It was the most infuriating shit ever, even when I asked him why would God allow Satan to create something so perfect as to deceive billions of people with evidence baked into the deception that cannot be contravened by any method known to man, his response was it’s just to test your faith.
To which I countered, if God sent me to hell for believing that dinosaurs existed, then he’s not a good God. And to which my dad replied, that’s blasphemy.
And don’t get me wrong, I am a Christian. I believe in Jesus, I believe in God. I actually believe in all of the major religions, but I lean towards Christianity personally, but there has to be some rationality, some understanding that human beings can rely on because God gave us the brains to think rationally and to consider what’s directly in front of us for what it is.
If you have to willfully be stupid and believe lies in order to go to heaven, then why would God make smart people that want to see the truth?
You’re pretty much describing the epicurian paradox. God, or at least the Christian (and similar) god, is presented as being three things in an absolute sense:
1 - All powerful. His will is our reality, period.
2 - All good. He doesn’t have even the tiniest shred of evil.
3 - All knowing. He is completely aware of everything that happens in this reality.
But we can plainly observe evil every time we so much as turn the news on, so how can that exist in the reality made by a god who demonstrates the three traits above?
Every single attempt at answering that paradox just shuffles two of the three pillars. (feel free to take a crack at it if you think you’ve got a solution, but this is very much a ‘gotcha!’ kind of situation that you might get really frustrated with, so, fair warning).
I was raised Christian, but this is a big part of what killed it for me. It boils down to accepting that if there is a god, the Christian presentation of it is mistaken at best, or dishonest at worst, and if we can’t be accurate or honest about even our own diety, then we have no basis for the rest of our religion.
I don’t think I believe in the elect the way I’ve seen it presented because too many people present the idea of the elect like no matter what they do, they could fire bomb orphans and they’re still going to heaven, they’re the elect.
There’s no way it works that way.
If you were one of the elect the only fire you would be bringing to an orphan is the fire of a home-cooked meal or a fireplace for Christmas or something because you have invited them into your home so that they won’t be an orphan anymore.
If there is an elect, they’re gonna be like Mr. Rogers, or at least approaching Mr. Rogers.
Joe Bob Dingus, the local alcoholic racist that goes to church four times a year, is not going to be the elect.
And don’t get me wrong, I am a Christian. I believe in Jesus, I believe in God. I actually believe in all of the major religions, but I lean towards Christianity personally
John 14:6
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
How can you believe in all of the major religions when they all contradict? For example, in the Bible Jesus claimed to be God, got crucified, rose again, etc. While Mohammed of Islam denied Jesus’ crucifixion and said Jesus never claimed to be God. In Christianity, Jesus claims exclusivity over Salvation and that He Himself is “The Truth”, leaving no room for other religions (a lot of which tried to leave room for Jesus, interestingly enough).
There’s a line in the Bible that reads something along the lines of “Those that do not have the Word will be judged by the precepts of their own heart”, of course, immediately following it by saying something like the people that do have the word will be judged more leniently, but the idea stands.
Also, the people that love to quote the, I am the way the truth and the light, no man comes unto the Father except through me line tend to happily overlook that the greater part of the world was never contacted by any form of emissary from the Christian religion for like 1400 years minimum after Christ died.
I refuse to believe that God would allow 1400 years of the majority of humanity to be automatically assigned to hell by default, simply because they didn’t follow a rule they had no possibility whatsoever of following.
And I know there are hand-wavy exemptions for all of those things, but it’s hand-wavy, it’s not written down, therefore it doesn’t count.
Plus, I find it highly likely that at the Tower of Babel, not only where the languages changed, but probably the religions also.
Otherwise, us humans being the smart creatures we are probably would have realized that we worship God in exactly the same way we just say different words for it.
If you confuse the religion, the theology, by changing some of the unimportant practices while keeping the core tenets valid, then you can have multiple religions and multiple divisions in humanity that keep them from coming back together and reforming the Tower of Babel.
I realize that this is a heretical thought, but it allows me to learn about and understand the ideologies of multiple religions while still holding true to the one God that I believe in.
