The burning house/cliff edge analogy

And why do you want to give back?

Does it make you feel good about yourself?

Would you do it if it made you feel worse?

 

No, I don't have any low self esteem issues!

I have empathy for those less fortunate than myself and I appreciate that misfortune can happen to anyone through no fault of their own.

 

I never said you had low self esteem.

The point is that you are doing it because it benefits you and the reward to you makes it desirable.

Am I right or not?

Helping those less fortunate makes you feel better, that is your motivation.

It is basically impossible for a human to be altruistic.

 

Because that is something you want that makes you feel good.

You are acting out of selfishness.

 

Wrong!

You are erroneously implying a motivation that does not apply as far as I am concerned.

I help others for the reasons that I have stated above.

Your cynicism is not my problem.

 

Kindly refrain from projecting your own motivations onto others.

 

So helping others doesn't make you feel good?

 

Would you help a criminal who just killed someone in a liquor store robbery escape?

It would help him.

A true altruistic person doesn't disseminate between these things.

Which is why one can't exist outside of people with mental problems.

 

Your DESPERATION is palpable!

Why don't you actually study the subject of altruism instead of posting your own misconceptions?

https://www.spring.org.uk/2018/12/personality-high-iq.php

 

Tell that to the others sitting in the pews. Christians should stop the Great Commission. They should stop caring.

 

Well when it comes to modifying my behavior, the question is who is correctly dictating God's laws? Muslims tell me God wants you to make a series of elaborate bows while facing Mecca. Christians tell me God wants me to to eat the ceremonial bread and drink the ceremonial wine at Easter.

In order to modify my behavior, we need at least a small degree of proof of God's nature to know his laws. Through a process of elimination however we do know what God is not and thus cannot be his laws. If we want to assume God is loving and just, we can instantly eliminate the Bible and the Qur'an as describing the nature of God as they both condone slavery. If God is cruel, then modifying my behavior is not called for. You might ask what about your survival and salvation? Well, all I can say to that is my personal survival and my nature are irreconcilable.

 

Agreed, but we can still independently determine whether there is some truth in a message.

If someone says what you are doing is wrong, you don't always necessarily need God in the equation to know it is the right thing to heed that message.

Is it fair to say people can still be deserving of hell even if there's absolutely no proof of God?

 

That is a false equivalence logical fallacy.

You are equating an individuals abysmal behavior to a lack of evidence of something completely irrelevant to that behavior.

 

The primary way for humans in majority to get to a truth is by believing in human testimonies from the supposedly eyewitnesses accounts. If someone died in order to bring out the message that there's bomb around. People should run instead of waiting to see the smoke before leaving. While making one's run, it's also a responsible act to warn others off the area.

The similar effect is that police ask for an evacuation. Police represent an authenticated source of information. You should believe with faith instead of asking for more concrete evidence before leaving.

Christianity is about a similar warning. No humans (perhaps except for the few chosen) can reach hell to confirm its existence (even when it exists for a fact). Humans in majority will have to rely on human accounts of testimonies in order to reach such a truth. Gospel is about the good news of an escape out. Preaching the gospel is the responsible act of spreading the message to reach more. This is the way even in the case that hell is a truth. This is the only thing left for humans to do.

 

Reliance on middle men (prophets) to get the message out especially in a garbled way as with the case of the book of Revelation, is NOT the fingerprints of an all knowing, all powerful, all loving God.

Unless they were to perform actual miracles, I have no reason to believe in messengers of God. Would you trust date setters like William Miller and Charles Taze Russell?

I'd have even less reason to believe the runners of such dubious middle men.

 

The message is to obey and to be completely loyal.

 

The fable about the Boy Who Cried Wolf springs to mind!

 

Isn't it funny that they come here day after day saying "I wish Christians would leave me alone"?

 

For anyone telling atheists to keep their atheism to themselves, let me introduce you to a Youtube atheist miles more articulate than myself:

 

So much for agape. It always perplexed me that this version of heaven and hell requires a certain level of psychopathy (lack of capacity for empathy and compassion) from heaven's inhabitants. The only options for the afterlife in this view are endless torture or a spiritual lobotomy.