Angra Mainyu

What about, say, the Quran?

What if you pick the wrong Hell?

What about the following scenario?

God exists, but doesn’t give any evidence of His existence, and He doesn’t want people to believe without evidence. God rewards unbelievers, and sends theists to Hell. :devil3:

While those problems are insurmountable, there’s perhaps an even more basic problem with Pascal’s wager: how is it possible pick a God, and actually believe in His existence, without believing before making the choice (and thus rendering the choice impossible)?

Gamera

[QUOTE=Johnny Skeptic;3845205]No, Where did I claim that? You seem to be attacking a strawman.

Actually the gospel message doesn't need to be revealed. It's just language. A text. I suspect most people on the planet have heard it. As to those who haven't, I don't have to figure that out. I have the gospel message so I must reject it or accept it.

You'll have to wait a long time. I have no idea and don't really accept the premise of the question. I suspect genes and disease are responsible, not God.

Skeptics nothing. I find much of the bible appaling. Did you ever consider it was supposed to be appalling?

Again, once you understand you're dealing with a text that has purposes, you may find yourself liberated from this restrictive view of Christianity.

Johnny Skeptic

Message to rhutchin: If you had good evidence that there was not a global flood, would you give up being an inerrantist? Consider the following:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-...html#georecord

Does a global flood make the whole Bible less credible? Davis Young, an Evangelical and geologist, wrote [p. 163]:

"The maintenance of modern creationism and Flood geology not only is useless apologetically with unbelieving scientists, it is harmful. Although many who have no scientific training have been swayed by creationist arguments, the unbelieving scientist will reason that a Christianity that believes in such nonsense must be a religion not worthy of his interest. Modern creationism in this sense is apologetically and evangelistically ineffective. It could even be a hindrance to the gospel.

"Another possible danger is that in presenting the gospel to the lost and in defending God's truth we ourselves will seem to be false. It is time for Christian people to recognize that the defense of this modern, young-Earth, Flood-geology creationism is simply not truthful. It is simply not in accord with the facts that God has given. Creationism must be abandoned by Christians before harm is done"

Another Christian scientist said, "Creationism is an incredible pain in the neck, neither honest nor useful, and the people who advocate it have no idea how much damage they are doing to the credibility of belief." [quoted in Easterbrook, 1997, p. 891]

Doug Shaver

Uh huh. If I think it's crap, that proves I haven't any of it.

I wasn't talking about the scholarship, though. I was talking about your blatantly fallacious Argument from Authority.

Gamera

In other words, you haven't read any postmodern scholarship and have no idea about their arguments about historiography. knownothingism is hardly a good basis to persuade.

Ignostic Morgan

:devil1: :angel: One should show that there is really Heaven and a future state and Hell.. Those are dubious to help the dubious god notion.Predestination is favortism. The whole notion of this verse is preposterous then.One objures the writer and abjures the verse.One finds the author of cruel thinking. Also, the verse comparing us with clay is horrid: we are not property of some god . Elsewhere the writer speaks of love, but this verse of predestination shows no love.Love in context means favortism, not goodwill towards all as Christians state.Too bad fundamentalists don't read their book of hate in context! If they read it in context , they would find it horrid .Evolution has built into us the moral sentiments that we should extend to all people as Peter Singer and Paul Kurtz state. Fundamentalists can be loving in spite of their book of hate where Bishop John Shelby Spong finds a god of love.Yes, why should we be gullible to think that the writer spoke for some god? A rational being would show no favorites ,have no Hell and would have Heaven on Earth as I maintains in the thread the definitive refutation of the free will defense. Errantists find metaphor in the book: what is the metaphor for favortism?Spong finds much of the book untenable ,but still finds values in it; If find Esop's Fables better source of morality . Show that the notions of god , Heaven and Hell mean something other than mere fantasies!Rhutchin:devil: :

rhutchin

No one really knows what happens after death. All theories of any existence (or non-existence) after death are dubious. A person is left with pondering whether the Bible (or other source) could be true and what to do about it.

rhutchin

This site--

http://www.trueorigin.org/arkdefen.asp

responds to Mark Isaak’s “Problems with a Global Flood” FAQ cited in your msg.

rhutchin

You have a set of data that includes many documents (Bible, Quran, etc) and many musings of men about that which happens after death. All Pascal said was that you have to make a choice and you could make a right choice or wrong choice. You can do nothing and let death choose for you (death chooses annihilation) or you can choose to believe in something other than annihilation. Pascal simply provided a methodology for a person to evaluate the risks involved and to choose the lowest risk option.

rhutchin

I don't really have the background to debate the flood.

If 95% of the leading geologists say that there was no global flood, has at least one of them written a book explaining how the current geological system came to be in such a way as to aswer the questions of skeptics?