I have a question for Atheists, say Christianity is wrong and I end up in a?
brown box rotting or the rest of my life, big deal. Say we are right though, what is going to happen to you?
No, living a good life does not mean you will go to Heaven. You have to believe in Jesus.
If I were to tell you to believe in MY religion, because you'll suffer eternally without it...would you convert or would you question? Well, an atheist chose to question...and they came up with different answers than were fed to you.
Being an atheist is not refusing that there is a god, just simply that no religion has explained god in how we believe. If we don't believe in your God and still live a good and honest life, won't we still go to 'heaven'?
Acording to the bible...... they end up rotting in a big box.... not much of a difference there.
Personaly I don't pay much head to the bobble... to mucked up by mankind.... I got my own be lives that god is a lot nicer than you think he is...
I couldn't punish anyone eternally or dis troy there soul for much of anything... let alone not listing to what I got to say but otherwise being a total saint......... How can god be less loving and forgiving than a ****ed up person like me can be?
I think a much more eloquent way to put it would be:
?I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is.? -Albert Camus
Just live your life, let them live theirs. Love and respect everyone and hope for the same in return, that is all you can do. Scaring people into believing in God isn't going to be effective.
atheists don't say god is wrong,we just dint buy into a religious explanation,personally i believe ,you live ,you die,an that's it!!!its what you do with your life that counts!
Hehe crazy cat I like your answer. But seriously, if all it takes to get to heaven is believing in Jesus, if you can be a devil who just believes in Jesus and still get in, I'd rather be in hell.
"Hedging your bets" is no sane reason to adhere to any particular religion... Tell your pastor or preacher or priest or rabbi or whatever that you just come to his church 'to be on the safe side', you know in case all this heaven and hell stuff turns out to be true, and please get a photo of the look on his/her face and post it on the net, because I would like to see that.
This is a variant on Pascal's Wager. The rational choice (I think) is to commit our lives to Christ.
I used to be an atheist. Over a period of time however, I grew convinced of the existence of the Christian God, and ultimately committed my life to Christ.
For a draft-version of my journey from atheism to Christ, see http://www.godsci.org/gs/chri/testimony/seek.html
Some dude - God judges us on whether or not we accept Jesus Christ, not our actions. No matter how good you are it won't earn you heaven because your sins separate you from God. You need to accept Jesus to be forgiven. If you don't your actions will only dictate the level of your punishment in hell.
For the person who thinks an atheist is a person who doesn't believe in religion. Please consult a dictionary. An atheist is a person who does not believe that God even exists. And that's sad because He loves you so much. And just because you don't believe doesn't mean it's not true. Try not believing in gravity sometime and see how that works out for you.
Well, i guess i will find out when i die. But to be clear I don't think Christianity is wrong. I just believe differently, and so do many other people who worship different beliefs.
Atheist will answer to the same God you do, either none, or the one. If none, so be it. If the One, then he would not turn a blind eye to those that have turned a blind eye to him. Either way, a good life is just that. And so it will be judged.
My body will be put in a brown box to rot away and my spirit will return to God. Don't believe me? Ecclesiastes 12:7 Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.
Isn't there a difference between an atheist and somebody who believes in some god but not a specific one? I though that atheism was about there being not god. Ever. Anywhere. Big bang theory and man evolving from apes and stuff like that. Correct me if I'm wrong.
There a quote that I'll paraphrase cause I don't have it in front of me. Life isn't supposed to be about alienation but about community and connections with the people in you circle on influence.
Your questions is a version of Pascal's Wager which tries to rationally weigh the decision to believe or not believe based on the infinite costs of being wrong in the case of Christianity being true and you choose atheism and the finite costs of being wrong in the case of choosing Christianity being true and atheism being correct.
Mathematically elegant, but logically flawed. The problem here is that it is not a two-by-two decision matrix. There are far more choices than Christianity and atheism and in fact there are an infinite number of choices with an infinite number of possible mutually exclusive infinite costs of being wrong (and conversely infinite rewards fro being right). For example say you choose Christianity because you fear going to hell and the cost of being wrong in atheism, but it turns out that in reality the Universe is ruled by a jealous but shy God who hasn't told anyone of his existence but still due to his jealousy sends all believers in different gods to hell. In this possible scenario, the atheist actually avoids infinite costs while the Christian roasts for eternity. Not a good decision making tool then...
The more fundamental reason that Pascal's Wager is flawed is because it assumes something that is simply strange - it assumes you can choose your beliefs consciously. Our experiences and thoughts lead us to beliefs, but we cannot simply choose what we are going to believe and not believe. For example: try to convince yourself that the monitor in front of you doesn't exist - can you fool yourself into believing this?
