Z(ombie)fan said:
a person with the name "Mad World" is defending religion.
WHAT MORE PROOF DO YOU NEED, PEOPLE!?
and yes, I payed attention to your defense. your "defense" is HORRIBLY flawed.
If you aren't satisfied with Mad World's answers, try me. What's your big deal in this issue again?
Danzaivar said:
So how is it not petty or sadistic?
I get that the reasoning may be beyond our comprehension or whatever, but in your eyes, does that not seem slightly petty or sadistic to you?
Like say if we take it to the human level: You get a letter in the post saying to paint a yellow smily face on your door in the next 3 days. You don't do it and then are kidnapped, plugged into a machine that ensures you will never die and tortured without reprieve. Billions of years pass, and all you know is that it's but a flicker compared to the amount of time you'll need to endure yet.
You could say that they was clearly warned to paint a face on the door. But that's kinda ignoring the elephant in the room here.
That is perhaps the most flawed analogy I've ever read. And I'm in debate, so that's saying something.
A better, but still flawed, analogy would be "Paint a yellow smiley face on your door within three days, or be tortured for the rest of eternity." Oh, and it's from the CIA. Would you take that more seriously?
This is, again, ignoring the bigger issue, and that is the fact the proverbial yellow smiley face(accepting Christ) only comes into the picture to help us. Have you actually read The Bible? Because I get the feeling you either didn't read it, or didn't read it to understand, only to criticize. The entire reason for everything we have to do, can be summed up in "our ancestors were morons." See, God gave out this handy little thing called free will. You know what people do when they have free will? They abuse it for everything it's worth. Let me pose to you a question: Say you have children in a house you built with your own hands, painstakingly over the years. Now, in this house you impose only one rule: Do not jump on the furniture. Next thing you know, you come home from work to find your loving children trampling all over your furniture, despite that one warning. What do you do? Just, let it go? Of course you don't. You punish them, and tell them don't do it again.
Now imagine that instead of jumping on the furniture, your children just doomed themselves and the rest of humanity, most of whom don't even exist yet, to an eternal struggle between right and wrong. They have created every liar, thief, murder, and rapist who will ever walk this Earth. What's worse, you knew, YOU KNEW, that this was going to happen, but you couldn't stop it. Because if you did, they wouldn't be your children anymore. They would just be servants. Nay, not servants, but slaves. In that one act of selfishness, you would become worse than all the evil their actions have created. However, you can warn them. You can tell them to fight against that evil. Against the pervasive force that now constantly tries to destroy them. You can give them a set of instructions, outlining what to avoid: Killing, coveting, stealing, lying, all these things they can know to avoid!
But they don't. They can't. The damage is too great, and too tempting. So you make the ultimate sacrifice, and give your own son, who is in essence a part of yourself, over to death. And as he lives life, he does no wrong. When he dies, as a blameless victim, he takes the place for all the rest of your children. For the injustice wrought against your son by death and Hell, you get to demand payment in the form of a pardon for all your other children. All they have to do, is accept.
That's how and why the Christian salvation system works. Now, let's take a deeper look at Hell:
Everyone assumes that's Hell's torments will be just like our torments on Earth, only worse. However, I would contest this. I prefer the theory put forth by, of all people, Neil Gaiman. The greatest torments of Hell are wrought by our own hands, upon the realization of everything we've done, and the fact that we have separated ourselves, for eternity, from God. That is the true terror of Hell, and nothing on Earth can never begin to compare to it.
Hope that clears things up.
im also being forced to go camping on the 26th!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - :'("
