Questions for theists.

[tackattack]

@@5thHorseman
Sorry must have missed that somewhere thought I did. Here you go.

1) as an atheist, what will happen when I die because I reject faith and superstition, through lack of evidence?

There are 2 basic (majority holding) schools of thought on what happens when you die. Your soul rests until the day of judgment, upon which day your soul will get resurrected and you will be judged for you acceptance of rejection of Christ. The other is that “good” souls go to heaven to wait and “bad” souls go to either a Jewish concept of Sheol or Catholic concept of purgatory to atone for your life before judgment. In the latter idea you would end up in heaven. As that is a more Universalist approach, I don’t subscribe to personally, I am of the former school. Within that schools there are 2 more circles of thought, one is that you have just one life to accept God. The other is that his forgiveness extends even to the day of judgment. Since the latter is also more Universalist in nature I am also of the former of those schools of theological thought.

2) what will happen to my children as they haven't been christened, baptised or genitally mutilated?
I’m not aware that salvation is dependent on any of those 3 things in the majority of opinion on Christianity.

3) my mum is a dead atheist who was a wonderful moral person, kind and accepting of others beliefs, a socialist and altruist who spent her life helping those with mental difficulties. What would happen to her?
See 1

4) because atheists are not gullible enough to believe things without proof and we cannot force ourselves to believe,(I have tried) would god be nice to us because of this?
See the latter part of 1

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Would the creator of a sentient explosive device designed to detonate in the middle of an urban area not be responsible for the effects of the detonation?
(want me to draw the comparisons between ourselves and "sentient explosive devices", lol?)

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You still missing the point that we are not a self-destructive design so your analogy is flawed. He may have put the people, C4, timer, street and houses there, but it takes someone choosing to put those things together of their will to make your scenario work.

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Apparently I had to dump my cache to see the posts, sorry for the delay.

1) It doesn't make him accountable for the decisions, period. That's assinine and in that world, you're righ,t all Christians would just blame everything on God and have no personal accountability. Perhaps you meant the consequences, which I'll conceed makes sense, while not entirely at least partially culpable. Perhaps the sum of the consequences will balance out?

2) In that example, my bosses intent is irrelevant. God may have presented him the opportunity to reward me with such timing as to concide with the answering of my prayer. God could have also answered by winning the lottery, or a check from the govt. or a donation from a friend or church. It's the frequenc of prayers being answered and the timing of the answers along with the uniqueness of the causal chain for the event that makes the prayer an answer rather than a circumstance. This is off topic though. God didn't force him to give me a bonus, he presented the opportunity and Mike took it at that time and place for his own reasons. You implied earlier that my free will was affected by the prayer was being answered. I've shown where neither of our free wills were violated, but certain opportunities were encouraged.

3) I'll go there and check it out immediately as I seem to have lots of time available tonight. I tried but the page is unavailable.

1. Perhaps the sum of the consequences will balance out? Oh dear, tack. Oh dear, oh dear. You're walking a tightrope. If you can look someone who has suffered a severe tragedy or injustice in the eye and say 'It'll all work out in the end, God has a plan', then you're going to plummet in my estimations. Could you honestly feel you were being anything other than morally bankrupt if you were to say to or about a rape victim 'Sure, things were bad for her, but it will balance out'? What could possibly happen to balance that out? It's a really vile notion to suggest that God is playing good cop, bad cop with people.

2. More gymnastics. The fact that you credit your boss recognising your ability to God is fairly insulting to your boss. I didn't imply that it interfered with YOUR free will, but that of your boss. Like I said, you claimed that the event of getting a bonus was a response to a prayer. In which case if you had not prayed, it would not have happened. Yes or no? If yes, then your boss had his free will interfered with, because had you not prayed he would not have given you the bonus. If no, then your prayer was useless and had no effect because it was coming anyway.

Mike gave you the bonus at that time because that was when he got cleared to approve it having made the request months ago. So it wasn't anything to do with his own reasons. What else was he going to do having got the approval? Sit on it for a few weeks and wait?

3. Apologies, the link is http://atheistforums.org/thread-3113-pos...#pid183442

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1. Your opinion of me really matters little and detracts from the conversation. Unless you question my motives, integrity orknowledge in the subject that is. You’d actually be surprised what could be done to balance that out, even in one person’s lifespan. We actually have a prison ministry, ties to an outreach ministry and ties with an addiction/abuse ministry. I’ve spoken to lots o f rape victims, addicts, homeless who have turned their pain into a testimony for God and helped others that suffer to get through their pain. They’ve even been to our Church to speak. They’ve also backed several philanthropic events. If they can see that their personal pain is more than balanced out by all the good they could do sharing that pain, who am I to question, I’ve never been through anything that traumatic. I only said perhaps because that’s not something I could speak from experience on.
2. You’ll excuse me if I’m not that limber. If I had not prayed I see no expectation that the bonus would have been presented when it did, because it probably wouldn’t have been started. Because of that you claim that my boss’ free will was interfered with, so let’s examine that. In the almost 5 years I’ve been here that was the one and only bonus, anyone has gotten, and that remain true today, so I have no reason to expect a bonus. It’s not for lack of justification that they’re not given; simply that it’s his prevue when and for whom to submit it. It was his decision to break the norm to attempt it and his decision not to tell me anything about it. When it got approved was not in his decision, nor is there a standard time frame to expect to hear back from corporate. Where exactly in there was his ability to choose interfered with?
3. No prob. I’ll go there as soon as I’ve finished previewing this post.