Ray's God

Yet another atheist objection Ray responds to...poorly:

“What does the Bible have to say about the countless people who, through zero fault of their own, never hear the word of God? Do they go to Heaven or Hell?" Andrew Douglas

Those who have never heard the good news of the gospel will go to Heaven, if they have never sinned. However, if they have lied, stolen, committed adultery, been covetous, had sex outside of marriage, looked with lust, hated anyone, been unthankful to God, committed homosexual acts, murdered, blasphemed, failed to love their neighbor as themselves, and to love the One who gave them life with all of their heart, soul, mind, and strength, etc., they will end up in Hell. God will give them justice.

Ah, so the game is completely rigged. In fact, we know it is. We are told that we are all born "sinful" because of the "original sin" that passed through the semen of an imaginary person-Adam. The sins of the father are passed to their children? How absurd. Christians, I would really think about what this implies about your god. And you should more than questions Ray's view of this god. This is essentially what he is saying, which is consistent with the last post: If through no fault of your own, you haven't heard of Jesus or YHWH, but you have been "unthankful to God [Jesus or YHWH]", or something as impossible and nebulous as "failed to love their neighbor as themselves"...they will go to hell. What? Now, one has to ask oneself, what is so important about belief? More importantly, how can you believe in something you don't even know about?? So until 2,000 years ago, people were just going to hell? This has led people to the interpretation that Jesus had to descend into hell to save the people who were apparently roasting away not due to their willful refusal to obey God, but rather because of God's failure to inform them.

Further, according to this interpretation, you are commanded to love and simultaneously fear God. How deplorable. Compulsory love, where the slightest failure to live up to impossible commands threatens ones eternal fate...unless they unwaiveringly believe and "love the One who gave them life with all their heart, soul, mind and strength, etc." With this kind of reasoning, Ray is confirming what Richard Dawkins wrote in The God Delusion:

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

Ray continues:

"The problem is, they have sinned (all of us have), and so they desperately need God's mercy."

Again, God might just have well of said, "If any of you breath, even once during your lives, you have sinned". How does "free-will" vindicate God for punishing us for "sin" when by definition we couldn't possibly keep the commands?

"So, as Christians, we have a tremendous moral obligation to make sure that they are warned of their danger before they die (see Ezekiel 33:8, Romans 10:14-15). We must plead with those that the Bible calls “unsaved” to come to their senses. We should be as the disciples, who, when they were threatened for preaching the gospel said, “We cannot but speak the things we have seen and heard.”Fortunately, you are not one of those who have never heard. You know that Jesus suffered and died for you. He paid your fine in His life's blood so that you could leave the Courtroom. That means that God can legally dismiss your case. Now, because of the suffering death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God can allow you to live and escape the damnation of Hell. What you must do to receive that mercy is repent and trust Him. Once you do that, you can take the gospel to those for whom you are so concerned."

Ah, the courtroom analogy again. So for this to make sense, the judge should have himself tortured horribly, and then crawl up to the bench, pull his bloodsoaked robe up and say, "case dismissed", to which the defendent grins and the plaintiff angrily objects, "So they just get to walk away"? "Yeah", says the judge, "I paid his fine with my blood". What does this nonsense solve? Why don't Christians see this as completely insane?