The Absentee Father

RabidAlpaca · Aug 31, 2015

Consider the following analogy:

A young child has an absentee father who has never visited the child and never spoken a single word to him. The absentee father however expects that the child follows all of the father's rules, so he dispatches a friend to relay the message to the child. The friend says "I was sent by your father to tell you how to live; do all of these things". However, the child is also visited by 99 other people also claiming to speak for his father, each carrying dramatically different messages. The child is overwhelmed and doesn't know what to do, so he just manages to live his life the best way he can. Later on, when the absentee father finds out the child didn't do everything he was told, he sends one of his goons to lock the child up in the basement, then torture the child for decades until it dies.

The most fundamentally important reason why I'm an atheist is that I recognize we are presented with an impossible choice. There are hundreds of religions and hundreds of gods in the world, yet there is no objective way to prove one right over the other. For those of you who believe there is only one correct answer, how can any given human being be expected to select the one right religion of the hundreds presented while rejecting all of the others? The vast majority of people in the world never make it out of their parents' religion, so if you believe in eternal hellfire, you believe most people are inherently doomed based solely on where they were born and to whom.

God, like the absentee father, could easily just tell us his will directly and unambiguously, instead he chooses a medium that can be easily falsified and has 100 other similar religions that have contradictory accounts. There is no way to determine which account actually comes from god and which doesn't. A parent doesn't torture their kids for their entire lives when they screw up, they briefly punish the child and guide it in the right direction, so why would god act any differently?

Jetboogieman · Aug 31, 2015

RabidAlpaca said:
Consider the following analogy:

A young child has an absentee father who has never visited the child and never spoken a single word to him. The absentee father however expects that the child follows all of the father's rules, so he dispatches a friend to relay the message to the child. The friend says "I was sent by your father to tell you how to live; do all of these things". However, the child is also visited by 99 other people also claiming to speak for his father, each carrying dramatically different messages. The child is overwhelmed and doesn't know what to do, so he just manages to live his life the best way he can. Later on, when the absentee father finds out the child didn't do everything he was told, he sends one of his goons to lock the child up in the basement, then torture the child for decades until it dies.

The most fundamentally important reason why I'm an atheist is that I recognize we are presented with an impossible choice. There are hundreds of religions and hundreds of gods in the world, yet there is no objective way to prove one right over the other. For those of you who believe there is only one correct answer, how can any given human being be expected to select the one right religion of the hundreds presented while rejecting all of the others? The vast majority of people in the world never make it out of their parents' religion, so if you believe in eternal hellfire, you believe most people are inherently doomed based solely on where they were born and to whom.

God, like the absentee father, could easily just tell us his will directly and unambiguously, instead he chooses a medium that can be easily falsified and has 100 other similar religions that have contradictory accounts. There is no way to determine which account actually comes from god and which doesn't. A parent doesn't torture their kids for their entire lives when they screw up, they briefly punish the child and guide it in the right direction, so why would god act any differently?

The usual excuse...

"Well that's faith".

Nah... that's blindly following dogma for which there is no evidence.

tecoyah · Aug 31, 2015

Thus am I tecoyanist...no need to pretend I know what I am believing, no need to convince anyone else I am correct and no need to tell them they are wrong. No hate in the name of the great and powerful tecoyah, no reason to really care that there are other handles and avatars out there.

Try it folks...everyone here can be God. Pretty damn cool.

Oh...and no one even think of worshiping me or I'm sending you to Stormfront.

CrabCake · Aug 31, 2015

RabidAlpaca said:
Consider the following analogy:

A young child has an absentee father who has never visited the child and never spoken a single word to him. The absentee father however expects that the child follows all of the father's rules, so he dispatches a friend to relay the message to the child. The friend says "I was sent by your father to tell you how to live; do all of these things". However, the child is also visited by 99 other people also claiming to speak for his father, each carrying dramatically different messages. The child is overwhelmed and doesn't know what to do, so he just manages to live his life the best way he can. Later on, when the absentee father finds out the child didn't do everything he was told, he sends one of his goons to lock the child up in the basement, then torture the child for decades until it dies.

