I mean think about it. They promise you if you believe what they believe blindly and unquestioningly you will be rewarded for all eternity no matter what you do. But if you don't believe you will be punished for all eternity no matter what you do. Now it can't just be me that thinks this looks awfully like a bribe and a threat designed to get people in and keep them in. So why would an all powerful god need his "followers" to do this?
2006-09-05 01:34:43 · 23 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
this is how all relegions work
2006-09-05 01:36:49 · answer #1 · answered by givaloluputya (greedy for taste) 2 · 4⤊ 3⤋
I like your question. An all powerful god would not need its followers to adore it. I'm sure arguements can be made to say that the Christian god does not "need" this from Christians, but that same god tells its followers they "must." (The commandments are fairly clear in this regard.)
I was bothered by Teddy J's answer. Hey Teddy, We all have a right to judge another person's opinion. Opinions have value. Some more than others. The closer the opinion is to reality, or the more useful the opinion is, the more value it has. To believe otherwise is wishy washy hogwash.
I say, if an opinion is lousy, DON'T be respectful, try to help the holder of that opinion form a better one. If YOU would rather hide your head in the sand than hear any possible criticism of your beliefs, you just go ahead and keep being ignorant. The rest of us will read each other's questions and answers and try to take something from them.
2006-09-05 09:45:56 · answer #2 · answered by metatron 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋
I don't know where some of you people get your ideology. Us ridiculous Christians do not believe that if we "believe blindly and unquestioningly we will be rewarded for all eternity no matter what we do". I believe you have to question what you believe. If you don't, you don't know why you believe it.
First off, if we did, we wouldn't sin. We would follow the Ten Commandments to a tee and basically be little carbon copy robots of each other. We struggle. We strive to do what God wants, but we fail just every day.
God doesn't use eternal life as a bribe. It's a gift. Anyone is entitled to it. Just because you think it's a bribe or a threat and refuse to accept it doesn't make it any less of a gift.
2006-09-05 08:49:43 · answer #3 · answered by Kayl Q 3 · 3⤊ 3⤋
That particular skew of Christianity is both ridiculous and rather self-serving. Witness those like Constantine who waited quite late in life to be converted and baptized so they could get a "clean slate" on their sins just before dying.
Where you go wrong is in assuming all Christians believe or behave that way. Some see Jesus as the messenger of the good news that all are "saved" anyway, and that we should treat each other well because it is simply the right thing to do.
These followers find an ethical code of honesty, care for those in need, kindness and generosity as the core of what Jesus taught and do not see the faith as a special coupon redeemable for paradise as long as all the conditions were met.
Further, not all who call themselves Christians necessarily believe in an omnipotent God. Others do not accept a trinity and others do not find it necessary to believe that Jesus was himself divine.
If you want to criticize the root beliefs, that's fine, but don't leap to the conclusion that fundamentalists have the "one true faith." Most Christians are not fundies.
2006-09-05 08:46:37 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 3⤊ 1⤋
Your right. I don't believe in god but i think if he is out there then he wouldn't condemn me for all eternity if i live right just because i'm an atheist. I think christians often use it like a bribe but i dont think they even realise. You could say though that its an insentive to live by good moral standards which christianity does provide.
2006-09-05 08:41:17 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 3⤊ 3⤋
The part I cannot believe about Christianity is their viewpoint that G-d came to earth in human form. G-d is G-d. G-d is One.
Jesus may have been a good man, but that is just what he was---a man.
2006-09-05 09:04:09 · answer #6 · answered by Shossi 6 · 3⤊ 1⤋
Mithras (and other ancient gods) is an even better example to me... and most Christians have never heard of such a god.
He predates Jesus by two to three thousand years, and just about everything Jesus did... right down to being crucified and then rising from the dead... is part of the story of Mithras.
But I would agree that referring to others as ridiculous won't get you very far. Play nice... :)
2006-09-05 08:37:15 · answer #7 · answered by Snark 7 · 2⤊ 2⤋
What answer would you accept? without Bias, remember, a superior human being can look at all things without Bias and be objectionable.
How can any one be so blind as to think that this universe and this world came into existence by "Chance" how can any rational mind can think that the "Big Bang" took place from "Nothing"
Sir James Gray, from Cambridge University
“A bacterium is far more complex than any inanimate system known to man. There is not a laboratory in the world which can compete with the biochemical activity of the smallest living organism. One cell is more complicated than the largest computer that man has ever made.”
National Geographic
In an article on the cell, pointed out:
“Each cell is a world brimming with as many as two hundred trillion tiny groups of atoms called molecules.”
- Most of these are protein molecules. And protein itself is the most complex substance known to man.
Dr. James Kennedy
“That is, the idea of a cell ever forming by chance is so impossible that for it to ever happen, we are going to have to discover entirely new natural laws of physics, chemistry and biology in order to be able to explain it.”
Dr. Edmund Wilson of Columbia University
“As early as 1855, Virchow positively maintained the universality of cell division, contending that every cell is the offspring of a preexisting parent cell. Today this conclusion rests on a foundation so firm that we are justified in regarding it as a universal law of development. The study of the cell has on the whole, seemed to widen the enormous gap that separates the lowest form of life from the inorganic world.”
A. H. Oparin
“Proof, in the sense in which one thinks of it in Chemistry and Physics, is not attainable in the problem of Primordial Biogenesis.”
Dr. James Coppedge, director of the Center for Probability Research in Biology in California
- applied laws of probability of a single cell, protein, and gene coming into existence by chance
- computed a world including the earth’s crust and entire array of elements were available. He then had all the amino acids combine at 1.5 trillion times faster than they do in nature. In computing the probabilities, he found that a cell would take 10,119,841 years, a single protein molecule 10,262 years
2006-09-05 08:48:07 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 3⤋
God doesn't need His followers to do that, who told you that? Honestly, is this just something you thought up on your own, or did someone claiming to be a Christian point blank tell you this?
They should be brought before the council of their religion and banished. What a horrible thing to say!
2006-09-05 08:45:13 · answer #9 · answered by arewethereyet 7 · 0⤊ 3⤋
God doesn't "need" you to do anything.
He is God.
He desires you to love Him and follow Him.
Your choice.
Joh 3:16 "For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.
Joh 3:17 For God did not send His Son into the world that He might judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.
2006-09-05 08:37:25 · answer #10 · answered by steve 4 · 4⤊ 4⤋
actually it isn't believing blindly. most Christians spend all kinds of time studying God's word. second, God doesn't "need his followers to do this". God loves all of us and wants a relationship, a friendship with us.
2006-09-05 08:42:29 · answer #11 · answered by trey45 2 · 2⤊ 3⤋