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bjs wrote:
Zzyzx wrote:
Wootah wrote:
All you need to do is believe in Jesus' saving grace. There is no work for you to do. If there is no work to do then that is a light burden indeed.
What a concept. It should be easy to sell to non-believers.
"Just believe what you do not believe, nothing else required, and you will be rewarded after you die."
No way to determine if the offer is legitimate.
No returning dissatisfied customers.
Isn’t that pretty much life?
Is this to say that ‘believing what you do not believe’ is ‘pretty much life’?
If so, I disagree.
bjs wrote:
You make a choice about how you will live, and then you live that way.
What has that to do with ‘believe in Jesus' saving grace’?
bjs wrote:
There is no return for dissatisfied customers.
In real life the ‘rewards’ or ‘punishments’ occur in the real world – not in some promised ‘afterlife’. Those who discover that promises were false can raise objections publicly or legally while they are alive. No so for promises of what is to happen 'after you are dead'.
bjs wrote:
There is no way to determine if any path will really take you where you want to go, or if you will want to be there once you arrive.
Agreed. However, astute people can often or usually make mid-course corrections in the real world.
bjs wrote:
We all have to consider where a given road promises to take us, make a choice
We would be well advised to determine if the promises are truthful and accurate. We can then compare alternatives.
An example from personal history: As a graduate student in Earth science and geology during the 1960s many attractive opportunities were presented. Among them, I chose university professor (for the promised benefits / advantages); which turned out to be a very satisfactory choice. Today, however, the once-grand promises are no longer true – and I would NOT pursue that career under present conditions (even if the promises made were largely unaltered)
bjs wrote:
and accept that there is no money-back-guarantee.
In spite of no guarantees, we can each learn to evaluate alternatives and verify claims or promises made in order to make informed choices. We
cannot verify the promise of rewards in a proposed ‘afterlife’ and the payoff is supposed to occur ‘after you die’. We
can verify the merits of becoming a professor – that information is available.
.
Non-Theist
ANY of the thousands of "gods" proposed, imagined, worshiped, loved, feared, and/or fought over by humans MAY exist -- awaiting verifiable evidence