Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: djdaneh@pacbell.com (Dan'l DanehyOakes) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Cutting Away at Tolerance Message-ID: Date: 12 Mar 91 09:29:13 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA Lines: 188 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article lindborg@cs.washington.edu (Jeff Lindborg) writes: >In article djdaneh@pacbell.com (Dan'l DanehyOakes) writes: >If people have never had to oportunity to hear the word of >God, they cannot be saved. Says who? Can you cite a Biblical reference to this? You've listened to some very intolerant people who profess Christianity: that doesn't mean they speak for Christ, or even for all Christians. There are many Christians who don't believe what you wrote above, and many ways in which they understand the fate of those who "never had an opportunity." >Unforunatly Buddhism is acceptant of all beliefs and >religions as long as they don't involve the maltreatment of other people. Yes: and missionaries in India had a similar problem. . . They would tell Hindus "Jesus is God," and the Hindus would stare at them like they were crazy. "Well, of course he is," the more articulate would say, "but who isn't?" >Yes, that Christianity, along with all other organized religions, are fictions >produced by men. So is atheism. So is agnosticism. So is science. All are attempts by people to understand the Universe in which we live. None of them are completely congruent with reality (and to those Christians who say theirs is, I ask you: is *your* understanding of God really perfect? I doubt it), and, to the extent that they aren't, they're fictions produced by men *and* *women*. (Christianity is often accused of sexism. It's nice to know that you humanists aren't any better.) >Just as a side note: If they are not truely believing Christians, what is their >fate in the afterlife? Just curious. How should I know? I'm not God. >And people criticize me for saying that Christianity is based on fear... Not me. Not anyone who really understands the meaning of the phrase "God-fearing." >>The most important reason to be a Christian, and one which you ignore (why?), is >>that, having examined the evidence for it and many other views of the world, >>Christianity seems to us to be most likely to be _true_, or likely to be the >>most true. > >I don't mention this because its baloney. Here I have to take strong exception. Up to now, you've been reasonably civil, if a bit pushy and hostile. (I may be defending my beliefs, but I haven't made fun of yours.) At this point, however, you have become rude and arrogant. You are, in effect, calling me a liar, and taking it upon yourself to decide what is going on (and has gone on in the past) in *my* head and heart. In fact, I was not raised in a Church; I came to my beliefs through long and often difficult searching of my soul. For you to trivialize this as baloney is beyond what the pale of civilized discussion. As a Christian, I am compelled to forgive you. However, there's nothing to stop me from telling you what a schmuck you're being. >There is no more evidence to suggest >the truth of Christianity than there is to suggest the truth of Buddhism or >Islam etc... There is no proof, as I said elsewhere, of any of them. I looked at the various ToEs (Theories of Everything) around, decided that science was good but insufficient, and worked for a long time to decide what would best explain what science doesn't *and* *can't* -- not because "it's beyond what we can determine now," but because it is outside the realm of science. For example: science, by its nature, is interested in how the Universe works. It cannot, for that very reason, explain why there *is* a Universe. Explanations such as the Big Bang -- which is clearly the best model of the early Universe around -- only defer the question. We come to a problem related to the Aristotelian question of the First Cause, the Unmoved Mover, and however many causes-and-effects sciences defers the question by, it still reamins and must remain incomplete. One option is to be satisfied with that state of affairs. Another is to look at the other models and see if they are satisfactory. Christianity, for me, was. I suggest that most honest Christians would be willing to look at evidence that Christianity was not true. So far, a lot of evidence has surfaced to change the details of some collateral beliefs; but no actual evidence *against* any of the core beliefs of Christianity has surfaced -- or is likely to. The core beliefs of Christianity have little to do with the physical world, beyond how we should behave in it. >If you were raised in China, you'd probably be a Buddhis, if you were raised in >Iran, you almost certanily be an Islamic. What is an Islamic? Do you mean a Moslem? How quaint. It's almost like calling them Mohammedans, I do believe. Yes, I might be those things. But I wasn't, so it isn't at all relevant. The world is that which is the case, not something you make up as a what-if. >No, but we must certainly examine the ease at which they were able to justify >their actions using the Bible... did they not accomplish their objective? The >infants DID go to heaven, right? If the Spaniards asked for forgiveness and >were sincere in their conviction, they were forgiven and went to heaven too, >right? Mission accomplished... The following is an attempt to understand their point of view, not mine or God's. If the Conquistadores didn't believe they were doing wrong, they wouldn't confess and ask forgiveness at all. (If it was wrong anyway -- which *I* certainly believe it was -- then what happened to them after death is between God and them; I don't judge, and I'm glad I don't have to.) If they realized later it was wrong, then forgiveness would involve genuinely abjuring what they'd done, never doing it again, and doing some rather severe form of penance, given the severity of the crime. If they realized at the time it was wrong, they can't just confess and be forgiven. Forgiveness involves genuinely accepting the wrongness of your actions, taking the consequences upon yourself as best you can in this life, trying your damnedest not to do it again, and so on. It isn't just "I'm sorry," and up to Heaven you go. >>Atheists designed a bomb to be dropped on Hiroshima. Obviously atheism is evil, >>right? You are attempting to argue for guilt-by-association. > >The major difference here, of course, is that they were not working under the >banner of athiesm... they were working for the govornment. Fine: "All governments are evil." Same difference. You can't judge a philosophy or a religion by the worst that comes of it; terrible things come from all such. What matters is the *best* that comes from it. That is a measure of how far that religion or philosophy *can* take a person if applied well. >>That's silly. Our God died to prevent it. Would you do as much? Would your >>blind Universe? >If your god were so eager to prevent people from going to hell, he wouldn't have >created hell in the first place. My "blind Universe" feels no need to punish >those of you who don't believe in it... Who said God created Hell? Hell, in the opinion of *this* believer, is not a created *place* at all, but a condition in which the soul cuts itself off completely from God. There may be a "plane" where such souls exist; if so, it may be created by God, to give them a place to exist. Or it may be that complete isolation from God, the source of all existence, is equal to nonexistence. I do not know. All I can really say on the subject is that some paths in life lead or seem to lead toward an infinite good, and some lead away from it. Christianity seems to me to be the path which leads directly *to* it. What is the fate of those who follow other paths, and especially those that seem to be heading in the same general direction, is not for me or any other Christian to say. Some, in the arrogance that is natural to us fallen beings, and possibly out of a desire to feel smug in having chosen the Only Path[*], feel free in saying that those other paths lead to this place they call Hell. I do not know this much; much of the Bible is prophetic imagery that I don't feel arrogant enough to explain, though I make some attempts to understand it for myself. Dan'l Danehy-Oakes [*]Christianity is clearly *NOT* the Only Path. In fact, it is not even the Best Path. The Best Path was lost to us when we Fell.