished the sacrificial system. The only people who SHOULD keep Torah laws of ceremonial and identity laws are the Jews themselves, and even that is a matter of conscience. The behavioral codes set out in the NT are clear as to what should be preserved, specifically the distinction between worshipping Yahweh and practices associated with idolatry. Everything else is "love your neighbor."

If Jesus ever referred to keeping every single law of the OT, then He had to include the prophets to be consistent. According to the prophets, certain aspects of Torah were only meant to apply to the establishment of Israel in Canaan. They could be changed or dropped depending on the needs of the people at various times throughout their history. The Gentiles have the law "written on their hearts" even though it wasn't "given" to us--which means we understand on a primal level good/evil and how to love each other (and act accordingly). The only differences concerning Christians is that we obey national authority (don't be troublemakers). We can otherwise keep as much of our culture as we want provided it doesn't create a conflict of conscience and it doesn't interfere with worshipping Yahweh alone.

We're going crazy in essentially a sensory deprevation chamber with no certain way of knowing which way is up, which way is down, and even within the mainline religous suggestions such as 'Live for Christ' - one holds them up to inspection and realizing that they're vague enough to mean not only nothing, even less than nothing (for the last example: great, tell me - if he exists - why he put me here, why he made me me, and I'll be more than happy to do exactly what he wants.....*if* that day ever comes).

If there's no hell - its perhaps unnerving, jarring, but apparently semi-well and good although we might be waking up out of our naps, traveling back up the Einstein-Rosen bridge, talking to other light beings at the other end and saying "Wow, I get that its supposed to be a great teaching venue but - it borders on unethical"! In that sense its like the movie The Game - and I can only imagine how many people who, when they saw their brother or whoever set them up to go through it would likely want to do the Major League thing and sucker-punch them in the stomach, THEN hug them.

If there is hell - and if it comes from confusion on earth and nothing more - it can't ethically be a permanent state. If the dice were thrown for this to be a learning experience and certain people go to places that are literally welded together of people's misguided subconscious thoughts (in which case the "I didn't do it to you - you did it to yourself" holds true); it wouldn't make sense that God can't run a salvage mission. If he can't - this process is ugly enough that I can't imagine most souls in that case entering heaven not asking him to bring it to a stop and telling God that being the lucky bullets in the chamber rather than the unlucky ones gives them little or no comfort realizing that they could have just as easily been the next person and not made it out.

Lastly - if there's a hell and a Lucifer - we're dealing with a higher power who either used him to this extent or doesn't know what omniscience means: that he's the sum of all factors, that there's no such thing as a situation that he hasn't created fully of his own doing, nor a single motion, thought, or twitch that any creature that's ever existed has executed that wasn't by extension his own behavior. If we have a God who forgives all, and Lucifer, and when the game is over the slate is wiped clean and he welcomes Lucifer back saying - 'Thank you for that rousing game of chess' - all's fair but wow, its even more horrifically nerve-wracking than the scenario two paragraphs up. In the last case though - if he truly doesn't realize what he's done (as organized/fundamentalists might suggest) - then we're DEEP in brown with out a boat or a paddle. Lets just hope by all intents and purposes that we don't find the Protestant's God, the Wahaabi's Allah, or Carl Jung's God of 'Answers to Job'.

From all this analysis though it does shed light on one thing - whether its controversial of me to say this or not I don't care: reductive materialism can be a heck of a wonderful security blanket, especially when weighed against so many possibilities - half of which are significantly more troubling than simply ceasing to be at the end of life.

i had a lot of trouble keeping up with that last post lol i tried but my brain is still processiong it

Huh?

Yes that is correct oh and here is the link for The Invisible Pink Unicorn
of course if you prefer to be touched by his noodley appendage you can go here Church of the Flying Spagetti Monster.