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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[Rolepgeek]

From what I remember, a lot of thought is less 'God sends you to hell' and more 'you can't go to heaven, there's only one other place, sorry bud'.

Also that you just get annihilated instead of tortured, which I'm guessing is annihilation doctrine? Like I'm not sure what's being used as evidence to support 'god sends you to hell'. It's like that one play. I think. "This is Hell, nor am I out of it."

It can be fully logically self-consistent, as long as you assume the common interpretation is wrong about one or two things. It's just really hard to verify that from an outside source; if god is extradimensional, we have no more reason to believe we will go to Heaven for X than we that we would go to Hell for it. A book, however long and influential, proves precisely zero things if it's not independently verified.

[Graknorke]

'you can't go to heaven, there's only one other place, sorry bud'

"I'm not condemning you to drowning, but you're not getting on this lifeboat."
The difference is negligible.

[Rolepgeek]

See, that's what I mean though. There's a couple possible interpretations of what that 'can't' means. Does it mean He won't let you? Does it mean the lifeboats got limited room? Does it mean that your getting on if you have trouble swimming in the first place would overturn it? If you don't assume omnipotence to mean 'literally anything including the impossible', and consider the philosophical nature of god, it's entirely possible that he wants everyone to go heaven but being that near to sin would destroy him, and eventually existence by extension. Or, considering sin is 'not being close to god' it's Him letting you choose to stay in the water. And if He values choice enough, then it makes sense. Saying 'well I think that's dumb and you should help people even if they don't want to be helped'...well, that's great, but that's an opinion, really, and there's plenty of people who disagree. "People have a right to be stupid" is a common saying in some places.

It's assumptions all the way down.

[Loud Whispers]

Except that Jesus/God is responsible for damnation, so it's that latter thing.  It's a threat.  "I'm sending you to hell.  Unless you do this thing, in which case I'll save you from me."

The context of that passage is whether it is possible for uncircumcised gentiles to go to heaven, because they're mostly all Jews following the laws of Moses, most but not all
The apostles are all saying that believing in Jesus Christ is what you need, not a Jewish mother or a cut foreskin, it's saying everyone has a shot at heaven not just a select group

But lol get rekt jesus for preaching equality between Jew and Gentile, that's eerily similar to ISIS, I can't even tell the difference

[Graknorke]

Are we going Christian God of the Bible here?

Does it mean the lifeboats got limited room?

That would violate the promise of anyone who follows Jesus getting in. Capacity has to be infinite to allow for that, unless the number of spaces is exactly predetermines already in which case it's entirely arbitrary and more-or-less irrelevant what the criteria are.

he wants everyone to go heaven but being that near to sin would destroy him

I don't think so, the attitude to sinners was pretty hateful. Burning cities, sending plagues, that kind of thing. That's not the kind of thing you do a group of people you pity.

it's Him letting you choose to stay in the water. And if He values choice enough, then it makes sense.

It's making them stay in the water if they didn't prostrate themselves before him before the ship even sank. Of course someone in the middle of the ocean is going to want onto a boat. It's the equivalent of someone trying to get protection money out of you but without making a very good case for why you should before they go ahead and burn your shop down. Even if you accept that it's a fair system, you have to accept that the victim can't entirely be blamed for not picking up on how they were suppoed to play into it.

[Loud Whispers]

Are we going Christian God of the Bible here?

OT and NT are different facets, one's the Jewish war God of moral code and judgement (self and divine), the other of mercy and virtuous self-sacrifices

That would violate the promise of anyone who follows Jesus getting in. Capacity has to be infinite to allow for that, unless the number of spaces is exactly predetermines already in which case it's entirely arbitrary and more-or-less irrelevant what the criteria are.

The promise is universal availability, not universal application, otherwise there'd be no effort spent to live a good life as a pleasant afterlife is automatically guaranteed
The principle is you gotta walk through the gates of heaven yourself irregardless of whether the gates are open; you follow in his Beardliness's footsteps, not have him walk for you

I don't think so, the attitude to sinners was pretty hateful. Burning cities, sending plagues, that kind of thing. That's not the kind of thing you do a group of people you pity.

