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F6U6C6K6Y606U on 30 December 2012
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BlkPaladin said:
IIIIITHE1IIIII said:

One thing that close to all Christians have in common is that they all believe that we have a free will. They say that God created all humans and gave them free will, allowing them to choose how they want to live their lives. After your life has ended, God will take a look at how you decided to live your life and will determine whether you deserve to live in heaven or hell for an eternity. And due to your free will, you would have no one but yourself to blame for entering hell (or heaven, depending on your preferences).

Now, let's create a hypothetical scenario: One kid is raised in a "godless" family, and is experiencing a perfectly decent upbringing. He is somewhat aware of how God supposedly works and knows some basic lines of the Bible. His parent though are strictly nonreligious and ridicules everything regarding religion on a daily basis whenever they have the chance. This obviously has a strong effect on the kid's views on religion and believers, resulting in him more or less copying their views on the matter. The neighborhood however is strictly religious, resulting in close to all neighbors reporting the kid's parent for child abuse, fearing that further 'mistreatment' may cause him to be more easily tempted by the devil in the future (or alternatively fearing that he will have a more difficult time to connect with God), thus increasing the odds of the kid (and his future relatives) entering hell after death. The social services happens to be controlled by strict believers as well, and in the end they decide that the kid will be taken away from his parents and be put in a more religious environment. Now, let's take a look at the possible outcomes:

 

Result 1 - Whether the kid eventually enters heaven or hell is affected by this decision

This means that thanks to the social services' actions, the kid became influenced by its new and more religious environment, and eventually ended up in heaven as a result. He decided to put his lack of faith away, and started a new life. Had the social services not taken action, then the kid would not have ended up in heaven since he would have made different decisions in life without this new influence. (Note: In an alternative scenario he might as well be mistreated and chances of entering hell increases instead.)

 

Result 2 - Whether the kid eventually enters heaven or hell is unaffected by this decision

This means that taking the kid away from his parents does not have any effect at all on whether he enters heaven or hell once he dies. In the end, it all comes down to the actual free parts of your will, while opinions and unconscious actions based on the many outer influences (in this case, influences by an upbringing in a religious environment) are completely disregarded since you had no control over them.

 

In case you haven't already noticed it yourself, here is the flaw that I find in all this: The first result suggests that teaching a child about Christianity increases its chances of entering heaven. The free will does not have full control of whether you enter heaven or hell, and outer influences will affect where you end up in your afterlife, thus giving an unfair disadvantage to those not exposed to proper Christian teachings. An important conclusion that one may draw here is that the more countries/people that would be properly educated about Christianity, the more people would go to heaven. In other words: Their (the non-/false believers') free will does not have full control over their final destination, but are directly affected by the "proper" believers' free wills. Again, this is unfair.

The second result suggests that outer influences has no effect on whether you end up in heaven or hell at all. No teachings gained from outer influences can be accounted for since they have no effect on your actual free will. If they did, then that would suggest that people with "better" outer influences (which they obviously have no control over) would also have a better chance of entering heaven, which would be an unfair advantage. An important conclusion that one may draw at this point is that all religious practicing might as well be disregarded since they will not affect your chances of entering heaven anyway. In other words: Religious practicing would ultimately be pointless.

 

This, my fellow VGCharterz, makes no sense to me.

You arguement has some flaws in it so I will start there. First of Heaven/Hell, not all Christians believe there is a hell and the wagdes sin give is just death or inexistance. Plus the Bible brings out there are two(three) gifts that God gives the two major ones are pictured by the little/large flock that Jesus, John and Paul spoke about on a few occasions. The little flock gift is going to heaven where they will act as priests and judges with Jesus. The second larger flock will inherit the earth, after all that was God's orginal purpose for man and the earth and as Isaiah wrote God purpose never chages. (He compared God's word to the water cycle. That it will not come back to him unless it achieved.) And humans where never intended to go heaven.

The next flaw is thinking all Christians are considered acceptable to God. Jesus spoke of the judgement in the parable of the Sheep and the Goats. What make this interesting is the goats plea to Jesus. "Didn't we speak in your name? Didn't we prophise in your name? Didn't we expell demons in your name? Didn't we preform many powerful works in your name?" So from these we can glean that they thought they were doing God's and Jesus' will, or by extension thought they were Christian. The way to tell false Christians from real could fill up a thesis so I will leave it at that.

But that brings us to the third gift. Brought out in Acts 24:15 that there will be a resurection of not just the rightous but also the unrightous. These are those deemed that finished their lives and didn't have enough information or ability to make a choice.  John futher covers this at John 5:28,29 that the resurrect unrightous will be resurrect to a resurrection of judgement. And this life they will be taught the ways of God and at the end of that time Satan will be released again to tempt these ones and at that time they will make their choice again.

I have to get to work which is the reason I haven't fully articulated my arguement or put all the scriptures up.


Religion makes people smarter since you are having faith in something you all know is true. Religion is science just believe in magic it makes you a supernintendo like Chalmers.

 

All religions are true and there are over 99 billion gods served at your local McDonalds. ROnald is actually the new-age Jesus. He must of been since he was a hippy in a dashiki. The only thing that doens't make sense is that religion is falsely recited by profits that are just making money from their large corportations. So if you love god buy form Walmart or McDonalds the true saviours of our salvation.