And also, it’s not that much of a stretch. I mean Islam is just a branch of Judaism. Christianity is just a branch of Judaism. They are all three Abrahamic religions. So any person that is a Muslim, or a Jew, or a Christian is still beholden to the same core concept.
I don’t know about Mormons, but the majority of the splinter churches for Christianity can just be grouped together, and then, as far as religions that are outside of that, like Shinto and Buddhism and Zoroastrianism, you just learn about them and learn where the commonalities are and how they share different concepts of religion and life and death and good, and evil, and spirituality, and what the reason for life is from all of those myriad viewpoints.
I mean, for instance, I’m Lakota, and there is an entire Lakota religion that is based off of living a good life and walking the Red Road. It has spiritual traditions like the sacred pipe and the hoop dance and the legends of buffalo corn woman and the white buffalo woman who is a harbinger of the apocalypse.
I feel like it would be disrespectful to my birth to abandon the learning and belief of my ancestors just because some people showed up 6,000 years after they came up with their own religious traditions and told them they were wrong.
So yeah, my ideology may be heretical to hardcore Christians, but it is not based out of trying to get a one-up on Christianity, or trying to find a way around the rules and laws of Christianity. I’m not practicing the other religions. I’m not worshipping any other god at all than the Christian God.
But my mentality allows me to talk to Hindu and Muslim people and buddhists and accept their beliefs as true for them and as that what the Creator led them to believe for his own purposes without attempting to shame them or tear them down or terrify them into following what I believe is the religion I’ve been led into for the same general reason.
As an ex Christian pagan, I suspect you’ve come closer than many. There’s a saying that there are many paths up the mountain. I feel that heresy often just means thinking for yourself. I’m not saying to throw away theological rigor, the opposite actually, one should analyze one’s religion through the lens of thought and conscience. You’re doing well for yourself there, good job.
Yeah, and I mean, there’s even lines in the Bible about figuring things out for yourself, which fit with my general philosophy, and there’s also a caution that just because one thing is okay for one person, it doesn’t mean it’s automatically okay for everyone, and so my mentality has to be careful.
This means that just because I believe something is not a sin doesn’t mean that someone else does, and everyone’s judged for themselves.
I’m sure if there is an intermediary point between now and the end of time where the majority rest waiting for the final judgment, there are many people tormenting themselves with guilt for eating meat on a Friday.
Going into the weeds a bit I believe that at the very end of things, that eternal piece of ourselves will be examined, and if it’s found to be good enough, it gets a pass on to the next realm, and if it’s found to not be good enough, well, hopefully it gets tossed back for a second try.
But worst case, it just ceases to be, because there’s no way that the God that invented love would punish someone eternally for temporary things, unless somehow they figured out the exact truth of everything and then used that truth to destroy as many eternal things as possible on purpose, with knowledge aforethought, fully cognizant of the consequences of their actions.
Even in Revelations the fire of hell that everyone talks about is called the “Second Death”. It’s not eternal hellfire and burning while all the joyous beautiful people clothed in white with wings play forever in paradise.
They just poof. They’re gone.
They cease to be.
So my walk, from what I understand, is not about finding the single exact right way out of all of the ways that are presented in the entire universe to meet the one specific set of requirements that is just good enough to let me through.
Mine is to learn what is out there, and to do my best to experience, and to figure out what is right for my soul, and then present that to my Creator, and take the gamble on whether or not He agrees.
The main issue here is that you’re basing your theology on how you feel, not on God’s divinely inspired Word -
Romans 1:18-23
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
God reveals Himself to those who’ll truly believe.
Those that do not have the Word will be judged by the precepts of their own heart
And the precepts of everyone’s heart is sin- and the punishment for sin is death. It’s sin in general that condemns you to Hell, Jesus is there to save you from it.
