Question about antitheists and salvation

Faith & Science Conversation
21
  • Unraveling the Mindset of Victimhood
    • By Scott Barry Kaufman on June 29, 2020
    • Quick: Rate how much you agree with each of these items on a scale of 1 (“not me at all”) to 5 (“this is so me”):
      • It is important to me that people who hurt me acknowledge that an injustice has been done to me.
      • I think I am much more conscientious and moral in my relations with other people compared to their treatment of me.
      • When people who are close to me feel hurt by my actions, it is very important for me to clarify that justice is on my side.
      • It is very hard for me to stop thinking about the injustice others have done to me.
    • If you scored high (4 or 5) on all of these items, you may have what psychologists have identified as a “tendency for interpersonal victimhood.”
    • … some people tend to see themselves as perpetual victims. Rahav Gabay and her colleagues define this [tendency for interpersonal victimhood) as “an ongoing feeling that the self is a victim, which is generalized across many kinds of relationships. As a result, victimization becomes a central part of the individual’s identity.” Those who have a perpetual victimhood mindset tend to have an “external locus of control”; they believe that one’s life is entirely under the control of forces outside one’s self, such as fate, luck or the mercy of other people.

Suppose the post-death world–if there is one–is “Heaven”. [This happens to be my personal opinion. After all, if “God is everywhere” and “God is eternal”, then it would seem to me that after death, there is only Heaven, and that possibly, for some, Hell actually would be Heaven, but that Heaven would seem like Hell, because they don’t want to be there.]

And suppose that in the post-death world, there are only three possibilities:

  • A rare few get to immediately begin experiencing “Heavenly Bliss”;
  • The vast majority–“the Bent Ones”–go to Purgatory, i.e. a sort of “Divine Repair Shop”;
  • And the remainder–“the Broken Ones”–go to a “Divine Recycle Bin”, where the broken bits and pieces get sorted and recycled–if there’s anything left to recycle–i.e. dismantled, and "annihilated’ or melted and turned into something decorative or useful or both, like a tree, a flower or a rock.

IMO, a Just and Merciful God would be the only One that I’d trust to decide my destiny in the world to come. I don’t know about anybody else, but I’d be grateful if there was some part of me that could be turned into a decoration or a door-stop, and even more grateful if some part of me gets sent to the Repair Shop.

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It does seem that some people impose culpability onto God as some sort of criteria for His existence. If God…
(Please note these are not my own questions or demands)
God must be tangible so that I can be sure He exists
God should heal this, or stop that
Why doesn’t God stop Putin (or Hitler, or any other tyrant)
Why must my son/daughter/wife/husband/mother/father die? Surely God…
If God does not do this then… or God did not do this so…

What right has anyone to make these sorts of demands on God? Is God God or is He some sort of slave to humanity?

Where do we draw the line? Death? Disability? Bad luck? stubbed toe? Financial disaster?Putin? Corona Virus?

At what point do we “let God off the hook”?

Does God have to do anything for Him to exist? Does it matter if the things credited to Him (or against Him) are or not true? Would he still exist? Would He still be God?

And why should God suddenly be contained in a book (or compilation of books)?

John 21
25 Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.

Yet some people would dare to insist that the Bible contains all of God? (and His wisdom and answers)

God either does or does not exist, there cannot be any criteria or proof necessary.

There are many reasons why God cannot reveal Himself tangibly and most of the demands here or elsewhere would make that happen. That is what faith is for.

For those who have faith no proof is needed, For those without faith no proof is enough.

Richard

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Really? So if someone hurts you after you treateed them like they were your brother than means you have interpersonal victimhood?Pshychology is not a medical field anyway.Pshyciatry is.
You are trying to discredit a lot of people here with that statement

So people who hurt you are always right?Get oput of here man.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:]

Go ahead and forgive those who hurt you because its your fault i guess as your pshychologists say above. Ohhh and dont forget to pray to your god for the pr3ecious freedom he gave ypu to do absolute nothing while others out there dying ,are hungry etc etc .Nice heavenly father you got there man.Proud of him. If he was here still in his incarnate form i would have thrown hands with him trust me

Sorry for this amswer but you really brought this to yourtself.Your comment was irritating beyond my control .

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Not that simple.Not everything in life is black and white.

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We don’t know. That’s up for God to decide, and I would say the same thing for the religious as well. It isn’t in my place to say.

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Really?

