Religion should prepare us for a mentality, not faith to God

Author: Intelligence_06

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#61
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@SirAnonymous
If all of us are going to hell anyways, then why bother even trying to go to heaven anyways?

My answer to your post is "We don't need your help. We can do it ourselves."
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@Intelligence_06
I don't see why going to hell is a problem.
Depends on whose conception of hell your talking about. The Muslim hell, if I recall correctly, is a place filled with smoke where the only water is boiling. That would get annoying after a while, but it could be worse.

The Christian conception of hell is rather different.

Revelation 20:9b-10
But fire came down from heaven and devoured them. 10 And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

There's no way to have fun in a place like that.
why doesn't religions tell us to find fun even in Hell? If Anna Frank found fun living under Nazis' eyelids, why is that the reason that we should avoid hell instead of coping with it?
Because if you're hiding from Nazis, you aren't being actively tormented 24/7.
Also, prove that we are sinners without using anything in the bible. 
Why without using the Bible? We're talking about whether the God of the Bible is justified in condemning people to hell. The Bible is an authoritative source on that topic.

However, I can demonstrate this particular point without having to use the Bible. Let me ask you this: Is anyone morally perfect? Is there someone in the world that you can point to who has never done anything wrong, no matter how small or insignificant? If the answer is that no one is morally perfect, then it follows that everyone has done something morally wrong. Therefore, everyone is a sinner.
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@Intelligence_06
If all of us are going to hell anyways, then why bother even trying to go to heaven anyways?
Because all we need to do to go to heaven is believe God's promise to forgive us. You don't have to try. God has done the work for us. All we need to do is believe.
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@secularmerlin
So you think it is morally correct to convict people of thought crime.
Nitpick: I think it is morally correct for God to convict people for thought crime because He knows our thoughts. It is morally wrong for anyone else to do so because they don't know our thoughts, and because no one else has the authority to do so.
I'm afraid I cannot agree. Punishing people for their beliefs (something that is beyond their control) is in my opinion morally reprehensible. 
But do you have any objective basis for disagreeing beyond your personal opinion?
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#65
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@SirAnonymous
The argument is circular and it leads nowhere. Why is the Bible reliable? Because it said so.

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@SirAnonymous
Believe what you will and do what you want, but I ain’t following a book series who can’t even give me evidence for stuff.
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@Intelligence_06
China still has confucsism,taoism,etc-these are good traditions and semi religious based that are still based in China, so yes it is thriving based on that

America used to thrive on its traditions
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@secularmerlin
the backbone of the long boom was the religious traditions
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@Intelligence_06
The argument is circular and it leads nowhere. Why is the Bible reliable? Because it said so.
That wasn't what I said. The Bible is not reliable because it says so. I've seen people make that argument, and I cringe inwardly every time I see it. The reason I said it was an authoritative source is because of the context of our discussion. We're talking about whether the God of the Bible is just. In that specific context, the Bible is a good source. 
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@SirAnonymous
Why? Yes. I can simply say I am the best ever person ever. However, I at least need some supporting evidence because my life isn’t inside a historical fiction book series.
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@Intelligence_06
Believe what you will and do what you want, but I ain’t following a book series who can’t even give me evidence for stuff.
Well, the book itself isn't the evidence. I believe there is a lot of evidence that supports the Bible. That's a different and way more time-consuming discussion, though.
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@Intelligence_06
Why? Yes. I can simply say I am the best ever person ever.
Sure, you can say it, but would it be true? Are you perfect?
However, I at least need some supporting evidence because my life isn’t inside a historical fiction book series.
I agree. Supporting evidence is absolutely necessary when you're deciding what to believe.
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@SirAnonymous
How can you prove God is? 

Also, there are evidence against bible as well. 
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@Intelligence_06
How can you prove God is? 
Indeed, that is the question. Would you be interested in debating it?
Also, there are evidence against bible as well. 
There are a lot of things people have said is evidence against the Bible. I don't think it is, but that is another question. It is also a question that is way more time-consuming than the first question you asked in that post.
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@SirAnonymous
Assuming some god(s) exist, which you have not demonstrated, how have you determined what any god(s) do or do not know?
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@Dr.Franklin
the backbone of the long boom was the religious traditions
There was religion before the long boom. If religion was the backbone why did is all of history not simply one long boom? I'm not sure your logic follows?
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@secularmerlin
Assuming some god(s) exist, which you have not demonstrated, how have you determined what any god(s) do or do not know?
By determining which God is real and seeing what He tells us about Himself. 
#78
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@Intelligence_06
If I do equally as many things as the theist when we both are working, and I am helping the needy when the theist is praying with seemingly no effect, why does he get to go to heaven and I don't?