The problem with this illustration is that it doesn't describe anything remotely resembling what Christianity proposes. In all likelihood, it also does not describe what the other monotheistic options offer either, but I won't comment on those since I am not an expert on those. Christianity does not propose a God who wants to send you rules to follow and will punish you if you don't. Christianity proposes a God who wants to have a relationship with you and who promises to give you meaning and purpose, to set you free from the pain and captivity that is part of the human condition, and to fulfill that yearning for knowing the creator that is common to most humans.

RabidAlpaca · Aug 31, 2015

CrabCake said:
The problem with this illustration is that it doesn't describe anything remotely resembling what Christianity proposes. In all likelihood, it also does not describe what the other monotheistic options offer either, but I won't comment on those since I am not an expert on those. Christianity does not propose a God who wants to send you rules to follow and will punish you if you don't. Christianity proposes a God who wants to have a relationship with you and who promises to give you meaning and purpose, to set you free from the pain and captivity that is part of the human condition, and to fulfill that yearning for knowing the creator that is common to most humans.

That is completely incorrect. The vast majority of Christians do believe that there is only one true religion, and a large swath of those Christians also believe in eternal hellfire for those who have not been saved.

It's great that you get some other kind of positive meaning out of it, but I started this thread to draw attention to the fact that many people believe you're punished for picking the wrong religion yet there's no way to prove one religion any more right than the others, so how would such a god expect us to choose? Do you believe there is only one correct religion? If so, how can the average human being be expected to identify that one religion as the correct one? Is eternal hellfire really a rational and proportionate punishment for not picking the right religion from hundreds?

CrabCake · Aug 31, 2015

RabidAlpaca said:
That is completely incorrect.

No, it is correct. Your analogy does a horrible job of portraying the relationship between God and man within Christianity, and probably within all monotheistic religions.

RabidAlpaca said:
The vast majority of Christians do believe that there is only one true religion, and a large swath of those Christians also believe in eternal hellfire for those who have not been saved.

This may be, although I'd love to see the numbers proving this to be the case.

Ultimately though, your analogy simply does a terrible job of modeling the proposed relationship between God and man. For one, Christianity doesn't invite anyone to follow some set of rules and then wait around to find out if you're right in the end; it invites people to enter into a relationship. It would be more akin to an invitation to go meet the person proclaiming to be your father rather than an invitation to follow some rules alleged to come from him. Your example also completely ignores the polytheistic options as well as the atheistic ones; it could be you have no father, but your analogy fails to even consider that option, it simply takes for granted that there is a god. All in all, it's just a bad analogy that does a poor job of illustrating the position those interested in discovering who their father is (or if he exists) are in.

RabidAlpaca said:
believe you're punished for picking the wrong religion yet there's no way to prove one religion any more right than the others, so how would such a god expect us to choose?

That's a great topic for discussion and I don't disagree that there is a serious problem with such positions. The analogy is what was poorly thought out, I think ultimately the question is a good one.

RabidAlpaca said:
Do you believe there is only one correct religion?

I believe all religions contain truth, some more truth than others. There being a "correct" religion would seem to imply that it is 100% correct in all of its doctrines. I don't believe there is such a religion. But I think some are more correct than others and thus if you put them on a chart that ranks from least correct to most correct, there would be at least one (and maybe more in the event of a tie) that is/are most correct. But then it would be very difficult to judge which is more correct because not all doctrines are of equal importance; suppose religion A is right about everything except for who God is, isn't that more significant than religion B which is wrong about many things but has a correct view of who God is? It's far too complicated a question to simply answer as a yes or no.

RabidAlpaca said:
If so, how can the average human being be expected to identify that one religion as the correct one?

Experientially, I would hope. Did you go meet your purported fathers? After spending time with them, what did your heart tell you? Did you feel like that was real father? Did he fill that father role? What about your mind? Did his story of who he is and how he met your mother make sense?

RabidAlpaca said:
Is eternal hellfire really a rational and proportionate punishment for not picking the right religion from hundreds?

You are exaggerating the number of options. That's akin to claiming that we had some half dozen options for president in 2012. While technically true, yes we could have voted for Jill Stein or Stewart Alexander, it was not true in practical terms. There may be hundreds of religions, but there are only a few viable options unless you are open to fringe interpretations. Ultimately, you can narrow down your monotheistic options to: Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Sikhism, and maybe Baha'i. There really aren't that many options beside those. You might throw Hare Krishna in there if you're really generous. But unless you are willing to accept a theology that sees the God of the universe as having failed to reveal himself to any significant number of people, or having failed to keep belief in him from going extinct, then there's really not that many options.