Why should God pander to any human criteria?

“My thoughts are not your thoughts” (Is 52)

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. (Hebrews 11)

Faith does not require any verification, physical or otherwise. That is the definition of faith. It is that simple.

Richard

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Indeed that is the most extreme black and white thinking I have ever heard. LOL

There is an enormous spectrum between irrationality and proof.

It can also be…

  1. logically incoherent because of logical inconsistencies
  2. unreasonable because it conflicts with the objective evidence
  3. unjust (intolerant) because it demands what it does not give
  4. unbelievable because it clashes with personal experience
  5. convincing because personal experience requires it
  6. only right because justice demands it
  7. only reasonable because the objective evidence demonstrates it.
  8. proven because logic demands it.

Few think the existence of God is in either of the last two categories. Most people think it to be in categories 4, 5, or 6. The question of this thread is whether the existence of God is in categories 1 or 3 depending on how you define God.

To be sure there are those like the Gnostics who believed in an evil demiurge creator, but most would define God as the ultimate good, for only then would they worship it. Others like Albert Camus and myself would defy a monster god no matter how hopeless such defiance may be. Besides, a religious person should be wary lest his religion has him worshipping the devil.

Everyone has the right to decide whether they will worship the god a religion is pushing or not.

A god made up to serve the interests of those running a religion will be their slave. Perhaps you should ask if you have enslaved “God” to your theology with a list of things you say he cannot do.

The existence of God has to be believable for people to believe He exists…

…OR… are you one of these magical faith types who think people only believe because God has cast a spell on them? That would certainly be an excuse for a religion to defy all the above standards of rationality.

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Really ?Why shouldnt he?He became MAN for a reason no?Why not pander to our thinking also?

Faith is a construct.No one in their right mind would believe something they cannot explain nor see. Its not in our evolution.As my friend @mitchellmckain said above

This world is cruel and theres nothing that can save or make this mess better ,so you have "faith"in something greater(im using you as describing religious people generally,this is not a personal attack).

If God exists hes cruel ,doesnt care or both,
If he doesnt well he dont pander to any human criteria

The world would have been a very much better place if we actually were to revernt to the earlier stages of our evolution .Complete anarchy .No feelings hurt no hate no love nothing.Pure survivalism

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These are all human. Why should any of it apply to God?

Surely God is amoral.

Any definition you have of Good and evil will be based on human values.

Not denied. But whether that is God or not is less definable.

I was not talking about any specific flavour of religion.

If the God is made up then it is not actually God.

God is not defined by religion. Religion is defined by humans

That is circular reasoning

The existence of God is not reliant on people believing in Him. It is logical to think that God would make Himself identifiable, but the precise nature of that is less easy to speculate.

As it happens, people find different reasons to believe in God, just as others find different reasons not to. That will be down to human individuality not the actual existence of God, or necesarily the ways He might imagine that He would be found.

No, that is a specific heresy that I do not conform to. That would involve manipulation by God which I am absolutely against.

I believe in Freewill above all things. That precludes any notions of manipulation by God or man.

Richard

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Lol you christians surely love your free will dont you?

Have you ever considered that God gave you “too much of it” to the point that you can destroy someones else?

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I can’t help it.

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Its overstated and overvalued here i feel like. Whenever theres an argument usually the counter argument from everyone religious here seems to be “freewill” and boom they are out. Dont really like it but ohh well…

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I shoulda put the chuckling smiley beside my last comment there. :smile:

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Glad we can still chuckle a few jokes here at least although on opposing sites.Its like a love-hate relationship here. Both we the non christians and you(the christians) will get mad sometimes at each other and some conversations get heated but in the end for some reason we dont hold grudges.Now thats a mirracle :rofl:

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Well mate, if it isn’t, it isn’t Love and nothing less than Love could be transcendent. Don’t worry about it. Why give any credibility to anything said or interpreted to have been said by anyone - including God incarnate - to the contrary? It’s just mere human dross. Think big mate. About humanity. Because if Jesus wasn’t God incarnate, then humanity is pretty awesome. We came up with Him.

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How can anybody apply anything to God. It is the ideas of God pushed by various people and religions that we must make a judgement about. So no, you cannot dodge the question of which of those categories do their idea of God fall into.

I will not give such a “God” the time of day.

Sure. So what? We should have alien values? No values? Is that what your religion does? Make people abandon their values and standards of good and evil. If so, I have no interest in your religion. I certainly do not think Christianity is anything like that.

