I was wondering something: I don’t love God, both because I see no reason to suppose his existence, and because he is a total bastard if he does exist. Now, should I be wrong, this view will certainly condemn me to eternal hellfire.
So, assuming that a bunch of well-meaning Christians decided to save my soul, by any means necessary, be it subliminal messages, enforced prayer in the hope that it would become habitual, and other such methods.
Now, I’d like to think of myself as strong-willed. However, I have no illusions that I could resist any message, no matter how little I believe it, if I am forced to repeat it enough/confronted with it subliminally/etc.
We hear about cults brainwashing people. Would it be possible to brainwash someone into mainstream religion? If so, would this save their soul?
You have your agency (free will), no matter what. That said, we can perform the ordinances on your behalf vicariously (after death) however, they don’t “take” unless you (your soul if you will) accept the ordinances in the hereafter when they are performed.
yup, sorry dude, you’re gonna fry:)
as far as the brainwashing thing,
tough one.
i guess the real question would be, at what point does the brain become the soul?
we have no way of quantifying a soul
but i’d say yeah, you clould brainwash someone, well now wait a minute…
does “brainwashing” suppose that a person once believed one way and then is being forced to believe another?
hmm…
tough, but possible.
I think Stephano DiMera did it on Days Of Our Lives, but he’s got alot of money and power, and creative writers
Robertliguori wrote:
Why do you view getting what you want as condemnation? You yourself have said that it is your view, and not God, that has condemned you.
Perhaps there is much yet to unfold in your life. There might be something around the corner today that you did not anticipate yesterday. In a context of eternity, maybe you should delay any final judgment of yourself until your journey here has finished.
It could be that when you see God face to face, whether here on earth or when you die, you discover that He is nothing like what you’ve heard, and that what you see is something you love with all your heart.
Wait until you meet someone for yourself before you decide if you like them.
Well, Lib, from my perspective sitting here, God doesn’t seems to be the type of supreme being that I want to get to know. He creates plagues, creates natural disasters, and fails to show up and explain himself. From an infinite perspective, God may have good reasons for acting exactly like He doesn’t exist. From my perspective, however, either God sucks at this creation thing, is malevolent, or doesn’t exist.
Some would argue that we live in someone else’s kingdom… so maybe it’s someone else at work and just God who is getting the bad press for it!
Can you save someone’s soul against their will? Sure, I do it all the time. I keep them in old fruit preserve jars in my office.
Umm… anyway…
Why do you assume that God creates these things intentionally? Perhaps they’re an unintentional side effect of the world he created. A necessary evil, if you will. Further, why do you assume that these things are bad, on a cosmic scale? Maybe the existence of these things that you deem bad actually makes things better in the long run? I would think a toddler could have the same view of their parent. “Even though mommy feeds me and clothes me and says she loves me, she spanked me when I tried to play with the stove, so she must be an evil, horrible person.”
Jeff
Ah, see the trick is getting to know Him from His perspective.
But don’t worry, I don’t believe you’ll be condemned for conclusions based on ignorance. Certainly you won’t be forced to live with God if you don’t want to.
ElJeffe: One Lizard beat me to it. Read if you dare.
http://www.mrlizard.com/catgod.html
For those who distrust links in arguments like this, Lizard points out that the only reason that we don’t know why we must suffer is that God hasen’t gotten His omnipotent butt down here to explain himself. We are not smart enough to grasp his cosmic plan, you say? Why the hell did God include such a design flaw? We are not smart enough to grasp his cosmic plan in making us unable to understand, you say? He could of made us capable of understanding why we don’t understand. Etc. ad nauseum.
If we understood there would be no reason for us to be here. robertliguori you may just be learning from a different perspective, but then we all are doing it in our own ways. Jerry Falwell may be learning his from the perspective of always being wrong, at least most of the time. No one knows and few are even close.
So, our purpouse is to suffer and be ignorant? Hell, why are we here, as opposed to someplace nicer?
Hazing.
Robertliguori
Or God has been misrepresented to you. I don’t mind you lashing out the way you do. From my perspective, you aren’t lashing out at anyone I know.
All you thiests here are assuming that people are born believers, which to date I’ve never seen. EVERYBODY has been brainwashed to believe, so Robertliguori, the answer is YES, you can be brainwashed. The question is, which mind-control expert will get you first! Not to say that it is inevitable – just keep that darwin fish around your neck. It wards off the, er, spirits.
Alright, Libby, is God:
A: Responsible for assembling nucleotides into the DNA of AIDS, smallpox, polio, black plague, etc.?