Now, would it seem fair for those who were genuinely following the one they believed to be the true God to be sentenced to hell for being wrong? No, that does not seem fair. But that is an argument against a specific theological position (the belief that those who do not follow the correct religion end up in hell). It is not an argument against God or against religion itself. It is an argument against one doctrine.

RabidAlpaca · Aug 31, 2015

CrabCake said:
No, it is correct. Your analogy does a horrible job of portraying the relationship between God and man within Christianity, and probably within all monotheistic religions.

This may be, although I'd love to see the numbers proving this to be the case.

Ultimately though, your analogy simply does a terrible job of modeling the proposed relationship between God and man. For one, Christianity doesn't invite anyone to follow some set of rules and then wait around to find out if you're right in the end; it invites people to enter into a relationship. It would be more akin to an invitation to go meet the person proclaiming to be your father rather than an invitation to follow some rules alleged to come from him. Your example also completely ignores the polytheistic options as well as the atheistic ones; it could be you have no father, but your analogy fails to even consider that option, it simply takes for granted that there is a god. All in all, it's just a bad analogy that does a poor job of illustrating the position those interested in discovering who their father is (or if he exists) are in.

I didn't think numbers for common knowledge was necessary. Are you denying that A) Most Christians reject universalism and B) A large portion of Christians (largely in the US south) believe in eternal hellfire for non-believers?

At no point did I try to characterize the entire relationship (what relationship?) of god and man, I pointed out ONE analogy for the purpose of discussing ONE aspect of certain religions. No **** it's not a comprehensive work on religion, I'm sorry if that's what you expected. The analogy fits with the standard biblical interpretation by bible belt Christians.

CrabCake said:
I believe all religions contain truth, some more truth than others. There being a "correct" religion would seem to imply that it is 100% correct in all of its doctrines. I don't believe there is such a religion. But I think some are more correct than others and thus if you put them on a chart that ranks from least correct to most correct, there would be at least one (and maybe more in the event of a tie) that is/are most correct.
Experientially, I would hope. Did you go meet your purported fathers? After spending time with them, what did your heart tell you? Did you feel like that was real father? Did he fill that father role? What about your mind? Did his story of who he is and how he met your mother make sense?

It's important to note that your list would only be the most correct for YOU. Any other human on the planet could and would make a different list. Buddhism would probably top mine. There is no objective way to experience god and thus identify which religion is correct.

CrabCake said:
You are exaggerating the number of options. That's akin to claiming that we had some half dozen options for president in 2012. While technically true, yes we could have voted for Jill Stein or Stewart Alexander, it was not true in practical terms. There may be hundreds of religions, but there are only a few viable options unless you are open to fringe interpretations. Ultimately, you can narrow down your monotheistic options to: Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Sikhism, and maybe Baha'i.

Now, would it seem fair for those who were genuinely following the one they believed to be the true God to be sentenced to hell for being wrong? No, that does not seem fair. But that is an argument against a specific theological position (the belief that those who do not follow the correct religion end up in hell). It is not an argument against God or against religion itself. It is an argument against one doctrine.

Exaggerating my choices? Really? Just because you don't find some religions credible doesn't mean they're not options. Who are you to decide that if god exists that he must be the god of a religion still around? Can you provide evidence for that assertion that it must be so? Truth isn't decided by which religion has the most followers or who has been around the longest. Even if I arbitrarily reduced it to 10 different religions, there still is zero way to prove ANY one more right than another.

All in all you're not really addressing the fallacy that I made the topic of the thread, you're just complaining about my analogy, that doesn't mesh with your beliefs, yet it DOES mesh with the beliefs of many monotheists. There are hundreds of millions, if not billions of monotheists who believe in hell and that people who don't subscribe to their religion will go there. If you don't think there's one true religion and don't think there's a cosmic punishment for picking the wrong one, then the analogy wasn't for you.