How do we know you are not worshipping the devil when you discard all the standards by which God can be distinguished from the devil?

Incorrect. It is not reasoning or an argument for that to even be applicable. It is a simple fact by definition of the words. The challenge in this thread is whether the notion of God is believable. You can talk until you are blue in the face about all sorts of flying spaghetti monsters and there is no reason for anyone to pay any attention.

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Likewise I choose to embrace hard determinism though admittedly it is an acquired taste.

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38

,
@NickolaosPappas When your life is over, before Whom will you stand and learn if you have passed or failed?

and if there is no accountability, then what is the fuss?

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I think freedom was always there, he cannot and should not take freedom of choice from people, this would make the whole thing meaningless, why bother then with creating it all if people are just mere dolls to be played with. The argument can be made by limiting our freedom of action, we would want to do something, but we simply couldn’t, there is already plenty of limits put on us though, but no matter how many limits there are, many will choose evil, or just will act selfishly or ignorantly.
Only ways God could stop this is by completely bending our bodies to his will, making free will redundant as we couldn’t act on anything, which also won’t create relationship that he wanted to have with us.

Sadly, God cannot uphold the justice, which pains him as much as you when you see so much injustice and pain in this world, because every human rejected him in some manner, which is shown less or more symbolically by Genesis, so if he decided to act with justice, there would be no one left. He knows that, that’s why, for our sake he decided to go different path. We need to give him our freedom ourselves, we have to accept the fact, that we are flawed and we need his help to make us righteous, to make us truly fit in with this relationship. It seems impossible, how can he make humans righteous, sinless, virtuous, when we will always decide to do something selfishly, doesn’t matter if it’s from curiosity, ignorance or hostility.

But that’s where Matthew 19:25-26 comes in

25 When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?”

26 Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

In the end I think this is what Christianity is all about, we need just to understand one fact to be saved. We need to understand that there is something greater than us, that we, humans, cannot make paradise ourselves, we cannot reach perfection alone, no matter what values we will hold, or what sacrifice we will take, we will ultimately fail. Just understanding that maybe I am wrong, my actions, my beliefs, my thoughts are flawed and there is always someone greater than me, that could help me clear those fallacies and weaknesses. When you understand it, from the top to bottom, then you don’t even need Christianity, because as long as you understand that you are lost, God can help you reach something you cannot reach yourself, it doesn’t matter what beliefs you held, as long as you can trust in being greater than you, not trying to justify where you went wrong or thinking that you know better, that what he will do with you is for your best, there is no being he cannot repair.

The biggest enemy of that is thinking that God is stupid, malicious, ignorant, limited, unworthy of anything. Thinking that you alone, with reason, instincts and hard work can reach something great, that you don’t need God at all. This is believes that many anti-theists have, if one believes in it, then God cannot help you, if you think what God desires for you is nonsense, then he won’t force himself on you, there’s no point. I think if there is antitheist that knows that his thinking may be seriously flawed, that he will accept inferiority if he looked God in the eye and let God shape him into something better, then he can be saved. If one doesn’t repent there is no hope for him.

In the end though it’s nearly impossible to say who will go to heaven or not, we don’t know what one person truly thinks deeply in his heart, maybe he appears kind but in reality he feels superior to others despite being as flawed as every other person, maybe he appears ignorant and violent but quietly he recognizes his flaws but fails to better himself.

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What is the alternative?

The same argument applies to Freewill but in addition, if you do stop anything you remove all freedom of choice. Laws may define what is acceptable but the choice to follow or comply is still yours. Negating the possibility brings in all sorts of negative dynamics. Not only that, how do you negate the possibility of death? You end up having to dictate Icontrol( more and more until people have no will of their own and just wander around like automatons unable to choose where to go (in case it might lead to a death)

Freedom and freewill is at the heart of living. But, as I have said before:
if you want to be free to live; you have to be free to die.

Which makes any interference from God problematic. Stopping someone from trying to kill you is an infringement of their freedom to choose. But, keeping you alive may not be.

Which is why, when we ask for something God may decide that there is an alternative answer which may achieve the same result, or, at least retains the necessary status quo of the world as a whole.

The dynamics involved in Freewill are complex to say the least. It can even be argued that if you place a carrot (Heaven) and a stick (Hell) you are actually replacing Freewill with coercion.

Richard