THE ELECT: DID GOD CHOOSE YOU TO SPEND ETERNTIY WITHOUT HIM?

peanutbean6111 writes:

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So I feel bad when I see people who are denying the name of Christ, because they may be one of the Elect, or the people who are going to hell because they do not have faith in Jesus.

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BZZZZT!Pascal's Wager. I'm so sorry, peanutbean6111. Johnny, tell him what parting gifts he has!Well, Bob, peanutbean6111 has won himself a lifetime of anguish in someone else's hell! Yes, that's right. After spending all of his life fighting against Satan and worshipping the Christian god, peanutbean6111 gets a reward of going straight to Hades for his hubris. He'll be sentenced to solve a series of puzzles for which the instructions can be read in many ways. Every attempt to glean more information will be met with "Since it would just be a waste of my time to tell you, I won't." Of course, every proposed solution will conflict with something in the contradictory instructions. This being for his continued insistence that those around him are unworthy of explanations.But, he won't get hungry because he'll have an afterlife-time supply of Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco Treat.You didn't really think that the god that truly exists is the Christian one, did you?------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Hey, if you don't like it, you don't have to read it.But if they're going to use the same argument over and over and over again, why must we devise a unique response every single time? Why not provide a standard response to a standard logical error?------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

zephyr responds to me:

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So did you write that or pick it up somewhere else?

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I wrote it myself. On the MSN group I frequent, we also get a lot of people invoking Pascal's Wager: Believe or go to hell. I got tired of having to come up with new ways of pointing it out, so I became a bit flippant, hoping that by making an outrageous comment, they might rethink their positions and come up with something other than an appeal to force.If they want to insist, I can go into all the bigger reasons why Pascal's Wager doesn't work (the assumptions Pascal made that believing costs nothing is untrue, for example...there is the time and money spent in worship that could be more productively spent elsewhere), but since the invokers of the Wager often don't realize they are making it, it rarely gets that far.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

crashfrog writes:

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Why can't a big donation to the poor or homeless pay for a peek at your dad's Playboys?

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Well, that's one of the big reasons for the Protestant/Catholic schism. If I recall correctly, one of the points made in the 95 Theses was the selling of indulgences in the Catholic Church. It angered Luther quite a bit that people were able to use money to gain religious absolution.Of course, even the Bible can't figure out if salvation is gained through faith or works. For example:Romans 3:28: A man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.And yet:Matthew 16:27: For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works.So, it's not surprising to find one general branch of Christianity insisting that you need merely to believe (Protestant) while another branch insists you have to do something (Catholic).I realize I am simplifying greatly, but those are the general trends.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!