Imagine I start a country and have the ability enforce my will. In my country, I create various laws. I say it is illegal to do certain things like murder, steal, rape, and lie. I also say that you have to swear allegiance to me. Now, if you swear allegiance, you get all the benefits of a citizen of my country (and we'll assume my country is pretty rad), but if you don't, I lock you in a dungeon for the rest of your days and have you tortured. No takesies backsies, either. You stay in there until you die. As for the punishments for the other crimes (murder, theft, etc)... there are none. If I walk down the street and see you killing a guy, I'd say "Hey, that's illegal!", and when you ask me what I'm going to do about it, I'd say "Nothing!", and presumably make sure you swore allegiance to me.

And that's the punishment and reward system that Christianity gives us (well, except the rape part. They don't explicitly forbid that).

How many orphanages do you have to build or lives do you have to save to get into heaven? How many to stay out of hell? There is no answer, because that's not part of the criteria. How many living babies do you have to eat before you won't get let into heaven? Again, there is no answer. Baby-eaters that swear the proper oath of fealty before they die get eternal reward, and orphanage builders who didn't swear the oath because it didn't make sense (or, even worse, they were raised in the wrong religion!) get tortured for eternity. There's no accountability, other than that you'd better swear your oath before you unexpectedly get hit by a truck, or something. Even then, you can can swear the oath, sin, repent, sin, repent, ad infinitum.

The best counter I've seen to this is the No True Scotsman of "Well, a true Christian wouldn't be bad like that", but that's just a nebulous claim to try to remove the obvious abuses. There's no basis for it other than that it makes people uncomfortable to think about, so they assume there must be something God does to try to sync his punishment/reward system with something more sane that we might actually expect.

You forgot the most important thing that undermines your entire post: repentance.

(April 14, 2014 at 10:39 am)ChadWooters Wrote: You forgot the most important thing that undermines your entire post: repentance.

The last two paragraphs address it.

(April 14, 2014 at 10:41 am)RobbyPants Wrote:

(April 14, 2014 at 10:39 am)ChadWooters Wrote: You forgot the most important thing that undermines your entire post: repentance.

The last two paragraphs address it.

I'm still trying to figure out the sanity of the logistics behind salvation through Christian faith. How exactly does one will themselves to believe something even when the intellect is more certain than most things that the entire Christian narrative is childishly egocentric at best and bat shit crazy at worst?

(April 14, 2014 at 10:45 am)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: I'm still trying to figure out the sanity of the logistics behind salvation through Christian faith. How exactly does one will themselves to believe something even when the intellect is more certain than most things that the entire Christian narrative is childishly egocentric at best and bat shit crazy at worst?

As far as I can tell, you basically have to be willing to completely disregard any dissenting view point, and then it's relatively easy. I went though a several year period where I didn't believe and couldn't make myself believe. I really wanted to, but I wasn't willing to throw out observable evidence or logic. I was hoping I could come up with a framework where I could keep those thing and my belief and... predictably failed.

Similarly, we see people do stuff like join cults and drink poisoned beverages and die willingly. I think you just have to get to a point where you refuse to consider any other view point.

For a lot of people, they can find themselves in that position out of ignorance, and the well has already been poisoned before they run into a dissenting view point. So, they're already convinced of the argument's/evidence's wrongness before they encounter it.

(April 14, 2014 at 10:53 am)RobbyPants Wrote:

(April 14, 2014 at 10:45 am)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: I'm still trying to figure out the sanity of the logistics behind salvation through Christian faith. How exactly does one will themselves to believe something even when the intellect is more certain than most things that the entire Christian narrative is childishly egocentric at best and bat shit crazy at worst?

As far as I can tell, you basically have to be willing to completely disregard any dissenting view point, and then it's relatively easy. I went though a several year period where I didn't believe and couldn't make myself believe. I really wanted to, but I wasn't willing to throw out observable evidence or logic. I was hoping I could come up with a framework where I could keep those thing and my belief and... predictably failed.

Similarly, we see people do stuff like join cults and drink poisoned beverages and die willingly. I think you just have to get to a point where you refuse to consider any other view point.

For a lot of people, they can find themselves in that position out of ignorance, and the well has already been poisoned before they run into a dissenting view point. So, they're already convinced of the argument's/evidence's wrongness before they encounter it.

So what's the trick for one to do this and retain their supposed affection for intellectual integrity? Is it even possible?

(April 14, 2014 at 10:57 am)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: So what's the trick for one to do this and retain their supposed affection for intellectual integrity? Is it even possible?

I'm confused what you're asking? "How does a person stop being intellectually honest while still being intellectually honest?"

They can't be, of course.

(April 14, 2014 at 10:41 am)RobbyPants Wrote:

(April 14, 2014 at 10:39 am)ChadWooters Wrote: You forgot the most important thing that undermines your entire post: repentance.

The last two paragraphs address it.

Repentance is followed by regeneration not continued sin. Secondly, intellectual understanding fails without a change of heart which happens at a higher level than mere belief.

Quote:You stay in there until you die.

Well compared to God you are letting them off easy.

With God you stay there forever and ever.

Nice guy! If you don't mind narcissistic, paranoid, schizophrenics with a penchant for the macabre.

(April 14, 2014 at 10:03 am)RobbyPants Wrote: The Christian God incentivizes the wrong things

Even more important than that, the creation and propogation of the concept of christain god is incentivized by the wrong things.