My reasoning in rejecting eternal torture/hell...

[radorth]

Civility in the west is in spite of that book, not because of it.

This is a gratuitous assertion, not supported by facts. I will agree it's in spite of the hypocritical Christians, but because of those who did salt the earth-- the early Quaker and Methodist abolitionists and all those to follow, the first builders of hospitals and asylums, the first to march for civil rights, all the men and women who demanded religious freedom under intense persecution, all of which led to your freedom , a freedom you use to completely distort history as if unbelievers ever did much more than invent some medical cures and a hydrogen bomb. And when they did do something big, like Communism, or the French Revolution it was a bloody disaster that made the Inquisitions look surprisingly civil.

At the same time Voltaire was saying slavery was necessary to an economy, Wesley was calling it the scourge of the earth. Franklin marveled at "the change soon made in our citizens" after Whitefield preached. Locke was a fundy Christian by your standards. Hooker was the first to accept unbelievers and other denominations in the town he oversaw as the price of religious freedom. The Salem witch trials you make so much of were stopped by a Christian fundy lawyer. Maybe he read what Jesus told us to do about heretics. (Nothing)

Now, tell me what the unbelievers did before Christians did. I'm all ears.

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I've noticed that a certain subset of believer like to make claims about logical arguments more often then they attempt to present them - and they seem to be the holy grail of christendom at the moment....but unfortunately, logic is only as good as what you plug into it...so, no, it wouldn't be enough -in and of itself- and it's not a matter of popularity.

I gave you Durant's rationale for believing the gospels, and he was hardly a Christian. What is your reponse to him then?