KevinKohler · Aug 31, 2015

RabidAlpaca said:
Consider the following analogy:

A young child has an absentee father who has never visited the child and never spoken a single word to him. The absentee father however expects that the child follows all of the father's rules, so he dispatches a friend to relay the message to the child. The friend says "I was sent by your father to tell you how to live; do all of these things". However, the child is also visited by 99 other people also claiming to speak for his father, each carrying dramatically different messages. The child is overwhelmed and doesn't know what to do, so he just manages to live his life the best way he can. Later on, when the absentee father finds out the child didn't do everything he was told, he sends one of his goons to lock the child up in the basement, then torture the child for decades until it dies.

The most fundamentally important reason why I'm an atheist is that I recognize we are presented with an impossible choice. There are hundreds of religions and hundreds of gods in the world, yet there is no objective way to prove one right over the other. For those of you who believe there is only one correct answer, how can any given human being be expected to select the one right religion of the hundreds presented while rejecting all of the others? The vast majority of people in the world never make it out of their parents' religion, so if you believe in eternal hellfire, you believe most people are inherently doomed based solely on where they were born and to whom.

God, like the absentee father, could easily just tell us his will directly and unambiguously, instead he chooses a medium that can be easily falsified and has 100 other similar religions that have contradictory accounts. There is no way to determine which account actually comes from god and which doesn't. A parent doesn't torture their kids for their entire lives when they screw up, they briefly punish the child and guide it in the right direction, so why would god act any differently?

Well, like....it's because he's mysterious, and ****, you know?

CrabCake · Aug 31, 2015

RabidAlpaca said:
I didn't think numbers for common knowledge was necessary. Are you denying that A) Most Christians reject universalism and B) A large portion of Christians (largely in the US south) believe in eternal hellfire for non-believers?

I'm not denying nor accepting it. I don't have the data to say one way or the other. I'd be interested in seeing that data.

RabidAlpaca said:
The analogy fits with the standard biblical interpretation by bible belt Christians.

No, it does not. Because it pretends that Christianity is an invitation to follow a set of rules sent by someone purporting to be God. This is not the standard biblical interpretation of bible believing Christians. The standard interpretation is that you are invited to enter into a relationship with the God of the universe. It would be more akin to being given an invitation to go meet someone purporting to be your father, not like being handed a list of rules to follow by someone purporting to be your father.

RabidAlpaca said:
It's important to note that your list would only be the most correct for YOU. Any other human on the planet could and would make a different list. Buddhism would probably top mine. There is no objective way to experience god and thus identify which religion is correct.

I never claimed otherwise.

RabidAlpaca said:
Exaggerating my choices? Really? Just because you don't find some religions credible doesn't mean they're not options.

I was more specific than that. I said why they are not credible options. Sure, you can disagree. There really are people who find the libertarian or socialist candidate to be a viable candidate in a presidential election too. Feel free to do that. The rest of us can see through this ruse.

RabidAlpaca said:
Even if I arbitrarily reduced it to 10 different religions, there still is zero way to prove ANY one more right than another.

Of course. No one has ever claimed otherwise.

[EDIT]Actually, I take that back. There are ways to prove some of them to be more right than others. Scientific research has proven that branches of Christianity that hold to literalist, fundamentalist interpretations of the creation account are less right than those holding a more traditional view. Likewise, satellite imagery and geological exploration has definitively proven there are no gods living on Mount Olympus.

RabidAlpaca said:
All in all you're not really addressing the fallacy that I made the topic of the thread, you're just complaining about my analogy, that doesn't mesh with your beliefs, yet it DOES mesh with the beliefs of many monotheists.

It doesn't mesh with the belief of any existing major Christian denomination. There is no major branch of Christianity that your analogy fits.

RabidAlpaca said:
There are hundreds of millions, if not billions of monotheists who believe in hell and that people who don't subscribe to their religion will go there. If you don't think there's one true religion and don't think there's a cosmic punishment for picking the wrong one, then the analogy wasn't for you.

That's not what ruins the analogy. What ruins it is the idea that being invited into a relationship with God is similar to being sent a list of rules that your father wants you to follow.

RabidAlpaca · Aug 31, 2015

CrabCake said:
I'm not denying nor accepting it. I don't have the data to say one way or the other. I'd be interested in seeing that data.

