Flawed Theology

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” -John 3:16 The details may vary among denominations, but the general consensus is that belief in Jesus Christ as the son of god is absolutely necessary and is step one on the road to heaven.  If you do not believe in Jesus, you cannot get into heaven (and you perish in hell, or are annihilated...details are fuzzy on that too).  This is also made very clear in John 14:6: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me”. But why though? If you stop to think about it, "belief" is a very odd thing to require as a ticket to heaven.   Presumably, God wants to separate all people into two groups: those "worthy" of heaven, and those "deserving" hell.  He has designed a cosmic test to sort people into groups, in which there's only one question:  Do you believe (in Jesus?) Appare...

Imagine a world where everyone knows God exists.  "Belief" in God isn't applicable in this world, because God's existence is so obvious that belief isn't required.  God's existence would be as evident as the existence of rocks, or trees, or gravity, or other people. In this world, when people pray, an audible voice answers (which can be corroborated by others or by recordings).  God appears to people as a physical entity (again, corroborated as not being a hallucination).  God gives us knowledge of the universe we wouldn't or couldn't have obtained otherwise.  God grants real miracles, like re-growing limbs.  God engages us in actual conversation.  There would be an on-going Wikipedia entry for God with concrete facts (visitations, what he said, what he did, what he wants, what he's like...).  And this hypothetical world would feel normal to us.  After all, if God DID exist, why would it be weird for there to be evidence for it? Needless to s...

Let's create a deity and a religion associated with that deity.  For this exercise, it isn't really relevant whether we, as the creators of the deity, actually believe that the deity exists--we're just trying to see what it would take to build a religion around an imagined deity and convince people of it. Name of deity: Let's pick a name and apply an arbitrary gender.  How about... Regina Phalange, female.*  Our religion will be called Reginianity. Regina Phalange, friend to everyone Characteristics:  We want people to be impressed with Regina Phalange and not follow any other deities.  So let's make her all-powerful . She's so powerful she made the entire universe. We want people to love Regina.  Let's make her all-loving and benevolent ! We want people to trust Regina.  Let's make her very very wise. She's omniscient ! How to spread the news about Regina Phalange? Since Regina isn't about to go door-to-door introducing herself (she isn't r...

Until very recently, I thought there was something wrong with me.  Everyone around me seemed to happily accept the religion they were given with no questions asked.  If anyone besides me ever doubted, I never saw it. It is extremely isolating to be the only one among your family and church friends to question the reality with which we are presented. I thought the reason I couldn't accept Christianity was because of who I was as a person. I was too curious, too logical, too rebellious, too disobedient.  I often wished I had been born differently. Couldn't I have been given more of a pliable mind? What if I were just a tad more gullible? Maybe then I could be convinced that the Bible is true. That this invisible entity that I couldn't feel, touch, or hear is actually there. These feelings eventually turned into guilt.  I tearfully admitted to my best friend that I didn't have any faith, but I wished I had some.  I asked her why it was so easy for her, why was it s...

I recently listened to a Frank Turek Podcast : "What is faith? And why everyone has it!" "Faith is not blind. Faith is trusting in what you have good evidence to believe is true." - Frank Turek In the first part of this podcast, he makes the claim that "faith is trusting in God for an unseen future, based on the evidence of what is already known about God."  In other words, this faith is not blind because God has proven himself with the following "historical facts". The resurrection Jesus's miracles God taking the Israelites out of Egypt and into the promised land What Mr. Turek is not addressing is that these "historical events" are far from fact.  To say that they are factual is in itself a leap of faith.  Let's briefly look at each of these. The Resurrection and Miracles The argument that Jesus performed miracles and rose from the dead all hinges on the historical reliability of the Bible--the gospels in particular.  If you a...