On a personal note- I’ve had the same struggles and thoughts you have. I have grappled with knowing many I love won’t be saved. There are different theologies on hell- personally I believe it ranges from just separation from Heaven to actual torment depending on if those people were extremely evil or just nominally evil. Jesus speaks about different degrees of punishment, and illustrations of both darkness and fire are used. The way the Bible talks about other religions isn’t the same way you talk about them- Islam is barely a branch of Judaism or Christianity. Instead, it’s a faith based on a paedophile self-proclaimed prophet who was also a military leader and used his prophethood to marry nine women (against God’s law of only having one wife) one of which being a six year old child. Mormons follow a similar prophet. The Religious Jews that exist today are the ones who rejected Jesus’ message, like the ones in the old testament. Sure, both groups aren’t doomed per say as anytime they can be reached out to with the Gospel and many have been accepted. But Jesus did put a large emphasis on evangelism, His last command being
Matthew 28:19-20
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them inthe name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.
So Jesus actively wants us to evangelise- evangelism is in fact the loving thing. If someone is wrong about something so critical, it is in fact hateful to not alert them to their wrongdoing because it is leading them away from salvation. Do you really want to be ascending when Christ comes back into heaven, and seeing your Muslim, Hindu and Atheist friends left behind? Will you say to them “sorry, I didn’t want to be hateful and force my religion on you?”
God is not a vengeful rules lawyer who’s looking for any excuse he possibly can find to punish every single human being that doesn’t do everything exactly the way a book written 2,000 years ago says it should have been done.
I have been through all of your objections in my own personal walk, and I’m making the choices that feel the most divinely inspired to me.
The greatest rule is love, and against love there is no law. And if I choose to love my neighbor and accept them the way they are, and my faith says that it is okay for them to be who they are, God’s not going to punish them for being the person who he made them to be based off of their life experiences, then I’m going to stick with that regardless of what a book says.
Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.
My grandfather did (does?). There are a whole lot of people who believe the earth is only a few thousand years old. I have no further details cause you couldn’t pay me to broach the subject with him.
I was at a small festival one time with my very rural-living family. There were people there passing out pamphlets that claimed dinosaurs were still alive in Jesus’ time and that they existed alongside humans.
I nope’d away from them as fast as I could. Now I wish I’d stayed to listen and share the stupidity.
Specific theologies believe dinosaur bones were planted in the earth by satan to affront God.
Never met anyone in the flesh who actually believed this
My dad did.
It was the most infuriating shit ever, even when I asked him why would God allow Satan to create something so perfect as to deceive billions of people with evidence baked into the deception that cannot be contravened by any method known to man, his response was it’s just to test your faith.
To which I countered, if God sent me to hell for believing that dinosaurs existed, then he’s not a good God. And to which my dad replied, that’s blasphemy.
And don’t get me wrong, I am a Christian. I believe in Jesus, I believe in God. I actually believe in all of the major religions, but I lean towards Christianity personally, but there has to be some rationality, some understanding that human beings can rely on because God gave us the brains to think rationally and to consider what’s directly in front of us for what it is.
If you have to willfully be stupid and believe lies in order to go to heaven, then why would God make smart people that want to see the truth?
You’re pretty much describing the epicurian paradox. God, or at least the Christian (and similar) god, is presented as being three things in an absolute sense:
1 - All powerful. His will is our reality, period.
2 - All good. He doesn’t have even the tiniest shred of evil.
3 - All knowing. He is completely aware of everything that happens in this reality.
But we can plainly observe evil every time we so much as turn the news on, so how can that exist in the reality made by a god who demonstrates the three traits above?
Every single attempt at answering that paradox just shuffles two of the three pillars. (feel free to take a crack at it if you think you’ve got a solution, but this is very much a ‘gotcha!’ kind of situation that you might get really frustrated with, so, fair warning).
I was raised Christian, but this is a big part of what killed it for me. It boils down to accepting that if there is a god, the Christian presentation of it is mistaken at best, or dishonest at worst, and if we can’t be accurate or honest about even our own diety, then we have no basis for the rest of our religion.
Hence, the Elect. You don’t have to believe anything - if you’re the Elect, you’ll go to heaven. Everyone else gets eternal damnation.
I don’t think I believe in the elect the way I’ve seen it presented because too many people present the idea of the elect like no matter what they do, they could fire bomb orphans and they’re still going to heaven, they’re the elect.
