There are two outcomes. Heaven and Hell. And you WILL be judged at a single time in your life by someone who has ALL the information about every action and thought you ever made., so you can't cheat. The rules of the game are unclear. There is a book which supposedly tells you the rules in a series of historical encounters and stories, but thousands of people have interpreted this subtly differently, and there is absolutely no information in the book on what constitutes a "cut off" score.
No gray area. No rating scale of 1-10. No mock exam. No do overs. Most HR departments would be shocked.
Rule #1 - you must believe in the big guy. That is a prerequisite to get the best ending. Not doing that is as good as pushing the button straight to for the basement.
But even if I stick to Rule #1, what can push me over the edge to the abyss, the long elevator down to the red guy with horns?
What amazes me is the utter absurdity of how unfair this black and white judgement of an entire life lived is to determine how you spend the rest of eternity (ie. a very, very, very long time to even make Graham's number blush), supposedly fully aware with your own mind and consciousness fully in tact.
Of course this human orchestrated construct is an attempt at societal control and power centralisation. Which is why over time different flavours have tweaked the rules
differently to get "better" outcomes. Not enough conformity? Increase the perceived severity of the punishment. Not enough ongoing motivation for criminals? Introduce "out" clauses so everyone can continue to have something to play for. Not part of the club yet? Anyone can join any time and still get to heaven - so what do you have to lose?
All of this is so transparently human, it's laughable.
The other dimension to this is how unfair exposure (and not just at the present time) to Christianity (or lack of) to humanity overall has been to comply with Rule #1 in the first place - remember not believing in Jesus Christ means immediate trap door down the forever garbage chute!
Hell must be absolutely busting since the Christian God is a complete prick when it comes to equal opportunity in both time as well as geography.
Not even talking about the ratio of true believing (not on paper) Christians who play by the rules today, since humans were a thing there would now be many many multitudes more people in Hell than in Heaven who have had 0% chance of success purely through circumstances outside their control. Fair? Can anyone say "Asshole"?
For me, if you examine this logically, you would need to get a very tight tin-hat head squeeze to make sense of this in any shape or form. I am interested in hearing from theists on how they rationalise this all. And don't say "it isn't up to us to understand God's will" - that is not answering the question.
No gray area. No rating scale of 1-10. No mock exam. No do overs. Most HR departments would be shocked.
Rule #1 - you must believe in the big guy. That is a prerequisite to get the best ending. Not doing that is as good as pushing the button straight to for the basement.
But even if I stick to Rule #1, what can push me over the edge to the abyss, the long elevator down to the red guy with horns?
- Is it 1000 X little rules broken?
- Is it 1 big rule broken when you have been mostly good all your life?
- Does the timing matter - What if I am good most of my life and then screw up once at the end - is that better than screwing up big when you are young and then atoning for 60 years doing nothing but good?
- Some people believe, it only matters what you think at the very end (even trumping Rule #1 above as long as you make the right decision) - at the moment your candle gets snuffed, as long as you have access to someone in a black robe with a white neck-square who has done more study of the rules than you?
- Those same people also believe that you can instantly cancel out anything bad you have done effectively "scott free" by coming to talk to one of the white neck-square dudes at your leisure, as long as you are honest, and then droningly repeat a few phrases - even if what you have done is really, really bad, like say, murder (of course the service conveniently guarantees complete confidentiality, otherwise nobody would use it).
- Can I teeter on the edge and just one single unkind word pushes me over the edge?
- Is there a balance sheet, and can I cross from win to lose and back again multiple times during my lifetime, but have no way of knowing?
What amazes me is the utter absurdity of how unfair this black and white judgement of an entire life lived is to determine how you spend the rest of eternity (ie. a very, very, very long time to even make Graham's number blush), supposedly fully aware with your own mind and consciousness fully in tact.
Of course this human orchestrated construct is an attempt at societal control and power centralisation. Which is why over time different flavours have tweaked the rules
differently to get "better" outcomes. Not enough conformity? Increase the perceived severity of the punishment. Not enough ongoing motivation for criminals? Introduce "out" clauses so everyone can continue to have something to play for. Not part of the club yet? Anyone can join any time and still get to heaven - so what do you have to lose?
All of this is so transparently human, it's laughable.
The other dimension to this is how unfair exposure (and not just at the present time) to Christianity (or lack of) to humanity overall has been to comply with Rule #1 in the first place - remember not believing in Jesus Christ means immediate trap door down the forever garbage chute!
Hell must be absolutely busting since the Christian God is a complete prick when it comes to equal opportunity in both time as well as geography.
- He waited with putting his only only son on earth until approx. 2 million years after the first truly self aware humans appeared. So every human before that has gone to hell
- His son only visited one region on earth which was arguably populous for the time, but certainly did not give his message any sort of widespread global exposure for a very long time - so anyone not in the middle east at the time - straight to hell.
- He chose a time before humans had widespread communication networks / technology, so the message could not spread effectively - yup, most of the population of the world before modern tech - straight to hell.
- He chose a time before the message could be indelibly and accurately recorded in its original form without being interpreted and re-interpreted many times, conveniently without giving the opportunity to in any way verify or correctly interpret the original authors' writingsl
- He also had his son contribute to another mainstream religion (Islam) as its penultimate prophet, this resulting in a completely separate, divergent book of rules for how to win the game - therefore sowing much confusion, many deadly wars to decide which book is right, and to this day a significant split in votes between team Bible vs team Quran - all of team B unfortunately - yup, you guessed it.
- You are a child,
- You were born (by God's will, no less) to parents who don't follow Christianity and therefore you are never exposed to it but possibly another religion instead through no fault of your own,
- You are born with special needs or mental disability which makes you unable to access / understand the word of God - yup. Straight to hell with you.
- You broke Rule #1, are an atheist by choice but spend your entire life being an a kind and moral person, employer, father, husband, helping people and being a law abiding citizen - apparently because of Rule #1, all your actions mean nothing, and someone who tipped to Rule #1 but led a far less amicable life than you wins. Fair?
Not even talking about the ratio of true believing (not on paper) Christians who play by the rules today, since humans were a thing there would now be many many multitudes more people in Hell than in Heaven who have had 0% chance of success purely through circumstances outside their control. Fair? Can anyone say "Asshole"?
For me, if you examine this logically, you would need to get a very tight tin-hat head squeeze to make sense of this in any shape or form. I am interested in hearing from theists on how they rationalise this all. And don't say "it isn't up to us to understand God's will" - that is not answering the question.
