I'd like to say this about Hell;
These are interesting points...
God doesn't send you to Hell, per say. He denies your access into Heaven. The gift of salvation is just that... a gift. If you deny it, then you have effectively said you do not want to be a part of the kingdom of Heaven. Thus you don't get in. [...] but it was ultimately your choice to stay outside of Heaven. The Holy Spirit is a perfect gentleman and will not interfere with your free will.
Sometimes, my son will hand something to me while I am not looking. Then he gets irritated that I haven't noticed it and taken it from him. and he puts it down. Then he blames me for not taking the thing that I couldn't see and that he never made sure I saw. Sometimes it might happen while I'm driving, and I put out my arm as far as I can, but again he blames me that my arm can't reach.
I think this is a misunderstanding many Christians have about non-believers; that we "reject" something that we
can see, or that we understand perfectly well. But the reality is that we cannot see it. Ironically, when trying to talk about it, many of these very same people will say that of COURSE we don't understand the bible, because the Spirit is not in us. Spirit is not in us, so we can't understand the bible, can't understand the bible so we can't sense any god from it, can't sense any god from it so the spirit is not in us.
The
method they tell us, is to open our minds like a little child and be ready to believe
anything and the only thing that will come in is Yahweh and it will all be obvious. This does not seem to work for Hindus, who open their minds to gods and the ones that become believable are the ones of their parents. It also doesn't seem to work for Muslims who open their mind to gods and conclude that Jesus is not a son of god. It does not appear to work for Jehovah's witnesses who are scorned here on this site despite loving Jesus and believing fully in Yahweh.
So it follows that others who might have tried to study the bible and see what it contains have concluded that the contradictions are a barrier to understanding. The main contradiction being that Yahweh knows
exactly what it would take to convince me of his existence (I hope we can agree that your definition of Yahweh does, indeed, know everything about how I think and reason things out), and has chosen not to enact that.
I also love how people say stuff doesn't 'make sense.' The same can be said about quantum physics, the properties of quarks and their sub-components, and even some aspects of electricity, certain biological organisms, or our own tax laws
... we don't understand any of them thoroughly. They don't 'make sense' either. Yet we're so arrogant to say that if our minds can't grasp it, it must be illogical and false (might be true in the case of tax law). But for the rest THAT position doesn't make any sense.
And yet it is the very position taken right here on this board regarding evolution, isn't it.
One difference, though, evolution cannot know you mind and know exactly what it would take ot convince you or teach you but decline to do it. Evolution doesn't care whether you understand it. Physics doesn't care whether you understand it. Quarks - don't care. Are you sure you want to compare the reason you don't understand quantum physics whith the reason I don't understand your definition of your god? That he
doesn't really care whether i understand?
That's the part that contains the flaw. That the
definition of the god is that 1) he cares and 2) he is all powerful and despite 1) and 2) there are still people who don't get it. This problem is what makes no sense. Now, if you defined your god as
not caring then it would be the same as physics, and that would make sense. I can't see it, it doesn't make sense, and since the god doesn't care and/or doesn't know how to make me understand, I continue to not understand.
My unbelief is not a "choice". It is a result. It is a clear and obvious result of what I observe and how my brain operates. It is not a matter of "free will" that your Holy Spirit does not speak my engineers' observation-based language. Observations and reason have convinced me of the repropducibility of the data that lets me understand quantum physics, quarks, imaginary numbers in electricity, biological organisms and, yes, even our tax law (I spent 5 years as an accountant before becoming an engineer). My ability to understand all of those things is a result of the "language" that my brain operates on. Does your Holy Spirit really have no skills in speaking that language?
It is not "arrogance that says it must be false". It is the inability to muster up a belief. It is not a rejection of something that we don't like. It is a lack of belief. The belief is just not there, we can't make it up, can't force it, can't make it compute.
And again, it is not like the arrogance of saying, "I can't understand evolution so therefore the people who can understand it are wrong" because evolution is not defined as all-powerful goal-oriented, caring Causer. Moreover Evolution doesn't punish you for failing to believe in it.
You Christians have defined your god as an entity that WANTS people to understand and
also HAS THE ABILITY to make people understand and simultaneously has created people who don't understand who will be tormented by Satan (What was he thinking when he created Satan, anyway? Was he surprised by how Satan turned out? "Snap, I think I shouldn't have done that...").
Based on YOUR dfinition of your god, there is no reason why he cannot speak the language of scientists, and yet he does not, and again based on YOUR definition he then allows to be punished those who cannot hear him. And he is still defined as "all good". And this just doesn't compute. It's not arrogance, not a choice, it just doesn't make sense and we can't pretend it does.
