God, come out, come out wherever you are!

[Black Chakram]

Hey, Black Chakram, you seem to be conversational enough, would you mind perhaps answering these two questions?

1. Is it entirely a person's own fault he goes to hell? (or non-existence, or whatever you think exactly hell is. I know you have different views on the matter).

2. Is it wrong for a Christian to *not* witness to someone?

If you answer yes to both questions, you're going have to explain how you're not contradicting yourself, as I show here: http://atheistforums.org/thread-12571-po...#pid279128

Thank you.

Hi teaearlgreyhot,

Let's start with the post below and see where it goes. I'm interested in logically debating this. I don't know if I was able to counterpoint all your concerns, but if not, we can get them in another post.

But first one point:

This appears to be a logical inconsistency within Christianity. With that noted, all my points will be from a standpoint of assuming that the basic tenets of Christianity are true. These questions are about internal consistency, for which you need to accept basic premises to philosphically argue.

1) The Bible definitely says that it's a person's own fault if they go to hell. Through Christ, God provides the free gift of salvation from sin. Anyone is free to accept that gift if they're wiling to follow God's principles as laid out in the Bible.

2) The Bible tells us the "Great Commission" is to go out and "Make disciples of every nation". i.e. convert non-believers. Since we're being told we need to do this, it would definitely seem that it would be "wrong" not to.

So if we accept the Bible as the inspired Word of God, we're definitely being told that both of these things are "true."

Now to address your contradictory point.

IF, as you say, God knows who would accept Him regardless of whether or not they were preached to, and IF God chooses to condemn based on that, then your argument follows very logically. Going out and trying to witness is pointless because God would either choose to save that person or not regardless of your actions.

So let's see if we can find a way around the contradiction using the logical statements laid out above.

1) This point seems to leave little room for debate. Either you accept God or you don't. If you've never heard of God, MAYBE He'll judge you on the criteria of "If you had heard of me, would you have accepted me?". Let's for now assume that if a dead person is asked that by God and says "yes" that He gets to go to heaven. (Which is a little shaky theologically, but we can't really argue 2 points at once without things getting messy.)

2) This point has room for a big question. Especially if we assume the last paragraph is true, why would God command this? There's an alternate way of thinking about this:

If you truly believe in Jesus, and converting to following Him has made you happy, wouldn't you want to share that with other people anyway? People love trying to share things that have made them happy with others. It doesn't seem too harmful that a benevolent God would say "Yeah! Go share it!". On the flip side, if a proclaimed Christian said "I don't want to share it." their motives and depth of belief might be questioned. Because, once again, if you genuinely feel it has made you better, why wouldn't you want to share it? This point essentially says that not sharing it wouldn't be wrong, it would just be indicative of a lack of wanting to follow a God you claim to be devoted to.

There is another argument that says even if God decides who gets saved and who doesn't, we need to witness because He commanded it. If God is God, you do what He wants. I never liked this argument as much because I'd rather believe that God won't hand out arbitrary commands that serve no purpose but to test obedience. As such, I'm throwing this one out the window for now. I'd rather believe there's a reason - the one outlined in the paragraph above.

So in summary, we get this:

1) Is it a person’s own fault he goes to hell?
Yes, because we've been offered a free ticket out if we just choose to follow God. For now, we assume that this choice can be made either before death, or after when all is made clear.

2) Is it wrong for a Christian to not witness to someone?
"Wrong" might be the wrong word. Lack of desire or dedication to witnessing at least a little might be indicative of a person that claims to follow God, but doesn't seem to really mean it.