On Non-belief

[FallentoReason]

What exactly to you want god to demonstrate his power (like turning water into wine) in order to prove to you {x} preposition is true. Being a God, should his word be good enough, such that the set {x}=|{x)| of absolute value? How then to you expect any God have an obligation, or burdon of proof if his word (for example the bibe) isnt an absolute? So, your logic is flawed in its initial setup. Just the absolute concept of God..gives the value of his word (x)=|(x)|. And the fuction of proof is the axion of truths.

ng he is agod

While propositions x in his Holy book y necessarily has to be absolute, this doesn't at all make it clear that God's requirements for eternal paradise (x) are the true propositions we need to believe. Here's an easy proof of that: how many competing religions do we have today? It isn't clear which one holds the (obviously absolute) true proposition x required by us to believe in order for salvation.

God has an obligation to do a little more than play peek-a-boo and then have the story of this game get written down by dubious sources which at times contradict each other and known history. Clearly, this wasn't enough to make propositions x be known to be true by every human walking the earth.

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Several problems with this argument. The first that pops out is: how are you using believe? If in the sense of faith as is usual in a religious context, and if belief in X is necessary for salvation, then knowledge of X would actually prevent salvation.

I use "believe" in the sense that if you asked someone (say, a Christian) "do you think x is true?" and they say "yes", then they believe x to be true.

How does knowledge of x prevent salvation?? I don't understand.

Second problem is: " God giving us the knowledge that x is true wouldn't negate our free will." I agree. However, with free will, we can reject that knowledge. You assume without justification that people necessarily accept truth. Atheists frequently charge theists with rejecting truth. The Bible makes the same claim regarding unbelievers in Romans 1.

God is supposed to be omniscient. He knows exactly how to do it so that we can't deny x to be true.

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It's all about love, man (makes hippy peace sign). Once again, my response typifies any church whose traditions focus on piety. Ultimate, every Christian believes that salvation depends on Jesus Christ. That is true across the board, including me. The issue is not who serves as the ultimate source of salvation; but rather, how He conveys that salvation and how we partake of it. It's a long subject so I'm just going to throw stuff out there in no particular order. Salvation is not a get-out-of-hell-free card. Salvation is the on-going process of conforming yourself to the image of Christ. Salvation comes to us when we love both the Lord and our neighbor (as ourselves) and when we avoid evils because they are sins.

Because the Lord is Divine Good and Divine Truth, loving the Lord means loving what is intrinsicly good and desiring truth for its own sake. This opens up the possibility of 'Christ Incognito'. The idea is that if you love what is good and desire what is true, then you are indeed loving the Lord regardless of what name you attach to those attributes.

Loving your neighbor is about just that. In the course of life you are to interact with others from a spirit of charity. Relationships based merely on mutual benefit, bereft of goodwill, do not exemplify true love. Thus the negative golden rule is not truly loving. It is just another way of saying tit-for-tat. Likewise, many people refrain from doing evil simply because of civil penalty, the loss of reputation, or even just to think highly of themselves. Their behavior is actually self-serving and self-aggrandizement. Your salvation hinges on driving evil motives from your heart. To do this you must recognize that some things are contrary to divine order and avoid them because of that.

Thanks for sharing that.

In terms of responding to keep the discussion going... I don't really know where to begin. There's presupposition on top of presupposition on this baby!