No, it does not. Because it pretends that Christianity is an invitation to follow a set of rules sent by someone purporting to be God. This is not the standard biblical interpretation of bible believing Christians. The standard interpretation is that you are invited to enter into a relationship with the God of the universe. It would be more akin to being given an invitation to go meet someone purporting to be your father, not like being handed a list of rules to follow by someone purporting to be your father.

I never claimed otherwise.

I was more specific than that. I said why they are not credible options. Sure, you can disagree. There really are people who find the libertarian or socialist candidate to be a viable candidate in a presidential election too. Feel free to do that. The rest of us can see through this ruse.

Of course. No one has ever claimed otherwise.

[EDIT]Actually, I take that back. There are ways to prove some of them to be more right than others. Scientific research has proven that branches of Christianity that hold to literalist, fundamentalist interpretations of the creation account are less right than those holding a more traditional view. Likewise, satellite imagery and geological exploration has definitively proven there are no gods living on Mount Olympus.

It doesn't mesh with the belief of any existing major Christian denomination. There is no major branch of Christianity that your analogy fits.

That's not what ruins the analogy. What ruins it is the idea that being invited into a relationship with God is similar to being sent a list of rules that your father wants you to follow.

So you've honed in on one completely insignificant detail then beaten it to death. What could it possibly matter if you are invited to do this or burn in hell, or you're told to do this or burn in hell. Either way, according to mainstream Christian doctrine, you are going to burn in hell unless you're a Christian, yet there's no way to prove it's any more right than any other religion.

You've made your annoyance of my analogy choice abundantly clear. If you have anything significant to the topic to contribute I'll be here.

CrabCake · Aug 31, 2015

RabidAlpaca said:
So you've honed in on one completely insignificant detail then beaten it to death.

It's not an insignificant detail, it's the entire basis of your analogy. Framing this poorly can lead to poor decisions.

RabidAlpaca said:
What could it possibly matter if you are invited to do this or burn in hell, or you're told to do this or burn in hell.

You're still failing to grasp the difference. The difference isn't between being invited to do something and being told to do something. The difference is between being invited to come meet your alleged father and being told to do a list of things by someone claiming to be your father. The two scenarios couldn't be any more different. The first scenario (being invited to meet your father) actually matches what the major monotheistic religions propose, the second scenario (being given a set of rules to follow) doesn't. If we want our analogy to be good, shouldn't we use the one that most closely matches reality?

With a poor analogy come poor results. It would seem reasonable based on your bad analogy to simply discard all of the rules in frustration. In fact, in your story, that's what the child decides to do.

If this were framed more accurately, on the other hand, a new solution starts to appear. If we understand that no one is handing you lists of things to do, but rather that you are being handed various invitations to come meet someone claiming to be your father, the situation changes. The more rational response starts to be more obvious; go meet some of these people. Go ahead and have lunch, ask questions, get to know them. See what kind of connection you have; does something click between you? Does he look like you? Does his story fit in with what you know to be true? Do you feel any kind of bond? Do his claims ring true? Not only are you being invited to meet your father but you are also being told that he is going to take away your pain, free you from the things that hold you down, and help you realize your purpose and potential. After spending time with your alleged father, are those things really happening?

There's a big difference between being handed a bunch of invitations to meet your long lost father and being handed a list of things to do by messengers claiming to be from your father. A better analogy leads to more rational results.

Your analogy was simply bad. It does a poor job of presenting the situation.

RabidAlpaca · Sep 1, 2015

CrabCake said:
It's not an insignificant detail, it's the entire basis of your analogy. Framing this poorly can lead to poor decisions.

You're still failing to grasp the difference. The difference isn't between being invited to do something and being told to do something. The difference is between being invited to come meet your alleged father and being told to do a list of things by someone claiming to be your father. The two scenarios couldn't be any more different. The first scenario (being invited to meet your father) actually matches what the major monotheistic religions propose, the second scenario (being given a set of rules to follow) doesn't. If we want our analogy to be good, shouldn't we use the one that most closely matches reality?

With a poor analogy come poor results. It would seem reasonable based on your bad analogy to simply discard all of the rules in frustration. In fact, in your story, that's what the child decides to do.