There’s no way it works that way.
If you were one of the elect the only fire you would be bringing to an orphan is the fire of a home-cooked meal or a fireplace for Christmas or something because you have invited them into your home so that they won’t be an orphan anymore.
If there is an elect, they’re gonna be like Mr. Rogers, or at least approaching Mr. Rogers.
Joe Bob Dingus, the local alcoholic racist that goes to church four times a year, is not going to be the elect.
John 14:6
How can you believe in all of the major religions when they all contradict? For example, in the Bible Jesus claimed to be God, got crucified, rose again, etc. While Mohammed of Islam denied Jesus’ crucifixion and said Jesus never claimed to be God. In Christianity, Jesus claims exclusivity over Salvation and that He Himself is “The Truth”, leaving no room for other religions (a lot of which tried to leave room for Jesus, interestingly enough).
There’s a line in the Bible that reads something along the lines of “Those that do not have the Word will be judged by the precepts of their own heart”, of course, immediately following it by saying something like the people that do have the word will be judged more leniently, but the idea stands.
Also, the people that love to quote the, I am the way the truth and the light, no man comes unto the Father except through me line tend to happily overlook that the greater part of the world was never contacted by any form of emissary from the Christian religion for like 1400 years minimum after Christ died.
I refuse to believe that God would allow 1400 years of the majority of humanity to be automatically assigned to hell by default, simply because they didn’t follow a rule they had no possibility whatsoever of following.
And I know there are hand-wavy exemptions for all of those things, but it’s hand-wavy, it’s not written down, therefore it doesn’t count.
Plus, I find it highly likely that at the Tower of Babel, not only where the languages changed, but probably the religions also.
Otherwise, us humans being the smart creatures we are probably would have realized that we worship God in exactly the same way we just say different words for it.
If you confuse the religion, the theology, by changing some of the unimportant practices while keeping the core tenets valid, then you can have multiple religions and multiple divisions in humanity that keep them from coming back together and reforming the Tower of Babel.
I realize that this is a heretical thought, but it allows me to learn about and understand the ideologies of multiple religions while still holding true to the one God that I believe in.
And also, it’s not that much of a stretch. I mean Islam is just a branch of Judaism. Christianity is just a branch of Judaism. They are all three Abrahamic religions. So any person that is a Muslim, or a Jew, or a Christian is still beholden to the same core concept.
I don’t know about Mormons, but the majority of the splinter churches for Christianity can just be grouped together, and then, as far as religions that are outside of that, like Shinto and Buddhism and Zoroastrianism, you just learn about them and learn where the commonalities are and how they share different concepts of religion and life and death and good, and evil, and spirituality, and what the reason for life is from all of those myriad viewpoints.
I mean, for instance, I’m Lakota, and there is an entire Lakota religion that is based off of living a good life and walking the Red Road. It has spiritual traditions like the sacred pipe and the hoop dance and the legends of buffalo corn woman and the white buffalo woman who is a harbinger of the apocalypse.
I feel like it would be disrespectful to my birth to abandon the learning and belief of my ancestors just because some people showed up 6,000 years after they came up with their own religious traditions and told them they were wrong.
So yeah, my ideology may be heretical to hardcore Christians, but it is not based out of trying to get a one-up on Christianity, or trying to find a way around the rules and laws of Christianity. I’m not practicing the other religions. I’m not worshipping any other god at all than the Christian God.
But my mentality allows me to talk to Hindu and Muslim people and buddhists and accept their beliefs as true for them and as that what the Creator led them to believe for his own purposes without attempting to shame them or tear them down or terrify them into following what I believe is the religion I’ve been led into for the same general reason.
As an ex Christian pagan, I suspect you’ve come closer than many. There’s a saying that there are many paths up the mountain. I feel that heresy often just means thinking for yourself. I’m not saying to throw away theological rigor, the opposite actually, one should analyze one’s religion through the lens of thought and conscience. You’re doing well for yourself there, good job.
Yeah, and I mean, there’s even lines in the Bible about figuring things out for yourself, which fit with my general philosophy, and there’s also a caution that just because one thing is okay for one person, it doesn’t mean it’s automatically okay for everyone, and so my mentality has to be careful.
