How about going to hell as punishment for believing something that you don’t have sufficient proof for?
Sigh. There is a difference between not believing something because of lack of evidence, and actively believing the opposite. Notice how nobody said “I’m absolutely, 100% sure that God doesn’t exist.” They simply stated that the evidence was less than convincing.
If you wish to present some evidence for the existence of God, you are better off not starting with premises upon which people are likely to disagree. Many humans do not have a basic need for something transcendent. Even if they did, this would no more “prove” God than it would prove nirvana. The question of atheist morality has been brought up dozens of times before. Search the archives.
Finally, if you believe that people deserve to go to Hell for believing something without sufficient proof, please, get psychological counseling.
What really gives me my jollies in when, on a message board, a (I suppose) Christian comes up with some really insightful new questions for me to answer. This, unfortunately, isn’t one of those events. But anyway…
Given the complete lack of evidence, I think it’s a safe belief. Please note the word belief. Thank you. I also am pretty sure that Binky the Magic Space Clown doesn’t exist - and if you worshipped him, I’d think you irrational for that as well.
Are you saying it is universally present and active? Apparently they left mine out at the factory… or it broke… or something. Don’t you think that if god existed he might even make a “basic human need for something transcendent” that pointed to… oh… the same god??
So, what you’ve said now is that god created a need in our “hearts” for him… but in doing so, he made sure plenty of people were going to look at the wrong god as The Big Guy. And then he gets to cackle and send them to hell.
Muwahahahaha. Yeah, that sucks.
They’re based on the applied use of reason to formulate a morality which balances the immediate benefits to me with long-term enlightened self-interest. In the grand scheme of things, yes, it’s all relative. But one need only look at the various cultures around the world to see that there is no absolute morality as much as Christians might want there to be.
Thanks for playing.
For the OP: I can’t remember the chapter and verse, but the statement from Jesus “I am the way, the truth, and the light. No-one gets to the father but through me” pretty much answers the question from a Christian viewpoint.
For everyone else: If anyone else brought that verse up, my apologies - I had a skim through, and going back for a proper read now.
Okay, so we’ve strayed a bit from the OP, and heck, it even was partly my fault, but The Mick – it’s their god, they can do whatever they want. If you actually read the New Testament, it is full of Jesus warning about how various people are going to be cast into hell, and it doesn’t exactly leave a big loophole like “if you don’t believe, I don’t really care”.
In fact, John 3:16 is what all christians know, but John 3:18 is much more interesting:
“…but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed…”
So, yes, I agree, it just plain isn’t fair, but hey, remember the Godden rule: “he with the God makes the rules.”
If it makes you happier, remember that Jesus reserves his biggest ire for people who are hypocritical. Possibly, if you are vicious, and God does throw you in hell, you can amuse yourself by watching all the people who thought they were going to heaven who didn’t. (someone with more familiarity with the bible can quote the “You thought you knew me, but you were just wrong” line)
Me’Corva
And, Super_Head, This buds for you. =:>
I won’t pretend to be insightful; so, thanks for the thoughtful reply. 
Noted!
Then, there is complete lack of evidence, even considering the extraordinary design found throughout nature? The incredibly complex coordinated biological systems in which no conceivable part-coordinated, part-functioning, simpler arrangement would be other than a liability?
A complete lack of evidence, even though nature abounds with magnificent visual beauty? Even hidden and unnecessary beauty? Beauty which is often quite useless except for the aesthetic gratification of man and God?
Can the universe create itself, contradicting the law of energy conservation?
Can the universe be eternal, contradicting the law of energy decay?
Based upon the principle of contingency, for the universe itself to exist, there must be a cause for its existence. Complete lack of evidence?
I agree!
People do have a tendency to find substitutes for God.
God gave people a will to choose Him, or to choose their God substitutes. God would rather they choose Him! (1 Timothy 2:4, 2 Peter 3:9)
People also have a tendency to be sinful. (Romans 3:23, Galatians 5:19-21)
Hey, ImNotMad, why don’t you and Mangetout get together and start a debate about whether there is sufficient proof of God/Jesus. Just recently, he seemed to be arguing that I should be as certain of Jesus as I am of your Great Grandmother. I’m sure you could spark interest. Heck, I’d probably even join in.
However, for this thread, am I to understand that you believe that unbelievers go to hell for not believing, end of story? If so, that’s all you needed to say.