If this were framed more accurately, on the other hand, a new solution starts to appear. If we understand that no one is handing you lists of things to do, but rather that you are being handed various invitations to come meet someone claiming to be your father, the situation changes. The more rational response starts to be more obvious; go meet some of these people. Go ahead and have lunch, ask questions, get to know them. See what kind of connection you have; does something click between you? Does he look like you? Does his story fit in with what you know to be true? Do you feel any kind of bond? Do his claims ring true? Not only are you being invited to meet your father but you are also being told that he is going to take away your pain, free you from the things that hold you down, and help you realize your purpose and potential. After spending time with your alleged father, are those things really happening?

There's a big difference between being handed a bunch of invitations to meet your long lost father and being handed a list of things to do by messengers claiming to be from your father. A better analogy leads to more rational results.

Your analogy was simply bad. It does a poor job of presenting the situation.

Once again, I don't really care about whatever goodies you feel you've been promised as a christian, we're talking about the giant threat christians use to manipulate people into believing using fear. If I place a gun to your head and tell you I'll blow your brains out either A) If you don't do what I tell you, or B) You reject my invitation to do what I tell you, there is no difference. You're still going to burn in hell forever for not being a christian.

At least in that scenario I'd be fair enough to physically threaten you and hold an actual gun to your head instead of not saying a single word then shooting you later for not doing something I didn't tell you. I can tell you're more interested in trolling that actually talking about the topic. You've nitpicked from the very beginning, even going so far as to pretend that most christians don't believe in hell. If you're not interested in talking about the fallacy of believing in punishment for non-believers then start your own thread about how awesome your relationship with jesus is.

tosca1 · Sep 1, 2015

RabidAlpaca said:
Consider the following analogy:

A young child has an absentee father who has never visited the child and never spoken a single word to him. The absentee father however expects that the child follows all of the father's rules, so he dispatches a friend to relay the message to the child. The friend says "I was sent by your father to tell you how to live; do all of these things". However, the child is also visited by 99 other people also claiming to speak for his father, each carrying dramatically different messages. The child is overwhelmed and doesn't know what to do, so he just manages to live his life the best way he can. Later on, when the absentee father finds out the child didn't do everything he was told, he sends one of his goons to lock the child up in the basement, then torture the child for decades until it dies.

The most fundamentally important reason why I'm an atheist is that I recognize we are presented with an impossible choice. There are hundreds of religions and hundreds of gods in the world, yet there is no objective way to prove one right over the other. For those of you who believe there is only one correct answer, how can any given human being be expected to select the one right religion of the hundreds presented while rejecting all of the others? The vast majority of people in the world never make it out of their parents' religion, so if you believe in eternal hellfire, you believe most people are inherently doomed based solely on where they were born and to whom.

God, like the absentee father, could easily just tell us his will directly and unambiguously, instead he chooses a medium that can be easily falsified and has 100 other similar religions that have contradictory accounts. There is no way to determine which account actually comes from god and which doesn't. A parent doesn't torture their kids for their entire lives when they screw up, they briefly punish the child and guide it in the right direction, so why would god act any differently?

The Christian God is not an "absentee" father.

He came down and lived among us (incarnated as Jesus Christ), to personally tell and show us His great love for all mankind.
He gave instructions how to gain eternal life, and warned us of the dangers by those who would try to lead us astray.

He wants us to keep the line open, to nurture a continually healthy relationship with Him.

How is that any different from a human parent who personally tells and shows us his great love for his son?

What loving parent does not give instructions and have rules for his child? What loving parent does not warn us of the dangers of being led astray by unsavory influences by peers or others - drugs, gangs, criminal activities, neglecting studies, etc..,
How many parents watch their sons go off to university, with the instructions, "if you need anything, let me know," or "don't forget to write or call often."

How many sons had strayed away from the teachings of their fathers - and indeed indulged in any or all of the above - and eventually regretted, and found their way back to their loving fathers?

How many, to their fathers' sorrow, end up truly lost?

RabidAlpaca · Sep 1, 2015

tosca1 said:
The Christian God is not an "absentee" father.

