clearly, promises of an afterlife in heaven play some sort of important role in the christian religion, Also, from listening to various fire and brimstone preachers, it seems as though the terror of consignment to hell is also kind of an important motivation So, here is my question If it turned out that there is no heaven awaiting us, and there is no hell that we need fear..... would you still think it important to be a Christian?
Yes... i would.... but then again I happen to be a Christian who believes that Rabbi Yeshua - Jesus may well have spoken the following words to his disciples as shown to a near death experiencer. www.ThomasTwin.com/ If... Rabbi Yeshua - Jesus actually gave teachings much like this..... as is indicated by The Gospel of Thomas and other writings found at Qumran.... then.... he may have been far, far, far, far more like Rabbi Nachman of Breslov and his grandfather the Baal Shem Tov than ninety five percent of Christians could even begin to imagine???
Where did you expect this to go? However much one assumes that Christian hell/heaven may be linked to its morality, I wouldn't expect an actual Christian to find it be important, even for the existence of morality.
Seems to me that Christians would not spend so much time talking about heaven and hell if it were not pretty important
That's fair, but that's not necessarily the same as saying that they are integral to the concept of morality. Murder would still be murder and would still be bad, even if prisons somehow stopped existing.
See Pascal's Wager. As the Bible says, God has planted eternity on our hearts, which is why almost all cultures have a concept of the afterlife, despite differing ideas on how to get there. The human soul is too large for our short lifespan.
If there is no heaven or hell it would mean by definition that there is no God and therefore abandonment of Christian beliefs and the abandonment of ALL moral law is prudent. Nothing is moral nothing is immoral do whatever you want with impunity.
Why? Other non christian countries manage quite well. Japan manages quite well. In fact, their standards are far higher than many Christian countries.
They don't oppress their people. Their culture is different to ours. Crime is low, People are polite, tidy. Children have a far wider education and are encouraged in the arts. They respect their parents. .
Why? Are you claiming that somehow all laws come from god and that without god as a justification all laws are tyrannical?
If there is no god then there is no moral authority to mandate what is good or bad behavior therefore all laws are tyrannical.
If there is a God what would be the purpose of laws? Humans have laws because there are no Gods to monitor and correct human behaviors.
The Japanese have hundreds of gods. Most of which have little relevance to their daily lives. Moral authority is an philosophical concept that should serve as a basis for, but is not in itself a rule of written law. The moral authority and legitimacy of law can be based on metaphysics or religion, on nature, on some aspect of society, or on the individual. It may be referred to as a "higher law", involving right reason, which calls a person to the performance of their duties and restrains them from doing wrong. Constitutional democracy combines qualitative, substantive, "higher law" concepts of justice and universal equality derived primarily from classical civilization and Judeo-Christian religion with quantitative, procedural concepts of justice and equality derived primarily from the communitarian ethic of common law, republican traditions, and social contract theory. https://definitions.uslegal.com/m/moral-authority/
Nope, if there is no moral authority higher than man then laws are just one group of people oppressing those who want to do those things. If there is no God then Ted Bundy shoukd be released from prison immediately with our apologies because there is nothing wrong with what he did.
Perhaps you should move from the US or wherever in the West you live to North Korea. All that atheism must make it a paradise.
Did Pascal's wager take into account the probability that Islam is true, or any other non-Christian religions, and the fact that the probability of Christianity is true, may not be 50-50, but maybe more like .0000001% - 99.99999999%?