Me’Corva
(quickly poking my head in)
These arguments are not very convincing either. They boil down to:
a) I can’t explain how something happened, so I’ll wave my hand and say “magic!” (aka God)
b) If I can’t explain the origin of something, I’ll invent a mysterious cause (also with no explanable origin) and assign it the name “God”. The fallacy in that approach seems self-evident.
c) The appreciation of beauty derives from the evolutionary process. Humans find a fresh fruit “beautiful” and a rotten fruit “ugly” because we eat fresh fruit. We find a waterfall beautiful because we drink water. A typical male will find a young woman beautiful because she can reproduce. etc… Granted that our society is so complex that these explanations seem simplistic, but originally I’m sure that’s how the concept of beauty came about.
Now picture a young woman by a waterfall eating fresh fruit.
ahh
(Of course, at your option you may choose different genders)
Tried that once. Stupid broad believed the snake and got us all in trouble.
Ahhh, the problem here is that you assuming it is design - which by definition would require a designer. All you’ve done is define a god into existence, and yet, it doesn’t help the case for your specific god one bit.
You mean like the human eye which is so badly designed we have a blind spot? If you’re going to make the “god as engineer” argument, you end up painting him as a pretty weak one deserving of termination. Furthermore, if you argue the complexity of design, then your god must be at least as complex as his creation no? So how does god get out of needing a designer - and where does the chain stop?
Or is it turtles all the way down?
Who says it was ever created? If the universe has a net energy of zero, then what’s the issue? Reference “The Whole Shebang”, by Timothy Ferris, pg. 247-264 which will address your concerns using gravitation and quantum physics… I admit to only being a layman myself.
Except for that whole pesky omniscience thing getting in the way of free will.
In your eyes, perhaps … however, my point was that cross-culturally, we agree only on the most basic of morals and consider the ones we possess the most “proper” of the ones to be held. There is no way to gauge the so-called absolute morals because they do not exist, and if they could be easily gleaned from the Bible, we’d have no need for all these denominations with their own interpretations.
The problem I see with these kinds of things is that either you wind up with an infinite number of turtles from the assumption that each turtle needs a mama turtle, or else you have only one turtle, whose existence is noted without being explicable. At some point, everyone I know (not, I’m aware, a proof) is forced to postulate a turtle whose existence is inexplicable. It’s not clear to me why postulating one turtle is inherently better or worse than postulating two.
Note that Ferris is also a layman, albeit a layman with contacts, is writing for other laymen, and IIRC is arguing for only one of the possibilities about the universe rather than equally and objectively presenting all scientifically recognized possibilites (he presents other possibilites, but he does have a bias). In other words, read Ferris, but take him with a grain of salt. I regret that I don’t have my copy of The Whole Shebang in state, but I’m skeptical that the energy of the universe is zero, given that in field theory a whole bunch of positive infinite energies are ignored because they don’t affect the physics (until you get to gravitation, and we have as yet no predictive quantum theory of gravity).
There are, of course, a great number of arguments about precisely this topic, most of which involve the way that time works for God. I don’t have a good cite for you because my philosophy of religion books are in the same other city as my copy of Ferris, but I want to point out that this issue has been addressed before. Whether the conclusions reached are satisfactory remains up to you, of course.
Hmm… Isn’t this statement a bit too strong? Better, I should think, to say that no absolute moral system is known or can be found because each person is bound to his own frame of reference. The inability to find something doesn’t mean that thing doesn’t exist, although it may well mean that the thing isn’t a useful concept.
ImNotMad, meet mythbuster. I think you and he will get along well.
(And why is it necessary to tell us you’re not mad? Do people often get the impression that you’re mad? And do you mean “angry” or “insane”?)
My last reply to this thread, since nobody is making any headway in this arguement in either direction. Not many people believed Jesus when he was here, either.
My point was that God set rules for people to live by. He also gave us a way out of eternal punishment for breaking those rules.
I still say that these rules apply to everyone, even if you choose not to follow them.
As hard as it is to stand up and say it, the only way to get to heaven is by accepting Jesus as the way. When you think about it, it’s not really that hard. He took your punishment for you. The least you can do is thank him for it.
I do think someone, who professes to believe that there is a God, and Jesus is His son, the Savior of man should address the question in the thread title. The rest of the thread seems mostly to deal with logic and evidence, and I will not join into that part of the discussion, since I find that entire exercise to be hurtful for both sides.
