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Why do non-adherents think they are entitled to heaven?
- Thread starter JohnStrachan
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Hume
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I’d agree.
More and more are realizing that you don’t need a deity in order to have morality. Moreover, many of the actions taken in the name of deity over the centuries are considered by many to be quintessentially immoral.
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Hume
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They weren’t predestined to do it, TULIPed…FiveLinden:
Why do you think there aren’t more people making your gamble? Said another way - why are so many people making the God gamble?
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openmind77
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I am sure Bishop Barron is right about atheists going to heaven.
However we have to take Jesus’s own words quite seriously. In Matthew 25 31-46, Jesus clearly says that the ‘goats’ are not going to heaven. The ‘goats’ are people who
- don’t care about those who are poor and sick (those who don’t believe in healthcare for the poor)
- don’t care about the poor and hungry (those who don’t believe programs that provide food to the poor)
- don’t care about people in prison (those who prefer long, harsh prison terms)
- don’t want to welcome strangers/immigrants
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Hume
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The odds of winning aren’t on the side of the theist. Theism is but one of many possible religious realities.
It’s just that if the theist ends up being wrong and there’s nothing beyond the grave, then so what?
It’s basically just Pascal’s Wager you’re referring to.
For Catholics since V2, yes.
For Jews, Muslims and very likely most Catholic sedevacantists, no. They’re not.
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RuthAnne
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Which I think is why he used the term “good will”.
JohnStrachan
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I would say the odds of winning are on the side of the theist. Jesus was real. It is unmitigated fact. You don’t need the bible to verify his existence. It is an act of faith indeed to believe that Jesus was God. But if Jesus is not God, than scripture is merely the writing of the gullible. Yet I find it hard to imagine that scripture itself is not inspired by a greater being. It’s wisdom, teaching, lessons, rule of life is unrivaled.
But what we are talking about here is belief and faith.
For me, a theist, I believe. Even if I have been hood winked it is worth living it. Even if it’s load of crap and there is nothing on the other side, it is the message of Jesus alone that makes me a better person.
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Freddy
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That’s a win for Christianity I think.
And I think it’s a win for those who listen to what Jesus said and try to live by those standards yet don’t believe He was the son of God.
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FiveLinden
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How can it be off-topic to respond directly to what you have said on the very topic of the OP? Anyway thanks for clarifying that you did not mean ‘ultimate rejection’ but ‘ultimate human rejection’. But you have ignored the obvious point that Adam and Eve rejected an instruction by God while being absolutely certain of his existence. We atheists do not reject God at all, but even if we concede that we do, surely Adam and Eve are further down the ‘rejection’ path than us? Unless, of course, by ‘ultimate rejection’ you mean ‘don’t believe in God’ but then you would be saying ‘atheists are atheists’ and I am sure you meant something deeper.
JohnStrachan
New member
This statement confuses me. You say you do not reject God - but you admit that you negate God’s existence. Isn’t negating a form of rejecting. Are you not in fact rejecting belief? And so if you reject belief in the first place, you are rejecting God. I mean there can’t be any greater rejection than denying ones existence.
Adam and Eve are not rejecting God outright. They are not denying God’s existence. That they erred fundamentally demonstrates original sin. They made a choice between following their desires versus the command of God.
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Cirdan_XII
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What if CS Lewis was right, and that Zeus and Odin are not fictions, but (garbled and misunderstood) images of the true God, or of their angels?
In which case, Zeus and Odin, or those entities you believe to be Zeus and Odin, do actually want you to recognize the true God.
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JohnStrachan
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I’m not sure what you are getting at.
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Cirdan_XII
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I’m not really sure what this means.
If there is only one God, then all gods who are not fictions must by definition be the same God.
If there are multiple competing gods, then all three religions have it totally wrong and are worthless falsehoods.
So laying aside for a moment the concept that the God of any of the three major religions might be a fiction, for them to be the same identical God in a world in which these religions have differing teachings and theologies, would imply that either all or at least two of these religions have false teachings, even if they have a true God.
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Freddy
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Can you quote that please? It makes no sense to me.FiveLinden:
You say you do not reject God - but you admit that you negate God’s existence.
JohnStrachan
New member
To quote the RC church: they lack the fullness of revelation. They are not incorrect, they just don’t have the whole picture.
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Cirdan_XII
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But isn’t that just a sugar coated way of saying, “we’re right and you’re wrong? Except for the things you agree with us on, where we’re willing to concede that you’re right as well.”
JohnStrachan
New member
Sure, you could say that. Ultimately one of the three major monotheistic religions is closest to truth - each one just happens to believe that they have the answer.
But the journey is more important than who is actually right. That each person strives to do the will of God and follow the respective tenets of their religion is what counts.
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Tommy999
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Just a guess, but I think some people believe in God deep down and adhere to the “God is love” mantra and believe He is merciful while forgetting that He is also a just and holy God.
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Neithan
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No, but you need some “ultimate good” and what else could it be? A secularist who accepts some kind of constantly changing reality as a brute fact has no ultimate ground of morality, so it’s just objectively incoherent, relativist ethics. That leads to might makes right, unfortunately.
Re: Pascals’ Wager — I feel like there are many good arguments there but my probability math isn’t skilled enough to convince you. I disagree that the odds are not always with the theist but that depends on our axioms. If you doubt all axioms then there is no way of knowing the odds about anything.
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Hume
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Life. And not just human life, all life.
The respect for it, the preservation of it.
Well, the reality is that morality is subjective.
I murdered a woman at church. I’m going to jail.
I murdered a bunch of guys on a battlefield. I got a cute ribbon to hang on my chest.
As far as might makes right, that underlies all societies. Every set of cultural rules also has an enforcement agent or the rules fade out.
And not to take a stab at Catholicism - not at all - but one of the contributing factors to the fall of Catholicism in the west was the divorce of states from direct papal authority.
As Christianity drew away much of the belief in “Roma Invictus!” toward it’s own deity and power structures - having a direct hand in the collapse of the Western Roman Empire - secularism is drawing away belief from the church toward it’s own power structures, too.
In Spain in the year 1000, if someone was expressing something anti-church like witchcraft, you could possibly have had them killed through agents of the church.
If that happens in the US in the year 2020, the church is powerless to do anything at all about it and the civil authorities will inform you that “the witch” can largely do as she pleases.
Axioms are just sales job. The more something appeals to logos and the less something appeals to pathos, the higher the chance I’ll be convinced by it.
My mom, on the other hand, was much the opposite.
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