It seems to me that according to your belief system God has already overrode their free will. If someone does not believe in this God of yours, they are vanquished to hell after death. An atheist, who for whatever reason, emotionally/psychologically/intellectually, just cannot fathom the existence of God, let us say for instance because of what he sees of man’s great inhumanity to man, or because he has experienced a sexual predator in the form of a catholic priest, or for whatever reason, is going to spend eternity in hell.
You would appear to give the atheist such a dirty name. Are they all immoral, inhumane people to you?
Are you incapable of seeing that just because one does not want to or cannot believe in God, one can live a good, exemplar life, perhaps even better than some of your so-called christian people? This or that atheist spends his or her life according to a strong moral code, caring about people in a compassionate way, then dies and spends eternity in hell.
You paint the picture of a very unloving, non-compassionate, totally illogical God, Free Spirit.
You might do far more good in the service of God if you painted him in a more “inclusive” “humane” landscape.
Yes, we do have huge flaws and one of them is Pride. I can certainly understand the atheists’ need to exclaim that they are good people when faced with someone who says they are not, they cannot be, simply because they do not believe in God and are going to hell.
Totally illogical to me. How much can this God of yours value goodness and meaningfulness and love and compassion and altruism when its creations are banished to hell forever. Who would ever want to believe in such a God?
Though it actually isn’t the wager. Not in this general sense, that anyone, believers, doubters, agnostics, atheists should believe because of the potential win and low losses. As I point out early in the thread…
The wager was intended as an argument not to stop believing. If you already believe, there is no particularly good reason to start dismantling it, according to Pascal. He doesn’t understand the wager that he thinks is brilliant.
Really going ad hom again. OK, you’re a whiny 35 year old who can’t get his own parents to respect him and thinks that getting pressured by parents to come to family events is a real world problem, talk about narcissism. You really think we should take seriously the psychological analysis of someone who goes online to complain about his parents expecting him to come to more family get-
togethers. Your posts are so Jesus like in spirit and so philosophical like this last one.
And, again, I’m not an atheist. If you meant not to include me, then figure out a way to post so you are clear.
I retract the respectful answer I made to your question in the other thread about you and your family. From my experience of you here, you’re probably presenting their behavior in ways that make you look like a victim.
Poor you.
You could learn from the people who responded here how to improve the arguments you made in the OP and later on in the thread. Those arguments were weak and based on a poor read of Pascal.
Is it because they represent atheism that you don’t agree with them?
You mentioned you’d moved on from my “kind” of thinking - have you considered that you have emotional reasons to dismiss them?
Love is nice, if there’s anything that Christianity is good at, it’s persuading love. You don’t need Christianity for it, but if you have trouble with a lack of love, Christianity would probably help you.
Living socially is also good, other primates do it, so it makes sense that we will too with or without religion.
Again, it’s a kind of “sublimation” to project it through an external entity in order to validate it. You don’t need that, unless you do?
I don’t believe I have emotional reasons to dismiss atheism. I believe that logic and reason compels one to be a Christian because of the enormous benefits.
We do need Christianity to love fully. We need to love God in a community. He sent His son to the Earth to teach us how to love.
Okay, just thought I’d ask. It’s interesting that logic and reason led me away from them. Assuming we are both flawless logicians, for argument’s sake - that would only leave the emotional component to differentiate our respective directions.
Sending his son to Earth to teach us how to love by giving us a guilt trip seems manipulative. I know how to love anyway - I don’t need someone to make me feel bad to trick me into it.
Vicarious redemption: he deliberately got himself crucified “for your sins”. Any sin you may commit, “it’s okay”… because Jesus literally got tortured horribly to death in the ultimate sacrifice to take your sin upon himself and be punished on your behalf.
You have to take Scripture in context. You can’t just post a line or two. That verse is Jesus teaching that we must love Him more than we love our own family. That doesn’t mean we don’t love our family, just that we love Him the most.
This is an atheist forum and an atheist world, so I will always be outnumbered
