On Non-belief

[FallentoReason]

Right, so what are these "qualifiers and conditions"?

Living a life as prescribed in the bible.

Call me crazy, but the Bible obviously supports the notion that you need to believe in x in order to be saved.

[fr0d0]

Or put another way... that you need to live a certain way.

[FallentoReason]

Or put another way... that you need to live a certain way.

Beliefs give rise to acting a certain way, so yes, I agree with you then. Therefore, according to the OP, God does not exist on these grounds.

[fr0d0]

Haha

Sigh

[Neo-Scholastic]

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.

[John V]

This isn't an original argument by me, but rather an argument from a Youtuber whose video can be found in this thread: http://atheistforums.org/thread-18268.html

Thanks for sharing that with us median. I've watched more of his videos and I can't believe he does daytime TV instead of travel the world and debate with theists. Absolutely brilliant.

Anyways. He begins by explaining an observation of our universe: here we all are, debating about whether the Christian god exists or not which apparently is too shy to show himself. It seems rather strange that his existence isn't just an everyday fact but rather an "abstract truth" that isn't all that evident, especially when there's so many religions claiming that they're the ones worshipping the true god(s). This, he says, is the last thing we should expect from Bible god. The argument is as follows:

1) If God exists, he desires for us to know x is true, where x is the set of propositions we need to believe in so that we can be saved.
2) If God exists, he has the power to make us know x is true.
3) If God exists, and given (1) & (2), we should know x is true.
4) We do not know x is true.
C) Given (3) & (4), God does not exist.

He goes on to explain that free will doesn't come into this argument as an objection, because God giving us the knowledge that x is true wouldn't negate our free will. The Bible itself gives us plenty of instances where an agent knew God exists, but yet they chose to rebel. There were even agents in the direct presence of God, yet they chose to rebel e.g. Lucifer. So clearly, God making sure we knew x is true shouldn't be a problem at all, but yet we are plagued with people not knowing x is true.

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.

---

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.

[catfish]

Premise 1 is a strawman and/or presuppositional fallacy.
"1) If God exists, he desires for us to know x is true, where x is the set of propositions we need to believe in so that we can be saved."

You claim knowledge of God's desires.
You claim the need for salvation.
You claim a set of "required" propositions.

[ebg]

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

[catfish]

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.

No, no, no and NO! YHWH is salvation, it's "Jesus's" friggen name.
.

[pocaracas]

What are you people going on about?!

if belief in X is necessary for salvation, then knowledge of X would actually prevent salvation.

Why would any god require lowly humans to believe it exists in order to provide them with any post-life gratitude?
This X sounds a lot like an unsubstantiated man-made claim that has been believed by a lot of people and gets passed on to other people by the people who believe.

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

what?!
I have only one requirement of this god thing: show itself (to me and everyone else on the planet) like it allegedly did in the text. As long as it doesn't, the text and related tales are considered fiction, just like many many texts we have available nowadays.

As long as belief is a requirement, it sounds like man-made story and all we're being asked is to believe the accounts of other people... and that is something I'll never do, when related to any god thing.