Ya just gotta have faith. If you’ve got faith, then it all makes sense. You and I don’t have that kind of faith. Prepare early; buy asbestos underwear. 
Well, the good news would be that his coffee will never get cold.
Lets say you were a former drug addict. Not just a run of the mill addict but one who’s life was being destroyed by your drug use. Then you someone showed you the way to overcome your addiction which you managed to do.
Then your brother started going down the path to addiction. You know how to help him but he doesn’t want your help. You see it start to destroy his life. Should you sit by and do nothing knowing it is unlikely they will ever recover on their own? Or should you try to help them? Could you even consider yourself a good person if you didn’t try and help them?
Power and control, they want everyone to do what they believe.
What if the seat belt is made of rusty razor blades and barbed wire? Like, what if I choose to follow the wrong god, and every time I sacrifice a chicken to my fake god, I’m just making the real god madder and madder?
See also: Pascal's wager - Wikipedia
Re: Kids smoking and not wearing seatbelts. (Separately or at the same time. :D)
These actually do affect me.
If I hit a car and the other person isn’t strapped in, I’m liable for a lot more than if the person was strapped in.
In both situations there’s extra demand on healthcare, higher premiums, etc. Many people who make dumb decisions end up not paying the bills for those decisions and the rest of us have to pay for it. And on and on.
OTOH, I don’t see how someone going to Hell will affect me.
But I must admit there are some interesting concepts being proposed here. Quite a scale. From “out of love” to basically greed.
I think Lemur866’s point that there’s a cause and effect thing going on is important from a practical point of view.
But I always try to remember that if you start off with a lot of contenders and after a while you’re down to a very few, it’s not always because these were the best at something. Random events don’t care who/what is good at something. There will always be a few survivors and that’s usually all they are. The ones that got lucky more than anything.
Because they’re stinking up the place?
It feels good to believe you’re right; they enjoy feeling good and will rationalize any way to do so. Witnessing is one of the more socially acceptable ways.
Religions compete in the market place the same way that plants and animals compete for resources. It’s all very Darwinian. For a religion to survive, it must do several things successfully. One of those things is to replace members who die or leave for other reasons. Therefore, the importance for recruitment and large families.
Which brand? Or are you saying to ignore all the different claims because all 5000 belts (gods) are equal? You *might * have a point if there was only one God to choose from…but just isn’t the case.
Yes he could take our freewill
If a guy pushes a knife into your side and says “Vote for me, or I’ll kill you!”, do you think this is a case of “free will”?
Yeah, but think about Homer Simpson’s corollary to Pascal’s Wager.
[Quote=Homer Simpson]
What if we picked the wrong religion? Every week we’re just making God madder and madder.
[/Quote]
Losing my free will…or burning forever in hell…
Shrug. I wasn’t using my free will for much anyway; my boss tells me what to do. What do I actually lose here?
All I have to say there is: Wow.
Really it’s more on the level of, “Do good or don’t live with me”
Well, okay, seriously. Engage with me here.
What good is my free will if it is punished by eternity in hell? If Adam had not had free will, he would have walked with God in the garden forever. How is that a bad thing?
If I were a happy robot…what, exactly, is wrong with that?
You say, “Wow,” but I don’t hear anything meaningful in it.
(Captain Kirk was a colossal jerk, ripping people out of their comfortable paradises!)
Great. You go your way, and I’ll go mine, and that’s fine.
Now, ah, about this “Hell” place… Nice bit of arm-twisting, yeah? It comes right back to the knife in the ribs.
Huh
I don’t know how to make this even simpler, but…It’s not free will if one of the “choices” is a threat-it’s extortion.