B: Just watched evolution create several stupendous badasses of diseases and let them devastate populations, and not rain down amoxicillin from heaven?
C: Unable to affect diseases, due to their free will. At which point he is a lying ho for not having lines like “Ask, and ye shall receive, unless it’s something important.” in the Bible.
Either God makes 'em, or he just lets 'em happen.
And no wossnaming about a higher purpouse. God, by definition, doesn’t need tools as clumsy as diseases, or us, for that matter. If God wished certain people to die, why not just magic them into heaven painlessly, and get a little good PR while he’s at it?
It’s not to test us or make us stronger. Again, God could make us whatever he wants, by definition. If something unpleasent happens, it’s because God wanted it to happen.
That kind of God is really scary. A blind, uncaring universe is workable. A universe where innocents die for no reason, when one who says that he loves all does nothing, is much scarier.
Echokitty
i agree that no one is born a believer, but brainwashing is different from development.
development is putting something there when there wasn’t anything to begin with.
brainwashing is when a person already believes something, then is biblethumped, browbeaten, starved, forced to watch beer commercials… and their belief is radically changed
so, the original question remains unanswered, can a person be brainwashed to the extent that their soul can be saved against their will?
really unanswerable, because there is no way to quantify a belief other than by report.
a person is believed to believe because the person reports that they believe, and it thus becomes “fact”
this is the way it works in the scientific community, anyway.
robertliguori,
you seem to know that these questions are really unanswerable, particularly without faith, so what is it you’re really looking for?
-not that i mind, this is a fun discussion.
;j
Why are you so concerned over rotten meat? God is Spirit. Death and life are not what you seem to think they are.
My dear confused friend. I have been in this world for nearly 26 years. Until about 6 weeks ago I was pretty much a full blown atheist. At first I just hated God. Then I got to the point that I asked the same question every time to anyone who believed. Why would you want to have a God like that? I used to think I was smarter than everyone around me or atleast the minority that had it all figured out. I will tell you right now that anytime unasked that question I could never find an answer that was good enough because if you are at that point in your mind then no matter the answer you will not accept it. Trust me I know. The crazy thing is once I was saved I finally understood and didn’t have to ask that question anymore. See most people believe (non believers) that they are the minority and that bible thumpers as you would call It or Christians are the majority. My friend it’s the total opposite but all this your mind and spirit will and cannot possibly comprehend until you accept Jesus as your Lord and savior and repent and realize that everyday you wake up you are a sinner just like everyone else. You already sound like you know that God is real more than I did. So you are basically angry with him which is 90 percent the reason all people are athiest and most won’t admit it but still again you can’t see that with your closed heart. You have been tricked into rage and anger and now you have fell under evils best tool to drag you down with him and that is believing your own conscious. Every man and woman cannot be born saved. It’s not possible. The only one who was born without sin and evil was Jesus. Every other person who ever lived and will love is offspring of Satan. You blame God but I surely blame Satan. He just got you tricked like he does everyone else. I accepted Jesus because the most gentle perfect spirit there ever was and is and will be died so you can sit here and blabber just like I did about him and his father who did this for you and you still have the chance to be saved and not die. When he arose from his death of the cross he conquered death and sin. You want to be smart? Do like I did. Research with this same energy and seek the truth and read and better yet find out for yourself that we are living in the generation of the revelations. That’s horny was saved brother because I know this. Judgement is coming soon. Your right you have two options. Sit here and be angry with God after what he did for you so you WOULDN’T have to perish in the lake of fire for eternity. If you want to be technical and question it then i would say continue with the plagues and death because if rather sit back and let Satan do his work and have this chance at peace by just simply repenting and believing on Jesus Christ than I would to have a sinless world and perish in fire if you weren’t perfect from birth to death. Since you already believe why don’t you go look research on visions if he’ll and then try to invision it yourself and think for one second you would want to be there for just one second much less eternity. Best part is God said that man couldn’t vision or feel close to it because man is not capable to even imagine how horrible it is. Your so mad but literally the choice is yours. Yeah he gave free will but it aunt like he said we had to climb a mountain with our hands naked lol. It’s as easy as closing your eyes and saying sorry and calling upon Jesus to save you. So if you should be mad at anyone it should be the idiot that chooses not to do this haha. I have to work harder just to get out of bed. Any ways I hope and pray that this somehow moves you in some way to just dare you to try it otherwise… good riddance and whatever comment you have to say please save it and respect me enough that I cared enough to write this dang novel for you because I know he’s real and he’s coming brother. Remember in order to go to heaven you must be born again! God bless you!
You weren’t an atheist.
god bless paragraphs