Whispers

I keep seeing mention of the unfairness of how God sends you to burn in hell if you do not follow him etc.

This is a misunderstanding of the nature of the issue...

IF there is one truth and one truth only and there must be, and Jesus was that truth, then everything he said is true....If he is the only way to the father, then all other ways/methods are doomed to failure. In other words, to have an afterlife, you need to be in a relationship with Christ, because he is the ONLY way to eternal life. If during your life, you repeatedly turn down or ignore this relationship which leads to the heavenly father, you cannot moan because when you die, you did not get what you never wanted or believed in. Remember a step of faith is required.

I offer an analogy....

You are drowning in a river, and a man walking his dog offers you his hand. You refuse. The offer remains none-the-less and during the next few hours as you grow weaker, you either ignore or deny the existence of the hand. Maybe you think that if you take the hand, nothing will happen or that the stranger will pulll his hand away at the last moment leaving you to drown. Either way, you will not, cannot or do not accept the hand. As a result, you drown. If you complain that drowning is a punishment of not taking the hand, are you not missing the point. Surely drowning is a result of a choice that YOU made. YOU said I don’t believe, or I don’t want or don’t need the hand.

YOU are given a choice, and your lifes choices will be confirmed to you when life ends. Is it that you would prefer not too believe during life, but then if it is PROVED to you after death that God exists, you would like a place at his side?

Mageth

This seems like a rather elaborate rehash of Pascal's Wager.

And the drowning man analogy only works if the river you are drowning in is not in the present but merely a threat described in an ancient book that you might fall into sometime in the future, and the man walking the dog is not corporeal but a hypothetical character described in the book.

Plus, the man walking the dog pushed you in the river in the first place, and due to his extraordinary lifesaving capabilities could save you from the river even if you rejected the hand.

SignOfTheCross

I have a problem with God sending good people to hell who are ignorant of the Gospel message. However, no such problem for those who reject it.

Peace,
SOTC

Barcode

Look, if God is so concerned about whether or not I believe, then he can give me a sign. Presumably, he endowed me with the reasoning capacities I am now using to assert his existence is extremely unlikely. If God can forsee what will happen, then I can only conclude this is " his will " as Christians like to say.

God is an abstract concept ... the person who could rescue me from the river is not.

Refusing the mans hand as real consequences (death) ... not believing in God should *not* send me to hell if he is just and merciful. He will know I was only using my own mind to form my own conclusions. We do have free will as Christians claim to excuse the bad things in the world.

And if I'm sent to hell ... I must conclude that I would want no part of a God who evidently is not all loving in the first place ... I''ll gladly go and comfort all the other non believers

Mageth

So, it seems that you have no problem with God sending good people who have heard the gospel message, but "rejected" it, to hell?

Sheesh.

SignOfTheCross

Well I wouldn't want to spend eternity with someone who rejected me even after I died for them. Without the Cross, hell would be unjust, but then again, there's the Cross.

Peace,
SOTC

Barcode

Well, Mageth, *I* most certainly have a problem with God sending people to hell who *have* heard the message and rejected it ... since we rejected the message using the tools (reasoning, intelligence) that God supposedly gave us.

The notion of being saved and hell, seems to me more like a form of emotional blackmail of the highest order .... (worship me or you will be spend an eternity in purgatory) as opposed to anything that corresponds to reality.

braces_for_impact

And this is what makes you such a good Christian.

You related to Magus55?

emotional

Let's not call it a Gospel, Good News, Evangelium, but rather a Baspel, Bad News, Cacangelium. And why, because it bases reward and punishment on the most arbitatry of criteria: faith in a particular event. It means that God doesn't ask people who stand before Him, "have you been kind towards other people?" but rather "have you believed in my death on the cross?". So that the kind man, who during his life clothed the poor and fed the hungry, goes to hell because of the puny, unimportant "mistake" of not believing in Jesus, and the mass murderer and torturer goes to heaven because of the technicality of believing in Jesus.

The judge says, "believe in my son and all your guilt will be pardoned". If a human judge said this, he would be dismissed from his office. But to the Christian god, all is justifiable, and he is called a fair judge although his office is one of perversion of justice.

Christians make it sound like God is mankind's worst enemy.

Stephen T-B

The opening post contains two very large Ifs
“IF there is one truth and one truth only and there must be, and Jesus was that truth, then everything he said is true....If he is the only way to the father, then all other ways/methods are doomed to failure...”

It is a peculiarity of the religions which emerged among the Semitic peoples - Judaism, Christianity and Islam – that each is exclusive. The Jews are exclusively the children of god, while only those who acknowledge the divinity of Christ or the divine mission of Mohammed can get to Heaven / Paradise.
After Europeans took up Christianity, they refined the exclusive principle with all the ingenuity and energy which they have brought to so many things, like slavery, warfare, commerce, manufacturing, banking etc.
It’s not enough, for them, to be a just a Christian - you’ve got to be the right sort of Christian.

I suppose, Whispers, you are the “right sort” of Christian?
Suppose you aren’t though. Will you then be better off than us poor god-forsaken atheists?