Saying this to an religious fanatic

[Rahul]

What kind of an response can I hear in return?


I'm asking this because I want to see if there are any good theist answers.

The answer I would have given way back when I still believed would be that god doesn't send anyone to hell. They send themselves from being sinful.

God gave his only begotten son to save you from that fate. Like throwing a life preserver to a drowning person. Just grab it.

One time in church a preacher had a story. Went like this.

An area experienced extreme flooding. A house started to get swallowed by the water. As it rose, he had to move up to the second floor. A guy in a boat came by. Tried to get him to get in so he could take him to safety. The man replied that god would take care of him and wouldn't let him drown.

A little while later he had to crawl up into the attic. Another boat. Same story.

Eventually he was sitting on top of his roof as the water got still higher and a helicopter came by. The guy once again refused saying that god would take care of him.

The water kept rising, the guy got swept away, and died.

He shows up in heaven, walks up to god, and says, "Why did you let me drown?"

God replied, "I sent you two boats and a helicopter."

Yeah, it's that kind of reasoning. Of course they ignore the fact that god invented hell and the eternal suffering of the soul in that place.

The really odd contradictory thinking in Christianity is that god is all-powerful but he can't do certain things. He can't look on sin for one thing. And somehow hell is beyond his control. He can't help you about that fate unless you accept his "gift". It's all pretty bonkers when you get on the outside and consider it. But it made some kind of retarded sense when you're a believer.

And they'll do this to you, too. Get in a good 15 minute conversation with one of them and in that time period, without even so much as blinking, they will say god can do anything, but 3 minutes later god can't do this or that. If you point it out to them they get this confused look on their face at the obvious contradictory way of their thinking, and change the subject to something else.

Most of them shut down mentally. They don't pursue the thought. I pursued the thought that I was holding mutually contradictory means of thinking, of rationalizing religion. That's why I deconverted.

I read once that only roughly 1 in 12 people raised in religion deconvert. Not switch religions or denominations, but go from believer to non-believer.

I'm one of the lucky ones. My parents, who are awesome by the way, and my only sibling, who is a jerk by the way, weren't so lucky. They're still trapped.