I was raised in as a Southern Baptist and was taught that the only way to get into heaven was to accept Jesus into your heart. That’s the only requirement and it can be done just by thinking of a string of words in the correct order, and your reward is everlasting life in a perfect place. This is awesome as the work-to-reward ratio is literally zero.
But there is a lot of other information in the Bible, 99.999% of it having nothing to do with exactly how to receive your reward and what your reward is. It tells stories of creation, genealogy, history, laws, morals and future predictions. Let’s pretend for a moment that all that stuff remains the same, but the mentions of your reward for accepting Jesus being everlasting life in heaven are replaced with your reward being everlasting torture in hell.
Putting aside the fact that this sort of belief system would have never flourished, would this change anyone’s belief that the Bible is “God’s word”? In other words, do people convince themselves to believe based on the reward for believing? If so, isn’t that kind of disingenuous? A fake belief?
To put this in another way, say we had absolute proof Jesus existed and died and rose from the grave and ascended to Heaven. That he actually did perform miracles to the extent that it is convincing to the most ardent skeptic that he has some other-worldly power and somehow, someway, it was proven that God is real and all the stories in the Bible are literal truth. But in this Bible, everyone that believes this will go to Hell. Would this religion have any believers even though it has been proven true?
To me, any Christian that would say, “No, I wouldn’t believe in that…” is not a true-believer, and according to my upbringing, really doesn’t have “Jesus in his heart” and according to this belief will spend an eternity in hell.
I don’t understand. It’s not possible to choose whether one believes something. It’s probably not even possible to choose to have faith (which is not the same thing as belief). But even setting that aside, and supposing that it were possible to choose whether to believe: If a person chose not to believe in Jesus because of the punishment of Hell, then why aren’t they believing? If they don’t believe in Jesus, then presumably they don’t believe the part about Hell, either. You can’t be motivated by something you don’t believe. It’s like the liar’s paradox.
As a confirmed atheist, I can say that if there was really “absolute proof,” I’d believe it. But if Jesus promised us eternal damnation, I sure as hell (heh) wouldn’t “accept him into my heart.”
It’s not believing that the bible is god’s word (actually some of the Bible is Satan’s word, some is even the words of a ass), and it’s not believing in the word, it’s believing in ‘The Word’, or the ‘living word’, or Christ. It is Christ and God’s job to reveal the conditions where one would willingly worship him because the person rejoices it God. The worship springs from finding out that you are God’s loved child. Worshiping god is also worshiping God in you.
So God is worthy of our worship and worthy of our praise. The Father loves to hear that from His children.
In the case you state, while that situation may be hypothetically true for your thought experiment, there is no reason to worship such a God. Even if the Bible was the word of this ‘God’ there would be no reason to place it anywhere. That God, though he be in power, is not worthy of worship or praise.
If this is what you were actually taught, then you were taught incorrectly. Not that I’m surprised–I have never come across a Baptist church of any sort that taught ALL the Bible. It is very telling that you say nothing about the necessity of repenting before salvation can take place.
Also biblically believing is not believing in God, but believing that God has the power (and willingness) to save. Believing is God is a given (even the demons know that God exists). So there would be no belief in the OP’s God, as there is no power/willingness to save.
If it was some how confirmed with out a shadow of a doubt that Jesus rose from the dead and ascended to heaven, I would think that that’s quite cool. We should look into that.
Wouldn’t change a thing about the way I live my life. Jesus/God or your music preference has not a darn thing to do with me. Or what some myths you believe in.
I’ll just continue to be the best person that I can. Why is this a question? THAT is the question.
And frankly, the people that need the fear of ‘God’ of any stripe to make them be good people are the people that we should fear the most. They seem to be the ones killing everyone. They seem to think they get a ‘pass’ if they believe in their god.
Believe in meaning existence or I am his child? Either way
My relationship with God, my to go for guidance and wisdom, my use of His power would have never developed.
I’m really not trying to snark on you. God seems to get you through though your life. That’s fine.
Can you understand that many of us just look to our selves to answer these questions? And that we question those that look away from themselves asking for help in, say, a moral dilemma?
That many don’t need the fear of god to make the proper choice?
Do you believe that I’m a bad person for not believing in your God?
That’s kinda what I was thinking. You can only fear hell if you believe it exists and that you may go there. Any action you take to avoid that fate is proof that you believe it.
Yes, many do and I did to. I found that over all it didn’t work or provide answers to a satisfactory degree. Actually I found fault with the premise. But yes I know many do.
. Yes and I also see it as sad you many don’t ask for help which is so available, but hey that’s life.
It’s not fear, it’s love. If you had access to God who is also your parent, who loves you and knows everything, how would it be fearful to ask for advice? It would be foolish not to. That’s not to say that God didn’t say many times that’s yours to figure out, but that’s part of God raising his child.
So it’s a fault to look inside for answers? If god made you, did he make you imperfect? Then it follows that god is imperfect? Did he make you imperfect? Why?
Yep. Many of us prefer more tangible things. Friends, family, or introspection.
Would a loving parent threaten a child to eternal damnation? Not my kind of god.
And I don’t fault you in any way. As long as you don’t try to bring god into government or public education. Any politician that confuses this does not understand the fundamentals of human rights.
I tend to agree about it not being a choice to believe and I think that is congruent with the point of the thought experiment.
The point of the thought experiment is that the belief follows the reward, not because the belief is likely to be true. Hardly anyone would willingly believe in a God that sent his followers to hell, even if it were otherwise the exact same God that billions believe in today.