Finally, Pascal's Wager is theologically suspect as another poster mentioned - it is based on belief by fear not faith.
if you're wrong then you will have spent your 80 years living some delusion wherein you hesitated to do the things you wanted out of some unfounded fear that maybe some mythical being (for which you have no other reason to believe exists than what those around you instilled in you since birth) will disapprove of your actions.
if I'm wrong then I'll have to answer to god, or Allah, or jaw eh, or Shiva, or Zeus or some magical 100 foot bunny. and if this being says that the only reason i don't get to partake in eternal happiness is because i chose not to follow him/her/it, then yeah i will have rolled the dice and lost.
come to think of it, how sure are you that you'll get into heaven? the magic bunny doesn't take kindly to heretics.
well...I am agnostic...and I figure when I die that is the end of it. I have never thought of what will happen to me after I am gone...where my soul will go. I have never said that he does not exist. I know that there must be something out there. But I will not commit myself to any single belief. And I will not spend my life praying to protect my ever lasting soul from the fiery pits of hell. But if there is a God...isn't he all about forgiveness anyway...you saying he will send me to hell? If he will because I did not pray...then I do not want to know a God like that.
I'm not an Atheist, but I'd say one advantage to the "brown box" point of view is that you want to make THIS life count. Not just living well, but working to make THIS world a better place, rather than waiting for the next world where everything will get sorted out.
Just one idea. You actually make an interesting point, though.
On the other hand, what if, say, Hindus are right and Christianity is wrong? Or what if, Christians, Jews, Moslems, Hindus, and Buddhists have all got it wrong, and when they get to Heaven Tom Cruise is there, going, "Wrong answer, but thanks for playing! (*flush*)?"
I'm just saying, there's a lot of good things going for Christianity (and with other religions), and if that's the path you want to follow, good for you; but I wish more Christians would have an open mind and admit to at least the *possibility* that it's not the ONLY way to look at the world.
P.S. as_myself: You're corrected. Atheism is a religion, in which the followers devoutly believe that there is no God, and won't take yes for an answer, as it were. "Big bang theory and man evolving from apes and stuff like that" is science, which just tries to figure out the world as it is, and doesn't try to make any judgment call one way or the other as to the existence of God. A lot of people get that wrong, because there are so many others, Christian and Atheist, who have an Axe to grind and use evolution, for instance, to further their cause (Atheists saying that evolution is right and therefore God doesn't exist, and Christians saying that evolution is wrong and therefore God *does* exist). Darwin himself was a Christian, and though he lost faith in the literal truth of the Old Testament, he still believed in God and Jesus, and considered himself a Christian.
What so Ur a christian Cox Ur scared? That doesn't sound right aren't u meant to be a Christian Cox u believe in God. I'm not becoming Christian out of fear. That's like marrying an old bloke so u can get Ur hands on his money. U shouldn't go around trying to scare people into Christianity. That is the wrong way to go about it. Religion shouldn't be like that. People should wanna be a Christian Cox they believe in God.
You won't be rotting in a brown box for the rest of your life, you will be dead...life over!...game over! death comes to all living things.
I have made honest decisions based on the available information and evidence and I'm comfortable with my choices, unless something extraordinarily compelling turns up I shan't be changing my mind...life is good and this is the only one we get!
It's awesome to be alive after all the things that could have knocked out our ancestor over the millenniums...they managed to survive long enough to pass on their genetic material so you and I can live now, Nature is amazing, don't you find life incredible...why do you feel the need for more than this shot at life...are you really so greedy?
Be careful you don't miss out on this life by concentrating too much on a fictional afterlife that isn't going to happen.
Okay, I've accepted that I will have to continually re post some of my answers. Here goes:
This is an old one. A Christian has nothing to lose if he is wrong, and the kingdom of heaven to gain if he is right. The atheist has nothing to gain if he is right, and eternity in hell if he is wrong. Why not be a Christian, then?
As an atheist, I do have something to lose by becoming a Christian, myself. I would have to unlearn all the knowledge I've gathered thus far encouraging me to look at things critically and require extraordinary claims to provide extraordinary proof. I would have to accept that "there are some things that man just cannot understand." But worst of all, I would have to embrace the intolerance and hatred that have come to define modern day faith.
If I walked out of that tunnel of revelation as a Christian, I would no longer be myself, I would be seeing the world with another person's eyes, and accepting "evidence" for things that cannot (right now) be pr oven or disprove. Simply put, "I" would no longer be "me."
So, your argument that an atheist has nothing to lose by accepting faith is incorrect. We would certainly lose ourselves, and likely lose our prospective on the empathetic nature of right and wrong, choosing to simply take some book's word for why things as they are.
That might not even be so bad, but we would also have to buy into (if only a little bit) the divisive system perpetuated by faith that leads to the majority of war and the lion's share of the world's suffering.
I have a question for Atheists, say Christianity is wrong and I end up in a?
