I kind of want to test a theory that I heard so if you help me out here you can prove it wrong or right…atleast among Dopers.
Let’s say that for one year you kept coming into contact with Christians and most of them tried to witness to you and some of them even debated with you. Then near the end of the year just to get a particularly aggresive Christian witness off your back you went to church with him. The next day something happened to you and you knew you would not live past a few hours and your Christian friend wanted to lead you to Christ.
What are the chances that you would accept Christ just in case?
I don’t want to say what the theory is but it’s one of many that I have heard a lot but I don’t want to influence your answer in any way so if I get a good response or if someone is curious I will tell you what I’m talking about.
Religious conversion is not a process that uses logic, and these proselytisers who try to convince me of their faith through logical argument are using exactly the wrong method to do it.
In order for me to convert to Christianity, there would have to be external events, perhaps involvong emotional and social inputs akin to brainwashing, that would alter my brain and change my allegiance. Logic will not suffice.
There are many reasons why this is not logically sound, but my own intial take is this: you cannot accept Christ just in case. Either you believe or you don’t, and if you’re faking to save your ass the Christian God is sure as hell supposed to be able to figure it out.
Anyway, it’s all just too damn dishonest for words.
In case it wasn’t clear: I don’t believe in God, and the chances of my “deciding” to believe in him on my deathbed are absolutely nil. If this particular Christian friend persisted I might tell them I was going to accept some other religion’s god just in case, if only to take a jab in revenge for their not ceasing their pestering during my last few hours of life.
If I only have a few hours left to live, I’m certainly not going to waste even a minute on something I think is an empty myth. I’ll be spending those last few hours with my family and friends.
If I were to be mobile and all in the last few hours of my life, I’d do all the things I’d always wanted to, but didn’t, for fear of the consequences. Which would entail breaking most of the ten commandments.
The flaw is that one may not want to goto Heaven. Or that there is truly a greater value there. Or that you will be punnished in heaven. The Bible is a little to biased to truely give a rating of Hells acomidations.
When I die even if there is a Heaven or Hell I hope I goto Hell. I can not imagine spending eternity with a bunch of born again christians. Plus thats where most of my friends and my favorate uncle will be. I also have a problem with athority and I dont think I would have a good of time as some in Heaven with all the praising and singning and suff. I know the Bible most likely is exagerating but gold lined streets and alters and thrones and doves and such are just a little much for me. It seem like living in the Sistine Chapel for etenity. NO THANKS.
Actually there’s another more fundamental flaw, which is that Pascal’s Wager as framed could apply to any hypothetical situation in which there’s some entity waiting around to judge you after your death. There’s no reason to assume it’s the Christian God up there rather than the god(s) of another religion, or even a pack of bloodthirsty purple polka-dotted unicorns who only exempt you from eternal torture if you believe in them. Except of course that the person proposing the whole thing was Christian.
Not to Hijack my own thread but I sort of had that same question which was “Will I get bored in Heaven?” but my Youth Pastor pointed out that boredom is part of your fleshly body and not your spirit.
Deep, huh?
Anyway I don’t want this to be a debate on whether Heaven exists so back to the OP.
No, there are several. You just picked one. Other major flaws include the dilemma of picking the wrong god or religion, and the problem of believing in a god who would accept/fall for this kind of dishonesty.
I’d have no respect for a deity who’d accept me into paradise just because I made an incincere “conversion” just to hedge my bets in the hours before I died.
Frankly, I’d be kind of wary of the kind of afterlife that I might encounter in a situation like that, if I did convert. What kind of “company” would I have or not have, and what would this kind of God’s idea of a “reward” be?
I think I’d rather stay my current course, and just take my chances on getting into the first circle of hell.
I have always wondered why, if Christ was really the Son Of God, he didn’t show up when there were videos, DVD’s and other devices to prove or disprove his being the Son Of God?
He must have known it was only a matter of time until there was a better method of spreading the word.
Regarding the OP…I don’t buy into the whole story, so I doubt I would go for the walk. I do have a personal theory about a higher power and religion, but I feel no need to go into a building on Sundays, drop money in a basket and listen to some idiot tell me he has God on a speed dial.
I’ll ask the counter question. START, let’s say you had a friend who was a Muslim who believed that you would only go to heaven if you believed that Mohammed was God’s true prophet and that non-Muslims would suffer for all eternity. Would you convert to Islam if you had only a few days to live?
(By the way, I am aware that there is far more to Islam than that and I apologize for my over-generalizations in the interest of setting up a hypothetical.)
I think it’s pretty well-known around here that I’m a devout Christian. As one, I find this sort of proselytization – convert just in case so you don’t burn in hell – rather obnoxious. Indeed, it’s tantamount to blackmail. One should choose one’s religion, be it Christianity, Islam, or Wicca, out of sincere belief and respect for it, rather than just a desire to escape the possibility of suffering. One of my favorite hymns starts, “I come with joy to meet my Lord, / Forgiven, loved and free” (emphasis mine). I have felt fear closely tied to awe at some points in my Christian life, usually as a side effect of a profound experience with Him, including one time when a prayer got a less than 5 minute turnaround :eek: . I do not, however, believe we should serve God out of fear, but out of love. Scaring people into belief is not only morally wrong in my book, but also likely to be ineffecive. The situation in the OP is, as far as I’m concerned, an attempt to scare people into believing in God. As such, I reject it.
Other major flaws include the dilemma of picking the wrong god or religion, and the problem of believing in a god who would accept/fall for this kind of dishonesty.