(March 12, 2011 at 8:26 am)Zenith Wrote:Quote:If there were gods, they would tell everyone that they exist, not one person or a small group of people.That sounds as an argument... Though unjustifiable - i.e. why??
We'll assume that all gods work in mysterious ways. Take old Yahweh, the Christian god. All-knowing, all-seeing, omni-present. Why did Yahweh not let every human know of his existence 100,000 years ago instead of waiting until 2500 years ago and then just revealing himself to a handful of desert nomads? Surely he could have shouted it out to the whole world? If he'd been a bit smarter then he'd have more than 25% of the World's population believing in him.
It would be like the CEO of Ford Motor Company getting 12 of his managers together and announcing that they have an amazing new automobile, but to save money, only the 12 managers know and have to go forth and tell people in person about the new vehicle. It would take a thousand years before the whole World knew about the new vehicle! Theoretically speaking, of course! No allowance made for modern communication methods.
Quote:I can think of not a single reason why gods would punish people who didn't believe that they existed. That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. I would be dead anyway, so how could I be punished?
Well, even in pagan religions before Christianity there was the idea of punishment and reward after death. So if pagan religions before Christianity believed in afterlife, then why is it wrong for my theory with gods to support afterlife??
Religions believing in something doesn't create fact and beyond being a control system, there's no justification in a god punishing people just because they don't believe he exists. It would be like punishing my children because they don't believe I'm their father. I'd just say "tough", believe what you want, it doesn't bother me".
There are many intelligent Christians, no doubt, but an "intellectual Christian", is surely an oxymoron.