He came down and lived among us (incarnated as Jesus Christ), to personally tell and show us His great love for all mankind.
He gave instructions how to gain eternal life, and warned us of the dangers by those who would try to lead us astray.

How is that any different from a human parent who personally tells and shows us his great love for his son?
What loving parent does not give instructions and have rules for his child? What loving parent does not warn us of the dangers of being led astray by unsavory influences by peers or others - drugs, gangs, criminal activities, neglecting studies, etc..,
How many sons had strayed away from the teachings of their fathers - and indeed indulged in any or all of the above - and eventually regretted, and found their way back to their loving fathers? How many, to their fathers' sorrow, are truly lost?

Yes, but hundreds of other gods have done the exact same thing. How can I tell which god/holy book is right and which one isn't? You're a christian because you like that religion the best, but what objective methods can I use to determine that christianity is true and all the others are false?

And yes, considering he only communicates through 2,000 year old dead prophets and never directly to us, he's incredibly absentee.

tosca1 · Sep 1, 2015

RabidAlpaca said:
That is completely incorrect. The vast majority of Christians do believe that there is only one true religion, and a large swath of those Christians also believe in eternal hellfire for those who have not been saved.

It's great that you get some other kind of positive meaning out of it, but I started this thread to draw attention to the fact that many people believe you're punished for picking the wrong religion yet there's no way to prove one religion any more right than the others, so how would such a god expect us to choose? Do you believe there is only one correct religion? If so, how can the average human being be expected to identify that one religion as the correct one? Is eternal hellfire really a rational and proportionate punishment for not picking the right religion from hundreds?

God gave us critical thinking.

I don't claim to know how exactly judgement will be done by God....but I assume that it wouldn't be the same for one who'd had heard the gospel
(and had the intelligence to do some thinking), from the one who hasn't.

tosca1 · Sep 1, 2015

RabidAlpaca said:
Yes, but hundreds of other gods have done the exact same thing.

Which god had done the exact same thing?

tosca1 · Sep 1, 2015

RabidAlpaca said:
And yes, considering he only communicates through 2,000 year old dead prophets and never directly to us, he's incredibly absentee.

You got that wrong.

So many Christians enjoy a relationship with Him. He does "communicate!"

The Book may've been written by ancient prophets..........but I tell you - that Book isn't called a "living Word" for nothing!

RabidAlpaca · Sep 1, 2015

tosca1 said:
God gave us critical thinking.

I don't claim to know how exactly judgement will be done by God....but I assume that it wouldn't be the same for one who'd had heard the gospel
(and had the intelligence to do some thinking), from the one who hasn't.

Ok, and how do I use that critical thinking to objectively determine that christianity is correct and all other religions aren't?

tosca1 said:
Which god had done the exact same thing?

I know you live in a bubble and think there's only really one choice, christian or not, but that's simply not the case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religions_and_spiritual_traditions

There are HUNDREDS of religions to choose from. How can the average human objectively determine that only christianity is right and the others are wrong. Break the decision making process down for me.

tosca1 said:
You got that wrong.

So many Christians enjoy a relationship with Him. The Book may've been written by ancient prophets.....

.....but I tell you - that Book isn't called a "living Word" for nothing!

And many other believers tell a completely contradictory story about their religions. How do I determine who's lying and who's right?

tosca1 · Sep 1, 2015

RabidAlpaca said:
Ok, and how do I use that critical thinking to objectively determine that christianity is correct and all other religions aren't?

Do some reading about why so many believe Christianity is the true religion. Talk to those who can explain to you.

If you seek God.....He will come to you.

I know you live in a bubble and think there's only really one choice, christian or not, but that's simply not the case.

See? You've got to drop that mentality. That's like a wall. It hinders.

Like anything else, if you want to KNOW and UNDERSTAND something, you've got to approach it with an open mind.

RabidAlpaca · Sep 1, 2015

tosca1 said:
Do some reading about why so many believe Christianity is the true religion. Talk to those who can explain to you.

If you seek God.....He will come to you.

See? You've got to drop that mentality. That's like a wall. It hinders.

Like anything else, if you want to KNOW and UNDERSTAND something, you've got to approach it with an open mind.

Exactly. You don't have an answer. You think that every person on earth if they honestly tried would determine that christianity is right. You think it's obvious and objective, and you are wrong. I was a christian for over 2 decades, and I've studied parts of all the major world religions. Buddhism seems the most right to me.