When God does that in the OT, it's not for people he pities, it's for awful people who live to sin #yolo
The whole point of the Noah's Ark spinoff is that by the end God leaves a promise to not destroy most of humanity again, and so tries to help mankind out by sending prophets instead of plagues, leading into the failed prophet sagas where humans keep killing them (lol) leading to Jesus (where they kill him) but that time everything is successful, all the way up to the last prophet in Islam (killed him too) though you get many many many spinoffs with alleged descendants, siblings, not-prophets and of course all three branches of Abrahamism all hold the option for further sequels with their own ends of this age to the new Godly one

It's making them stay in the water if they didn't prostrate themselves before him before the ship even sank. Of course someone in the middle of the ocean is going to want onto a boat. It's the equivalent of someone trying to get protection money out of you but without making a very good case for why you should before they go ahead and burn your shop down. Even if you accept that it's a fair system, you have to accept that the victim can't entirely be blamed for not picking up on how they were suppoed to play into it.

It'd be like telling someone not to smoke by the engine and they do anyways and set themselves on fire, even after you told them not to do it because they'd start a fire and they did anyways

[Vilanat]

Who killed the last prophet of Islam?

[Graknorke]

The promise is universal availability, not universal application, otherwise there'd be no effort spent to live a good life as a pleasant afterlife is automatically guaranteed
The principle is you gotta walk through the gates of heaven yourself irregardless of whether the gates are open; you follow in his Beardliness's footsteps, not have him walk for you

Don't understand what you mean here, sorry.

It'd be like telling someone not to smoke by the engine and they do anyways and set themselves on fire, even after you told them not to do it because they'd start a fire and they did anyways

Not really. Fires are something you can experimentally test before the fact, and also make sense as a follow on from smoking. You can't really compare it to an arbitrary punishment that you can't possibly know about until it's too late to do anything about it.

[Loud Whispers]

Who killed the last prophet of Islam?

An angry tribeswoman whose people had just been conquered

Don't understand what you mean here, sorry.

Heaven being universally available does not mean it's universally guaranteed

Not really. Fires are something you can experimentally test before the fact, and also make sense as a follow on from smoking.

Not in this analogy you can, you can only experimentally test once, and you don't get to live to tell the results

You can't really compare it to an arbitrary punishment that you can't possibly know about until it's too late to do anything about it.

You do know about it though, you've just been told

[Rolepgeek]

Are we going Christian God of the Bible here?

Does it mean the lifeboats got limited room?

That would violate the promise of anyone who follows Jesus getting in. Capacity has to be infinite to allow for that, unless the number of spaces is exactly predetermines already in which case it's entirely arbitrary and more-or-less irrelevant what the criteria are.

Well, it could be the idea that there's some uncertain amount of space, but it is certainly limited, and the people who actually want to hang around the dude who owns the lifeboat are the ones who get to be in there. Not sure how many people actually will fit, maybe, but (especially if eternity is as a few seconds), then you prioritize the people who actually give a shit about you.

he wants everyone to go heaven but being that near to sin would destroy him

I don't think so, the attitude to sinners was pretty hateful. Burning cities, sending plagues, that kind of thing. That's not the kind of thing you do a group of people you pity.

I didn't say anything about pity. I mean, it's probably there, but saying 'you usually don't do that to people you pity' doesn't actually mean anything here. If you want the maximum possible number of people to come to heaven/be with you, then you institute very visible punishments for those who don't. Sure, it might be unfair to them in particular, but in the long run it will save more souls. just as one possible interpretation.

it's Him letting you choose to stay in the water. And if He values choice enough, then it makes sense.

It's making them stay in the water if they didn't prostrate themselves before him before the ship even sank. Of course someone in the middle of the ocean is going to want onto a boat. It's the equivalent of someone trying to get protection money out of you but without making a very good case for why you should before they go ahead and burn your shop down. Even if you accept that it's a fair system, you have to accept that the victim can't entirely be blamed for not picking up on how they were suppoed to play into it.

No, it really isn't. The act of loving God and accepting Jesus into your heart is the very same act as that of getting into the lifeboat. They are the same thing. And while I would agree that hey if there's enough lifeboats, put everyone one, but if someone's gonna tip the lifeboat over because they're flailing about 'thoughtcrime' and 'burning heretics at the stake' and 'but I don't wanna go to Church', I'm not gonna force them to be on the lifeboat.

And the whole point of the Bible and shit would be to get people to know how and what to do. If you tell someone 'this is the procedure for getting into the lifeboat, you should drill in this a couple of times a month' and they never do, whose fault is it when they drown?

I mean, in all honesty, we've taken this analogy much too far and it's kinda ridiculous and can be twisted to say whatever, but meh.