If Pascal's wager is a sound theory then God is a total jerk. No matter how much good I do to humanity, as long I trust myself to do everything, I go to hell. Isn't this just like Authoritarian Communism? Good things good done, but you criticize me and the punishment is equally as bad as the slacker on the hay.

I can do good things and I can help more people on sundays than the average theist because they don't work on sundays. Having the mentality of helping everything is not bad, or is it?
Pascal was an intriguing fellow. For a Catholic he was very Presbyterian. At least in his views on election. 

Yet, Pascal's wager, despite the insights it may provide is essentially an utilitarian framework. It relies on a view that God believes the ends justifies the means. 

Typical game theory. Yet, God in the bible has far bigger things going on than simple ends.  Ends is by the way a human concept - which arises naturally because we think in terms of beginning and ends. We are mortal. God is immortal. He has no beginning and no end. Hence why for him the ends do not justify the means.  

The other thing you seem to be missing here is the definition of good works.  OR good things.  Christians don't get to heaven based on their good works. They get to heaven based on Jesus' good works.  Not one Christian - will ever get to heaven because they are good or do good things.  Don't misunderstand me. I think Christians and indeed atheists should do good things. This the right thing to do. Yet, it is not the reason to go to Heaven.  Not at least according to the bible.  It is true that every other religion sees good works as the reason for going to heaven or of ascending through the ranks of reincarnation or whatever.  Yet Christians, believe good works by us have got nothing to do with whether we go to heaven or not.  

This is one of the chief defining distinctions between every other religion and worldview and Christianity.  Everyone else thinks that if they are good enough - God will let them in the door because they are good.  But the Bible rejects that idea. 
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@SirAnonymous
By determining which God is real and seeing what He tells us about Himself. 
How have you determined that any god(s) are or could be real to say nothing of your particular flavor of theism?
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@secularmerlin
religious traditions werent in place in the 20's, its cycles
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@Dr.Franklin
religious traditions werent in place in the 20's, its cycles
What are you even talking about?

The United states is by no means a Christian country- Thomas Jefferson 

And if your argument is not that the country itself was religious you can't really expect me to believe that Christians stopped being Christians during the time period you are referring to. 
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@secularmerlin
what i'm trying to say is that religion in culture has its high and low points-the 1920's was a low point and it was better in the 50's

right now we are at a low and America is not prosperous
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@Dr.Franklin
Do you have any way of backing up this bald assertion?
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@secularmerlin
How have you determined that any god(s) are or could be real to say nothing of your particular flavor of theism?
I think the best evidence is simply the existence of the universe. Because of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, the universe cannot have existed forever.

"In this case the second law of thermodynamics (in the simplified form presented here) says that no matter what process takes place inside the container, its entropy must increase or remain the same in the limit of a reversible process. Similarly, if the universe is an isolated system, then its entropy too must increase with time. Indeed, the implication is that the universe must ultimately suffer a “heat death” as its entropy progressively increases toward a maximum value and all parts come into thermal equilibrium at a uniform temperature."

If the universe had existed forever, it would already have suffered a "heat death." Thus, it must have had a beginning. However, it cannot simply have popped into existence into nowhere. Wikipedia says this about the conservation of mass:
"The law of conservation of mass or principle of mass conservation states that for any system closed to all transfers of matter and energy, the mass of the system must remain constant over time, as the system's mass cannot change, so quantity can neither be added nor be removed. Therefore, the quantity of mass is conserved over time.
The law implies that mass can neither be created nor destroyed, although it may be rearranged in space, or the entities associated with it may be changed in form."

It would break natural laws for mass (or energy) to be created out of nowhere. Thus, if the universe cannot have existed forever, and it cannot have been created by natural means, there is no natural explanation for its existence. The reason for the universe's existence must then be beyond nature; that is, it would have to be something that is not bound by the laws of nature. It would also have to be extremely powerful in order to cause the universe, and extremely knowledgeable to cause something so complex. Finally, it would have to be personal in order to choose to make the universe. Put together, the cause of the universe was an extremely powerful, extremely knowledgeable, personal entity that is beyond nature. In other words, the cause of the universe must be God(s).
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@SirAnonymous
I think the best evidence is simply the existence of the universe. Because of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, the universe cannot have existed forever.
Since our best mathematics break down before the planc time I have no choice but to reject your first premise as unsupportable. Indeed the laws of physics may simply not apply. The truth is that the origin of the universe (if it has one) is most probably beyond human epistemology. 

