Is there a god?

[rickthestick2]

Apostrovich said:

My thoughts regarding this are as follows. Not believing in god apparently sends me to hell. So, logically, even if I had lived 1000 years ago on a part of the earth where christianity hadn't expanded to yet, and I was still a good person, god would still send me to hell for not believing in him. That is a huge douche thing to do, especially because god is supposed to be omnipotent and all seeing and all knowing, therfore, even if I have free will, god already knows how I'll use it, and therefore would have known that he was going to send me to hell ever since he created the universe. Anything anyone does is according to god's plan, because if anyone does anything and it turns out it was against god's plan, that means god is fallible. And THAT means that either god has no plan and just does shit for the hell of it, or that god has a plan and it involves nine tenths of everyone who ever lived going to hell, regardless of whether they ever even knew that christianity existed, let alone had a chance to convert.

My conclusion is that god either doesn't exist or is an asshole. And I refuse to bow down and serve an asshole based on fear of hell. Especially when there is zero evidence that god or hell exists. If I want superstition to be an everyday part of my life I'll choose a less constradictory religion, thank you very much. Like the Australian aborigine belief that the universe was created by a flying rainbow salamander. And has ended and re-begun like 8 times now.

I should also add that atheists and agnostics make up about 1 billion people last I heard. And if you're roman catholic, you can claim to be part of the 1.2 billion roman catholics. If you are not, however, then you are one of the 20 or so other denominations of christian, none of which to the best of my knowledge have more than about 50-100 million members, and none of which agree totally with the roman catholic church.

 1. First of all, God doesn't "send people to hell" how many times can this topic be discussed?

 2. According to God's Word, nature itself has proof of God and Christ and no man lives or dies without the knowledge of God. I'm sure you can't name one person who doesn't know of Christianity (or God) and the people 1000 years ago would have come to God in a way that wouldn't be considered "Traditional" to us.

 3. Yes God is omnipotent and who knows what choice you're going to make, but the responsibility of your choice belongs to you and for God to directly influence your choice would be against God's gift of Free Will.

4. The reason why you think that if God exists he is an "asshole" is because you don't really understand God much at all. That's why i recommend you read Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer, not that you should be converted but that you know what the Christian God is, assuming he exists. I think you are (don't take thin the wrong way) ignorant of the subject.

5. Seriously i despise denominations of Christians. It goes right against the Word of God about being united under God. The reason why we have our denominations is because most men have thier pulluted, mutated, deformed concept of God that goes against what knowledge of him that was given to us. Yet it seems it is the nature of men to be divided in just about anything.