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Originally Posted by leehop71
The premise of the OP is foolishness to begin with. Too many testimonies like myself that have 'experienced' the presence and change with Christ in our lives.
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Personal subjective experiences inherently can't be valid input for anyone but the experiencer. Nor is this a principle adhered to only by unbelievers ... it is a fairly important teaching of many non-charistmatic evangelicals. By their lights, personal experience cannot be trusted, especially compare to scriptures, which are believed to provide 100% of any needed direction / guidance in matters of religious faith and practice.
So not only are your experiences -- even if supposedly shared by many others -- useless to others, there are many Christians who believe they are unreliable even for you.
When considering any truth claim, one must consider the available evidence that the claim is true, as well as any logical argument on offer in favor of the claim. Other's testimony of personal subjective experiences does not count as evidence or logical argument.
Next, one must consider the consequentiality and extraordinariness of the claims. The more consequential and extraordinary the claim, the higher the bar must be raised before belief can be afforded to the claim.
The existence of an afterlife, much less one that threatens infinite / eternal punishment for finite transgressions, is about as consequential a thing as can be imagined. Also, given that both heaven and hell are invisible and merely asserted to exist, the dead conveniently prohibited somehow from reaching back into SHARED reality (as opposed to the private perceptions of select individuals) to tell us anything about the afterlife, heaven and hell are also about as extraordinary a claim as can be made. This combination of consequentiality and extraordinariness raises the bar for evidential and logical requirements approximately as high as they can possibly BE raised.
I suspect that you don't like either the high bar or the inadmissibility of your alleged experiences, but they are and must exist nevertheless, for people at least with decent and appropriate evidentiary standards.
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Originally Posted by leehop71
Bottom line: 1. The Weiss family cannot answer, personally, every Tom, Dick, and Harry that comes down the pike.
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No, but it isn't unreasonable for them to answer every serious inquiry that they possibly can, given the concern that they would naturally have for the eternal destiny of people. And I am assuming that they are about something more than simply selling books, and have a genuine concern for souls. The evidence of this concern would be active engagement, by all feasible means and channels, of all honest inquiry on the matter. And if in fact the Weiss family has sound logic and evidence in their favor, they should be eager to present this evidence without a requirement that the people they present to must be biased in favor of the Weiss family beliefs. The whole point is to change the minds of people who are indifferent or opposed to their notions. And if they are coming from a position of strength, they should relish the opportunity to engage in a 21st century manner with inquirers -- not limiting themselves to the arm's length engagement of the publishing world, but using social media as a powerful adjunct.
Quote:
Originally Posted by leehop71
2. You have made the choice NOT to believe. There's nothing that they or anyone else can say to make a difference.
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I have made no such choice. My beliefs are predicated on facts and argument in evidence that are in my field of awareness. All you have to do -- ALL you have to do -- to change my beliefs is make a credible argument and/or present credible evidence that will change the preponderance of evidence that I'm aware of. So your assertion that nothing the Weiss family or anyone else can say will make a difference, is simply an admission that you have no evidence or logical argument -- AT ALL -- on offer. That is your issue, not mine.
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Originally Posted by leehop71
The enemy has you right where he wants you, and until you hit a bottom in your life, you will get to experience this place, personally.
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This is another asserted truth for which you need to cite empirical evidence or logical argument in its favor. Note that personal subjective experience and quotes from holy books do not count in this regard.
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Originally Posted by leehop71
3. Jesus said the road to hell is wide and many will travel. The road to heaven is narrow and few will find it.
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Interesting that a deity who is said to be all loving would structure things in such a way that he brings into existence / consciousness billions of sentient beings over thousands of years, knowing full well that most will pass into an eternity of torment for simply seeing no valid reason to afford belief to claims that are clearly fantastical. If "god is not willing that any should perish, but that ALL should come to a knowledge of the truth", then in what sense can "narrow is the way, and few there be that find it" be considered a good-faith effort to show himself as concerned and benevolent as he is claimed to be?
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Originally Posted by leehop71
He has given us free will. He could have made robots and programmed us to love Him and do good, but that's not how He wanted it designed.
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And yet somehow in your belief-system it is magically NOT a problem or a violation of free will in the sweet by-and-by where 100% of everyone will love and worship god and live in harmony.
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Originally Posted by leehop71
Accept Christ, live a good life, and spend eternity with Him .... OR, choose to keep our stubborn will, die and spend eternity in the place Weiss describes.
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This is the explicit, mafia-like threat that Weiss is hawking. Believe or else. Pretty typical "value" proposition coming from a fundamentalist Christian. I am amazed that you not only endorse this but are okay with it -- proud of it, even.
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Originally Posted by leehop71
God wouldn't want folk like you with Him anyway, that doesn't want to be there to begin with!
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Particularly in that, as a former fundamentalist Christian, I demonstrated a willingness to embrace the beliefs and ruleset of that faith, you might wish to consider that it has nothing to do with "not wanting to be there". It is an inability to believe that it's there TO be in. Due to your inability to evidence it or produce a sound logical argument in its favor.
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Originally Posted by leehop71
If folk like you are right, and Christians are wrong, then Christ followers live a good life, die, and stay 6 feet under. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain for surrendering to Christ.
If the Christians are right and the unbelievers are wrong, .... what then? They live like hell and spend eternity there! Nothing to gain and everything to lose by rebelling.
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It is weak arguments like Pascal's Wager and your inability to address the rational objections to it (primarily that it is a false dichotomy that fails to take into account the myriad other conflicting truth-claims both inside and outside of Christianity) that undermines your ability to convince thinking people to adopt your beliefs.
By the way, I am not "rebelling". It is impossible to rebel (and/or hate, and/or be disappointed in) something that, so far as I can determine, doesn't even exist.
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Originally Posted by leehop71
.... That's why all the other faiths are wrong ...
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Seriously? We're all mad, and you lot are the only sane people in the world?
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Originally Posted by leehop71
So many things we don't understand about Christ because God has told us, His thoughts and ways our higher than our thoughts and ways.
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Hand-waving dismissals of people's logical concerns will not get you far. Consider how that's been working for you so far. After 2,000 years, Christianity -- even generously defined as "those who claim to be Christians" -- account for about a third of the world population, and is in decline at that. Defined as YOU do ... where Christians are "those who believe my particularly personal subjective interpretation of scripture" ... and you're a tiny minority. And this is what "not willing that any should perish" Jehovah has managed to accomplish ... not only in two millennia of Christianity but roughly six millennia or so of him "revealing" himself to humanity. Pretty unimpressive.
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Originally Posted by leehop71
Is eternity something you really want to gamble with? Something that you cannot change your mind about once you leave these earthly bodies??????
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Entirely so. That is like me asking you if you want to gamble that the Holy Squirrel will not take you to his great nut cache in the sky if you don't believe in him and roast two chestnuts a day in his honor. There is no reason to think there is such a thing, and I'm not entirely sure that I want to spend eternity in a bunker full of nuts anyway.
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