As for the 'arbitrary punishment' bit, a lot of the point of raising someone to be Christian is, as far as I can tell, in this context, teaching them why it isn't arbitrary, and the point of all those miracles and sermons and firebrand preaching is to tell and show everyone else 'hey look this shit is real guys come on please I don't want your souls to die in fire'.

The crucial difference here is that Christianity believes virtue and heaven are inextricably linked, and sin and hell/annihilation are inextricably linked. It's not an arbitrary decision by some dude, it's a fundamental fact about God/The Universe. Little kids don't make the connection between fire->hot->pain until it's been shown. God did that a couple thousand years ago with the plagues and the flooding and so on. Saying 'well you don't keep doing that' would, in this instance, be kinda equivalent to saying 'well, you only showed my granddad what happens when you cover someone's legs with greek fire-liquid and set it on fire, I never saw it happen'. To which Jesus would respond "I'm not setting your legs on fire Medamnit I already feel bad about doing it to Patrick forty years ago fucking hell dude'.

[Graknorke]

If you're going to try and prove something with a one-off event, it would probably help to do it in the witness of historians rather than lower-class types who wouldn't write about it until decades later. Or alternatively just go into everyone's heads and convince them that you're real because apparently that's a thing that the almighty can do, but only does to people who already have accepted its existence as truth.
What I'm saying is that everyone in this thread could do it better, given the same omnipotence and omniscience.

[Rolepgeek]

Maybe.

I doubt it, honestly. I know I'd fuck up. Or I wouldn't be me, if I could handle all that info, even.

Also, there's plenty of people who convert because they believe God's spoken to them. So that second part isn't quite true. I mean, if you had a vision or a dream like that, would you assume you were hallucinating, or that god was talking to you? Why bother making you think you have hallucinations when you won't even believe it?

And...there were a lot of plagues and 'proof's from Old Testament and New, if I remember right. I mean, the argument that God really needs to update his shit if he is real is a fair one, but that's not quite the same thing.

[Graknorke]

Also, there's plenty of people who convert because they believe God's spoken to them. So that second part isn't quite true. I mean, if you had a vision or a dream like that, would you assume you were hallucinating, or that god was talking to you? Why bother making you think you have hallucinations when you won't even believe it?

A being with the experience of everyone and forever should be able to convince me, with my decade and most of another one. It's like how teachers take the responsibility for the learning of very young children, except massively more so. Or alternatively could just pull a Pharaoh and make people believe it.

And...there were a lot of plagues and 'proof's from Old Testament and New, if I remember right. I mean, the argument that God really needs to update his shit if he is real is a fair one, but that's not quite the same thing.

I meant as in, things for historians that would write it down in proper historical texts rather than a religious one with an obvious agenda. It's not as though there weren't any around.
And also things that should be impossible but there's credible evidence of them having happened, rather than things that are just a bit odd. Like the global flood except if there was any reason to think it actually happened. Plagues and earthquakes aren't exactly supernatural, maybe they thought so at the time but we know better than that now.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Also, there's plenty of people who convert because they believe God's spoken to them. So that second part isn't quite true. I mean, if you had a vision or a dream like that, would you assume you were hallucinating, or that god was talking to you? Why bother making you think you have hallucinations when you won't even believe it?

False dichotomy. While anyone who realizes the implications of solipsism could, if sufficiently reticent, dismiss any divine experience as a hallucination no matter how significant, that could also apply to literally anything but their own qualia. Almost all people can still be convinced by experience, that experience just has to fit the magnitude of the claim and not demonstrate signs of falsehood. Dreams and visions are already the realm of hallucination, even people who believe in divine vision will admit this for other religions.

Even a dank euphoric atheist like me could be persuaded of at least the substantial power and existence of the Christian God with a satisfying display, but that display is not "I prayed for something plausible and then it happened" or "My terminal illness went away on its own". Try "resurrecting someone who's already started rotting or was cremated" or "rearrange some stars to spell out a Bible verse or a secret only I could know about".

[TD1]

Just a small aside, not said within the context of any ongoing conversation - I was contemplating that Annihilation Theory, and thinking that it - for me - is worse than hell. A more complete punishment. A profound shame, and a decisive obliteration of mind, matter and spirit. In the poem Reading Gaol, the hanged man is shamed by being buried with quick lime so nothing will remain of him, not even flesh.

Of course, such a view is what atheists tend to favour, myself included, only without the God factor. It is a terrible thing, and I wish for myself to be wrong. Unfortunately, wishes aren't horses, I guess.