Why Christianity is Fundamentally Flawed

[appolose]

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.

I think the first result may actually not be as unfair as it seems.

While I agree that, if we assume that external factors can influence free will, a person mightmake the choice to be saved or not based on the information he is again, I do not think that means it was unfair.  A Christian viewpoint of free will one might have is that, while desires or motivations can make a choice more easy or difficult, free will is ultimately responsible.  That is, no matter the pressure or temptation to make a decision, a free-willed person can still go the other direction.  Therefore, if someone has at least the choice to be saved available to them at all, then they have enough.  That some other person might have more motivation to make the better choice does not lift responsibility from him.