But I agree entirely with the statement that God cannot hate atheists. I would also add that it seems pretty clear to me that Christians may not do so either. Loving atheists is a very important part of faithful expression of the love Christ gives to us. I shall not defend God from the accusations implicit in some of the arguments presented. But I do wish to offer to those who have been hurt by what is identified as God’s hatred, that this is the work of men.
If you cannot believe in God, please believe in love, and keep your heart open.
" It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching." ~ Saint Francis Of Assisi ~
Tris: So what’s with John 3:18??? Do you see the juxtaposition in love and condemnation? How can a supposedly loving God condemn someone who’s never had a chance to learn (either geographically or due to their age when dead). Any argument used to get them into heaven is the beginning of a very slippery slope that ends in discrediting the whole Bible…
:rolleyes:
DNFTT
-Ben
Some of the arguments in this thread remind me of something I read in that Roy Comfort comic (the one in which he ripped off Indiana Jones in order to bring people to Jesus. I guess “thou shalt not steal” isn’t high on the list for some people.)
He describes how he talked to a young fellow about the Bible, and the young guy told him that he didn’t really believe all that stuff in the Bible. Roy asked him, “What’s your name?”
The kid replied, “Paul.”
Roy said, “I don’t believe you. What’s your real name?”
“Paul.”
“I don’t believe you.”
After a bit of this, Roy “Einstein” Comfort replied that the reason Paul got mad when he didn’t believe that Paul was his real name is because Roy was implicitly accusing him of lying. And (you can see the punchline coming, can’t you?) if you don’t believe that the Bible is true, you’re calling God a liar, so imagine how mad he must get!
Of course, any non-F.C. knows that this argument is totally moronic, because you can easily turn the logic around to show that Christians should believe the Koran, because otherwise they’re making Allah justifiably angry by calling him a liar. But to Comfort’s audience, this sort of thing seems like the height of brilliance.
Sometimes I’m reminded of one of the tests used to diagnose autism in children. You show the child a box of Junior mints and ask them what’s inside, and they tell you it’s full of Junior mints. Then you show them that in reality, there’s a pencil inside. Then you put the pencil back in and ask them what a friend of theirs would say if you showed them the box and asked what was inside. A healthy child will say, “Junior mints.” An autistic child will say, “a pencil.” It never occurs to the autistic child that the other kid will see things differently than he does, and it so often doesn’t occur to FC’s that Jesus just isn’t the center of the universe for atheists, Muslims, and Jews. And as a result, we get bizarrely circular arguments about how you’ve got to be a Christian, because Jesus died on the cross for you. You’ve got to believe the Bible, or Jesus will get mad at you. (“You fool- why take that box when you know there’s no Junior mints in it?”) And if atheists don’t believe, it’s because they “rejected” God, so naturally they’ll get Hell, because separation from God is what they always wanted! (“I guess maybe some people prefer a pencil to candy!”) And never mind the obvious fact that atheists no more reject God than FC’s “reject” Odin and spit on his sacrifice.
-Ben
jab1: As if mythbuster weren’t enough to deal with…
Trisk: You are right. We have strayed from the OP, and we aren’t getting very far (but it is kind of fun.) However, it seems like most interpretations from the christians here are in line with John 3:18 – that Atheists are going to be cast into hell.
And, I’m just basing this on the obvious christians we’ve had post:
ImNotMad:
How about going to hell as punishment for believing something that you don’t have sufficient proof for?
[which implies that believing god doesn’t exist causes one to go to hell]
Super Gnat argued that since there were only two choices, heaven and hell, atheists would be uncomfortable in heaven, so must go to hell. (where they will be much more comfortable, I’m sure )
Edlyn, Bitterdrunk Kid, and the nice people who responded to HubZilla seem to agree that hell is self-selected, and unbelievers WANT to go there.
I could go on – but the uniformity of views is pretty obvious. I hate to tell all of you liberal christians who really don’t think it’s fair that unbelievers are sent to hell – but Jesus’ words and the vast majority of the believers out there seem to disagree… Heck, I even agree with you – but, well suffice to say, we’re the minority opinion. And, frankly, I can’t see anything in their theology that help out – Jesus pretty much coined the phrase “rending of garments and gnashing of teeth” – and really, he didn’t leave a lot of outs. You could probably argue that there was nothing about hell being forever (that I know of), but still – he pretty much said “It’s going to be worse than getting your eye plucked out” – which frankly, doesn’t sound appealing.
And, for goodness sakes – god doesn’t HATE atheists – he just wants to char them forever… But, it’s only because of his abounding love.
Me’Corva