Show me that your religion is objectively the true one and I will convert on the spot. Stop deflecting and answer the question. Every person on earth will not come to the same conclusion and I think it's arrogant and sad that you think that.

tosca1 · Sep 1, 2015

RabidAlpaca said:
And many other believers tell a completely contradictory story about their religions. How do I determine who's lying and who's right?

Christianity? Why do they tell a contradictory story? Ask them.

Usually, the reason behind it will be because they think "God didn't answer" their prayers (therefore, there is no God)......
.......or that they got disillusioned because of the "hypocrisy" of people who call themselves Christians.

Some people lose faith because of the evils and sufferings in this world.

tosca1 · Sep 1, 2015

RabidAlpaca said:
Exactly. You don't have an answer. You think that every person on earth if they honestly tried would determine that christianity is right. You think it's obvious and objective, and you are wrong. I was a christian for over 2 decades, and I've studied parts of all the major world religions. Buddhism seems the most right to me.

Why did you lose faith in Christ? What's exactly your reason for it?

Buddhism seems the most right to me.

That's relativistic.

Some people pick and choose which religion they prefer - not because of the truth in it - but because it suits their needs.

You're talking about finding the true religion, right?

tosca1 · Sep 1, 2015

RabidAlpaca said:
Show me that your religion is objectively the true one and I will convert on the spot. Stop deflecting and answer the question. Every person on earth will not come to the same conclusion and I think it's arrogant and sad that you think that.

I'm not deflecting.

I'm sure you followed the two threads, "GOD of ABRAHAM," and "IS THERE A GOD?"
You're not stupid....you are an educated person. You know where I'm coming from.

Manny · Sep 1, 2015

RabidAlpaca said:
You're still going to burn in hell forever for not being a christian.

Don't believe what those who have little education in theology might tell you, go with the real authorities on Christianity. Pope Francis reached out to Islam. He does not believe that muslims will go to hell for it.
Among several of his recent utterances-

Pope Francis To Followers: “Koran And Holy Bible Are The Same”

On Monday the Bishop Of Rome addressed Catholic followers regarding the dire importance of exhibiting religious tolerance. During his hour-long speech, a smiling Pope Francis was quoted telling the Vatican’s guests that the Koran, and the spiritual teachings contained therein, are just as valid as the Holy Bible.

“Jesus Christ, Jehovah, Allah. These are all names employed to describe an entity that is distinctly the same across the world. For centuries, blood has been needlessly shed because of the desire to segregate our faiths. This, however, should be the very concept which unites us as people, as nations, and as a world bound by faith."

calamity · Sep 1, 2015

RabidAlpaca said:
Consider the following analogy:

A young child has an absentee father who has never visited the child and never spoken a single word to him. The absentee father however expects that the child follows all of the father's rules, so he dispatches a friend to relay the message to the child. The friend says "I was sent by your father to tell you how to live; do all of these things". However, the child is also visited by 99 other people also claiming to speak for his father, each carrying dramatically different messages. The child is overwhelmed and doesn't know what to do, so he just manages to live his life the best way he can. Later on, when the absentee father finds out the child didn't do everything he was told, he sends one of his goons to lock the child up in the basement, then torture the child for decades until it dies.

The most fundamentally important reason why I'm an atheist is that I recognize we are presented with an impossible choice. There are hundreds of religions and hundreds of gods in the world, yet there is no objective way to prove one right over the other. For those of you who believe there is only one correct answer, how can any given human being be expected to select the one right religion of the hundreds presented while rejecting all of the others? The vast majority of people in the world never make it out of their parents' religion, so if you believe in eternal hellfire, you believe most people are inherently doomed based solely on where they were born and to whom.

God, like the absentee father, could easily just tell us his will directly and unambiguously, instead he chooses a medium that can be easily falsified and has 100 other similar religions that have contradictory accounts. There is no way to determine which account actually comes from god and which doesn't. A parent doesn't torture their kids for their entire lives when they screw up, they briefly punish the child and guide it in the right direction, so why would god act any differently?

I thought this thread was about Adrian Peterson.

The Absentee Father

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