Belief as a condition of salvation is an unreasonable demand (translation, myths)

[mordant]

Originally Posted by Vizio

Actually, you have touched upon an issue here that is very true. Faith is a gift from God. Faith is a requirement for salvation, but faith is a gift from God that not everyone has.

In Romans 8-9 Paul talks about how only the elect are saved -- only those that God knew, predestined, and chose. Yet, in Romans 10 he says that we are made righteous by faith.

If god miraculously provides convincing yet unsharable evidence to some and not to others, then what is the motivation to proselytize? What is the motivation for apologetics? Are those doing nothing more than cooperating with or completing or catalyzing god's selection of his elect?

[mordant]

Originally Posted by elyn02

Are you equating God with an abusive person? I could not do that and not because I want to defend him. What I know now wouldn't allow me to do this. Basically, the world is not what I think it should be, it is what it is.

Not in terms of life being difficult. Like you, I've learned to accept that life is what it is. The abusiveness comes through what Arq had termed "hellthreat" which is a nice, concise, descriptive term. "Love me or suffer for eternity" is an abusive and manipulative threat no matter how you try to spin it.

Originally Posted by elyn02

I hate to say this but I have adapted to a God whose only goal is for me to find my way back to him through faith alone regardless of what happens to me. He can set the rules but I set something else that I can't quite explain. Silly, I know.

I wouldn't disparage you as a silly person, Elyn, you are clearly a serious person with curiosity and heart. I don't agree with you, either, but it is an amicable disagreement.

What I would say is that creating lost beings who are obliged to find their way to you, perhaps often through suffering, strikes me as a Sysiphean task if there ever was one. My children were never obliged to grope their way to me in the dark, and I suspect that yours weren't, either. Neither of us would have willingly put them through that, especially if we were all powerful and all loving as the Christian god is alleged to be. The operative Bible verse here is, "if you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father which is in heaven give good gifts to those who ask of him".

I basically grew weary of all these circuitous explanations for why life is as it is. It is far, far, FAR simpler to just say that life is exactly as one would expect if we lived in an indifferent universe where random stuff occurs. A lifelong quest for "something more" is just the continued expression of personal disappointment that life is never about us. In my opinion.

[thrillobyte]

Originally Posted by Vizio

Actually, you have touched upon an issue here that is very true. Faith is a gift from God. Faith is a requirement for salvation, but faith is a gift from God that not everyone has.

In Romans 8-9 Paul talks about how only the elect are saved -- only those that God knew, predestined, and chose. Yet, in Romans 10 he says that we are made righteous by faith.

Vizio, I suspect you are a 5-point Calvinist. And what does a person do if, as Paul so eloquently puts it, "he has been predestined as a vessel of wrath", meaning God, for His own divine reasons which are unfathomable to those of us who Jesus called "children of the devil", God decides to withhold His gift of faith from this person and predestine him to eternal fiery torment in hell--remember now, for no other logical reason than His ways are higher than our ways and He answers to nobody?

What then?

[Miss Hepburn]

Salvation...belief....demand...are words I am not accustomed to using.

Salvation? From what, suffering here on earth? Or in the Afterlife from a hell?
Biblical words, Biblical concepts, interpretations...I don't use the word 'saved',sorry.
No belief, blood,death of another saved me....it was direct knowledge
and personal experience of Truth,
Reality, of the Divine Presence that clued me in on how
to be happy and know
I am an eternal soul or spirit with choice.

Belief? What.... a blind belief in something? No way. To know something
is the ticket.
Faith? Same thing...it is blind...know something for yourself, know that something 'is'
or true or fact, I say.

Demand? Oy vey....God loves our love....we have free will...no "demands" even exist!

Sorry, this isn't the atheist section so I speak freely that God is.

My 2 cents.

[daylux]

Evidence doesn't lead people to a belief in God.

[Shirina]

I would have thought that, if there was any universal truth at all to religion, there wouldn't be so much debate about it.

So I go down the only path that doesn't expect you to push your way through intellectual thickets, thorns, and burrs to get to your destination ...