Would you care to reform your argument with this in mind?
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@secularmerlin
Since our best mathematics break down before the planc time I have no choice but to reject your first premise as unsupportable. Indeed the laws of physics may simply not apply.
On the contrary, I can support my first premise without appealing to laws of physics that may or may not apply. The universe cannot have existed forever for basic logical reasons (which I probably should have started with in the first place, but it's too late now). Suppose the universe had no beginning. That would mean that there is an infinite amount of time that had occurred before the present day. No matter how far back along the timeline you went, you would never reach the beginning. Conversely, if you went forward along the timeline, an infinite amount of time would have to pass before you reached the present day. So if the universe had existed forever, it would never have reached the present day. It's a logical impossibility. If you take the universe out of the equation, it still applies. Time itself cannot have existed forever. Since something cannot come from nothing, there must be a cause for time and the universe. It would have to have all the attributes I listed earlier, in addition to being timeless. As a result of being timeless, the cause itself would not need a cause because there never was anything before it. Thus, we have a timeless, extremely powerful, extremely knowledgeable, personal entity that is beyond nature. In other words, God.
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@SirAnonymous
This sounds similar to Zeno's paradox. If you throw an object at my head before it can reach my head it must travel half the distance to my head. It must then travel from the halfway point to my head but first it must travel half of that distance. Because it must always travel half the distance between any given point and my head and because any distance can be halved the object can never reach me. The object will however in real life eventually collide with my noggin. Let us say that the universe had existed forever. That does not prevent us from being at any particular point on its infinite timeline including this one.

Let us for the sake of argument however say that it did have a beginning. That does not in and of itself necessitate a cause. And even if we accepted that there was a cause nothing is saying that this cause was a thinking acting agent(s). Even if it was some thinking acting agent(s) nothing is saying that the thinking acting agent(s) could be recognized at some god(s). Even if it was some god(s) there is nothing saying that it was your preferred god. If I am prepared to grant far more than your argument actually warrants we arrive at best at deism not christianity.

Would you care to reform your argument with this in mind?
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@SirAnonymous
Something else also occurs to me. If god had existed for an infinite amount of time and if your argument holds water then an infinite amount of time would have to pass before he made the universe and so an infinite amount of time before the present day therefore believing in god in no way solves this seeming logical problem. 

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@BrotherDThomas
add flavor to this conversation.
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@secularmerlin
This sounds similar to Zeno's paradox. If you throw an object at my head before it can reach my head it must travel half the distance to my head. It must then travel from the halfway point to my head but first it must travel half of that distance. Because it must always travel half the distance between any given point and my head and because any distance can be halved the object can never reach me. The object will however in real life eventually collide with my noggin.
There is a distinct difference between my argument and Zeno's paradox. In Zeno's paradox, there is a finite distance that is divided infinitely. Translating that to time, Zeno's paradox would be dividing a finite amount of time infinitely. If the universe had existed forever, then there would be an infinite amount of time, not a finite amount of time. Your analogy is invalid, so my argument still stands.
Let us say that the universe had existed forever. That does not prevent us from being at any particular point on its infinite timeline including this one.
It doesn't prevent us from being on a point on the timeline. However, it does prevent time from ever reaching that point, which is why the universe existing forever is a logical impossibility.
Let us for the sake of argument however say that it did have a beginning. That does not in and of itself necessitate a cause.
I disagree. Something cannot come from nothing. It's logically impossible. If you want to argue that something can come from nothing, the burden of proof is on you to show how.
And even if we accepted that there was a cause nothing is saying that this cause was a thinking acting agent(s).
Causing the universe is an action, so it does have to be an acting agent. Furthermore, it has to choose to cause the universe, or else the universe would never be caused. Thus, it must be thinking as well.
Even if it was some thinking acting agent(s) nothing is saying that the thinking acting agent(s) could be recognized at some god(s).
I'm not sure whether you mean that it couldn't be recognized as a God or that it couldn't be recognized as the God described by any known religion. If the former, a thinking, acting, powerful, knowledgeable, timeless, supernatural entity is basically the definition of a god. If the latter, see below.
Even if it was some god(s) there is nothing saying that it was your preferred god. If I am prepared to grant far more than your argument actually warrants we arrive at best at deism not christianity.
Agreed, but you didn't ask me to provide an argument for my preferred God. You asked me to provide evidence that a god(s) is real "to say nothing of your particular flavor of theism".
Something else also occurs to me. If god had existed for an infinite amount of time and if your argument holds water then an infinite amount of time would have to pass before he made the universe and so an infinite amount of time before the present day therefore believing in god in no way solves this seeming logical problem. 
That one's easy. Since the God I'm arguing for must necessarily have caused time as well, this God must be timeless, i.e. time doesn't apply to him. Thus, there are no problems with an infinite amount of time so far as God is concerned.