by Bust A Kitten » Wed Jun 13, 2018 3:37 pm
> You may think you can cavalierly toss off "God will judge them according to what they know," but that's the answer. It's not a generic cop-out at all. You're mistaken that it's just binary, and mistaken that there are no loopholes. God is a God of judgment, but also of mercy and grace. There are plenty of variables at play.
Romans 5.13 says, "for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law." In other words, people cannot be held accountable for what they could not possibly have known. Romans 1.20 lets us know that they will be held accountable for what they do know. Theologians talk about in terms of "common revelation" (what everybody can see and have a knowledge of [things such as order, uniformity, purpose, function, cause and effect, the validity of sense perception, beauty, reason, personality, knowledge, the benefits of moral responsibility, will, and love; as well as a conscience inside of them]) and "special revelation" (the knowledge of things in particular, such as Jesus). Those are different accountability standards, and the Bible teaches that God is just and will be fair with people, considering what they knew and what they did with it.
Ok, so in short, Romans 5:13 states that I can't be judged for what I don't know. Then you mentioned Romans 1:20, and said that it lets us know that we can be held accountable for what we do know. What you failed to mention is that Romans 1:20 says that we all know. It asserts it. I read a good few translations just now, and they all assert the same thing. The verse says that we all know that god exists. That is simply not true. We don't even all believe that god exists, let alone know.
To believe something is to be convinced that a thing exists, or that a proposition is true. To know it, is to also be able to demonstrate it to be more likely than not. If you ask me, I don't believe that a god exists. I am not certain that a god doesn't exist, but I think it is highly likely that that's the case. As far as the Christian deity, I am as certain that it doesn't exist as I am that the moon isn't made of cheese. I can't go up and touch or taste the moon, nor can I go back in time to 1st century Judea, and see if the new testament miracles actually occurred, as written.
So for one who grew up Catholic, dropped his religion, but has read chunks of the bible, and in the intervening years has looked at the doctrines of other Christian denominations and found no truth in them either, am I without excuse like Romans 1:20 says?
Romans 1:20 doesn't even excuse those who haven't heard of Christianity, as it says that the truth of it is seen in everything. I certainly can't even claim that, as I grew up in a Christian household. I believed, and now I don't. I believe the likelihood that Christianity is true is equal to the likelihood that Islam, or Mormonism are true. The reasons for that are:
1. Since those 3 religions are all mutually incompatible, the only possibilities are that 1 is true, or none are true.
2. The fact that at least 2 of them must be false also demonstrates that under the right circumstances, people in large numbers can be conned into believing fantastical falsehoods, and perpetuate them through many generations through childhood indoctrination, and other methods. Those other methods are seen clearly in the fact that the two of those 3 religions that have the biggest numbers of followers world-wide featured massive empires perpetuating them over the course of their history. While Christianity is the odd man out in terms of origin story (since the other two are, in summary, a dude wrote a book after speaking to an angel), Mormonism is the odd man out in terms of its spreading. And even with a unique story, if Muhammad could make up sightings (or convince people in his delusion, we're not sure which) of the archangel Gabriel, and Joseph Smith could make up sightings of an angel named Moroni, then early Christians could make things up too. In Christianity it's unclear whether it was made up by one person, or by a small like-minded group, but there is nothing unique about it that eliminates that possibility. Jesus could have been made up entirely, or whoever concocted what became the eventual gospels exaggerated a somewhat popular real self-proclaimed prophet into the divine son of god.
Sorry about the long paragraph but, in short, there is nothing unique about the growth of early Christianity that made it more likely that it was true. Were it the only large religion of the sort, or the only one with an origin story where even the early followers died for their beliefs, then a point could be made. However, that's not the case. As a result of all of the above, I believe it likely that those 3 monotheisms, and all other religions, are products of human imagination and delusion. There is nothing indicating any one of them to be more likely to be true than any other, and thus I am convinced that they are all false. Until such evidence comes out suggesting that one of them is actually very likely to be true, I will remain that way unless I suffer some sort of a brain injury that impairs my judgement.
Given all that, am I going to hell, will I be tortured after I die, and do I deserve it for mere disbelief despite having heard many arguments in support of Christianity?