That path says to me that all religions cannot be right but they CAN all be wrong. Only this particular path does not require mental gymnastics to rationalize, it doesn't require me to surrender my reason and forgo the use of my brain, it doesn't require me to believe things on faith, and it doesn't demand that I love and adore a deity that behaves like an absentee father.

Belief itself is an interesting notion. By and large, it is not something you choose to do any more than you choose who to fall in love with. It either happens or it doesn't. Some of us simply aren't hardwired to believe in religion or gods. Moreover, when it comes to religion and salvation, belief is not enough. You have to love these gods with every fiber of your being and put these gods first in your life, even above your own children. That's far more than beleif, that is a mild form of fanaticism.

For those of us like myself who tend to be logical, cerebral, and have very high standards of evidence can never really and truly believe in these deities much less love them and adore them and whatnot. Yep, I've tried, and it never takes hold. Oh, for awhile, while I'm immersed in a group of people inside a church swaying and singing and raising up their hands and crying, it's easy to convince yourself that, just maybe, you're starting to really believe.

Then the service is over and suddenly you begin finding all of the silly and ridiculous things the pastor might have said, the idea that Christian myths are no different than a thousand other myths, why should I believe this bunk, wow - was I ever an idiot for getting caught up in mass hysteria ... and off you go for another unbelieving day without gods in your life.

If you see not only religion but all of humanity from the perspective of an observer, a non-participant, almost like an alien monitoring human behavior from afar, you really begin to realize just how primitive and primal these religious beliefs are.

I never chose to see things in that way, I never chose to disbelieve, I never chose to regard religion as an almost comical set of beliefs. As I've said before - I could no more believe in god than a paralyzed man could get out of his wheelchair and run the Boston Marathon simpy because he wants to.

And if I even believed in a God, I would have to wonder why I was "created" with the brain that I have. Am I not supposed to disbelieve? Then I end up with a paradox. After all, how can I ask a god I don't believe in why he created me to disbelieve in him.

At any rate, I know a lot of Christians want to know what a person like myself would accept as evidence. The most sincere answer I can give is: I don't know, but God would know. If he cared at all about my soul, if he cared at all if I came to his party, he would send me an invitation I would know was from him.

[Kophi]

Originally Posted by shopper23

Just consider this - what if your thoughts, theories, doubtings are wrong? What if all your opinions are wrong??

The thing is, though, is that Christianity isn't the only religion that
comes with a hell for nonbelievers. That being the case, a Muslim,
for example, could ask you the same question regarding rejection of
their religion and the risk of hell that comes with that: So, what if
your thoughts, theories, doubts, and opinions about Islam are
wrong?

By the way, I'm not pushing Islam – I was a born-again evangelical
Christian for a long time, and while I no longer consider myself that
now, I do think that the confidence I have in God's protecting all
souls springs from the assurance I once had in Jesus specifically. I
went from resting in my own salvation, to resting in the salvation of not only
me but all mankind, to realizing that the whole endless-torment-
in-hell concept does not glorify God at all and chucked the hell-thing
right out the window. The bigger God gets in my estimation, the
smaller these other, most likely man-made, concepts become until
they just go *poof* and are gone.






–

[Vizio]

Originally Posted by thrillobyte

Vizio, I suspect you are a 5-point Calvinist.

I do believe that he was correct in the 5 points. I would likely have some disagreements with him on some other issues.

And what does a person do if, as Paul so eloquently puts it, "he has been predestined as a vessel of wrath",

Actually...that phrase isn't in the Bible.

meaning God, for His own divine reasons which are unfathomable to those of us who Jesus called "children of the devil", God decides to withhold His gift of faith from this person and predestine him to eternal fiery torment in hell--remember now, for no other logical reason than His ways are higher than our ways and He answers to nobody?

What then?

The Bible does not say that God predestines anyone to hell. If God does not grant the grace, then they will be punished for their sin.

[nateswift]

So, ONLY predestining SOME for salvation does NOT predestine the rest to the only other choice...... right.