This means that just because I believe something is not a sin doesn’t mean that someone else does, and everyone’s judged for themselves.
I’m sure if there is an intermediary point between now and the end of time where the majority rest waiting for the final judgment, there are many people tormenting themselves with guilt for eating meat on a Friday.
Going into the weeds a bit I believe that at the very end of things, that eternal piece of ourselves will be examined, and if it’s found to be good enough, it gets a pass on to the next realm, and if it’s found to not be good enough, well, hopefully it gets tossed back for a second try.
But worst case, it just ceases to be, because there’s no way that the God that invented love would punish someone eternally for temporary things, unless somehow they figured out the exact truth of everything and then used that truth to destroy as many eternal things as possible on purpose, with knowledge aforethought, fully cognizant of the consequences of their actions.
Even in Revelations the fire of hell that everyone talks about is called the “Second Death”. It’s not eternal hellfire and burning while all the joyous beautiful people clothed in white with wings play forever in paradise.
They just poof. They’re gone.
They cease to be.
So my walk, from what I understand, is not about finding the single exact right way out of all of the ways that are presented in the entire universe to meet the one specific set of requirements that is just good enough to let me through.
Mine is to learn what is out there, and to do my best to experience, and to figure out what is right for my soul, and then present that to my Creator, and take the gamble on whether or not He agrees.
The main issue here is that you’re basing your theology on how you feel, not on God’s divinely inspired Word -
Romans 1:18-23
God reveals Himself to those who’ll truly believe.
And the precepts of everyone’s heart is sin- and the punishment for sin is death. It’s sin in general that condemns you to Hell, Jesus is there to save you from it.
On a personal note- I’ve had the same struggles and thoughts you have. I have grappled with knowing many I love won’t be saved. There are different theologies on hell- personally I believe it ranges from just separation from Heaven to actual torment depending on if those people were extremely evil or just nominally evil. Jesus speaks about different degrees of punishment, and illustrations of both darkness and fire are used. The way the Bible talks about other religions isn’t the same way you talk about them- Islam is barely a branch of Judaism or Christianity. Instead, it’s a faith based on a paedophile self-proclaimed prophet who was also a military leader and used his prophethood to marry nine women (against God’s law of only having one wife) one of which being a six year old child. Mormons follow a similar prophet. The Religious Jews that exist today are the ones who rejected Jesus’ message, like the ones in the old testament. Sure, both groups aren’t doomed per say as anytime they can be reached out to with the Gospel and many have been accepted. But Jesus did put a large emphasis on evangelism, His last command being
Matthew 28:19-20
So Jesus actively wants us to evangelise- evangelism is in fact the loving thing. If someone is wrong about something so critical, it is in fact hateful to not alert them to their wrongdoing because it is leading them away from salvation. Do you really want to be ascending when Christ comes back into heaven, and seeing your Muslim, Hindu and Atheist friends left behind? Will you say to them “sorry, I didn’t want to be hateful and force my religion on you?”
God is not a vengeful rules lawyer who’s looking for any excuse he possibly can find to punish every single human being that doesn’t do everything exactly the way a book written 2,000 years ago says it should have been done.
I have been through all of your objections in my own personal walk, and I’m making the choices that feel the most divinely inspired to me.
The greatest rule is love, and against love there is no law. And if I choose to love my neighbor and accept them the way they are, and my faith says that it is okay for them to be who they are, God’s not going to punish them for being the person who he made them to be based off of their life experiences, then I’m going to stick with that regardless of what a book says.
Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.
My grandfather did (does?). There are a whole lot of people who believe the earth is only a few thousand years old. I have no further details cause you couldn’t pay me to broach the subject with him.
I was at a small festival one time with my very rural-living family. There were people there passing out pamphlets that claimed dinosaurs were still alive in Jesus’ time and that they existed alongside humans.
I nope’d away from them as fast as I could. Now I wish I’d stayed to listen and share the stupidity.
This satan guy sounds like a hoot. I want to see more of that.