[MysticPhD]

This is an excellent thread and you have some fine posts in it, mordant . . . as usual. I will try to address what I see as the central issues as they impact my own views.

Originally Posted by mordant

The problem with belief as a condition of salvation in Christian theology is that belief is the product of the preponderance of evidence and is not really voluntary once the evidence is known. You cannot ask a person to believe (or not believe). Their belief is simply the product of what they know with reasonable confidence.

The only thing a person can do to remain within the Christian faith once they see a lack of evidence for and/or a preponderance of evidence against Christianity is to rationalize or reinterpret or ignore the evidence in an effort to influence what is believable to them, which is what Christian apologetics is all about. This is why the emphasis in fundamentalist Christianity is to decide in advance what you want to believe and then use blind faith to hold that in place regardless of evidence. Apologetics is merely a concession to an increasingly educated and informed populace, an attempt to kick the can down the road when faith collides with reason.

Much is made of people's "refusal" to believe the "Truth" when it is actually inability to believe once enough facts are known. One cannot legitimately assert Truth and then demand that it be believed. Especially when the Truth is extraordinary, one cannot legitimately expect people to accept it with only tradition, ancient writings, appeals to authority, and shared personal subjective experiences to commend it. We are asked to believe in invisible beings and realms, promises with invisible / spiritualized / deferred fulfillments rather than demonstrable results, in claimed attributes of immaterial things when we have no faculties to assess anything other than the material.

If someone chooses a version of how reality works that is more pleasing than what actually presents itself, and refuses to test that chosen reality against the real deal, who am I to deny them that or to judge it? I don't recommend that course or agree with it, but it's up to each person to figure out how to get through their day. As long as they understand that the "refusal" that goes on is not on the part of people who don't accept Christianity, it is on the part of Christians. It is not a matter of "refusing to believe" or "refusing to accept a free gift". It is a matter of "refusing to follow all evidence wherever it might lead". Indeed, it's a matter of refusing to even see evidence unless it conforms to dogma.

In fact this is the fundamental issue: what are we to wrestle with? The facts on the ground, or the contrived dogmas of traditional belief systems? It's a question of whether dogma is the arbiter of the validity of reality, or if reality is the arbiter of the validity of dogma.

This is absolutely true if it means belief in the religious explanations of God and our purpose. The explanations are ALL man-made . . . despite their claims of provenance as "God-inspired." Inspiration from God is not an unreasonable assumption . . . if God exists. But it is completely unreasonable to assert it and accept it . . . as the religions do . . . without applying our knowledge and reason to it.

What absolutely depends on belief alone is the existence of God, period. It all reduces down to whether or not we believe we have a purpose for our existence which implies a purpose-giver. These are not and cannot be fact-driven beliefs . . . they are intrinsic. They cannot be articulated using factual reasons . . . and the real answers to them can really only be inferred from our behavior and attitudes toward life and others, IMO. We can express our reasons for belief based on the attributes of reality or can have personal subjective experiences that invoke our belief . . . or some combination. But the central belief in the existence of God is essentially intrinsic . . . not extrinsic.

What you describe happening to belief as knowledge is increased is the evaporation of confidence in the man-made explanations based on extrinsic factors. Those who have the intrinsic belief may or may not be motivated by these extrinsic factors to abandon the religious explanations. Those who do not are generally considered fundamentalists . . . but they are just strong intrinsic believers in the existence of God. Their expressed defense of the absurd religious explanations is not so much a defense of the absurd. It is just their way of expressing their conviction in the existence of God.

Those who are swayed extrinsically will then either abandon their belief by becoming atheist . . . or they may become agnostic . . . or they may retain their belief but become non-religious. The outcome does depend almost entirely on the level of intrinsic belief they started with. If their initial position was based entirely on a buy-in to the religious explanations . . . the erosion of confidence in them will almost certainly produce atheism. The other outcomes reflect the different combinations of intrinsic and religion-based belief. That is how I see the dynamic, mordant. Fortunately, as you said . . . our salvation does not depend on any of it. In my view Christ took care of whatever was needed. I assume in your current view nothing was needed in the first place.