As an atheist, will I go to Heaven?

[Tiberius]

In other words, the Gospel of Matthew as whole insists that the real problem is that YOU are separated from God by your sins. No amount of goodness (or what you consider goodness by your own standards) will repair the breach between you and God.

it's a shame that we only get bits and pieces at a time then.

The works that the quote about is speaking of are those that reflect a state faith or lack thereof. So, put your faith in the person of Jesus the Christ,and then you will have done the work that God requires.

Can you provide a passage which supports this?

Imagine that a man rapes a woman and is arrested. He's brought before the judge. He tells the judge, "Your Honor, I raped that woman. In fact, I've raped several women. But what you may not know is that I regularly volunteer at the local homeless shelter. I mentor poor children. I walk little old ladies across the street. You can't send me to jail. Just look at all of the good things I do!"

What do you think the judge is going to say?

First of all, i'll be remembering this particular example...

Now, what if the man really repents of his sins?

And is not believing in God really as bad as rape in God's eyes?

We get rewards according to our works, but our salvation is based on faith and belief on Christ. The truth is no human is "good," and our little good deeds we do are like filthy rags to God.

Seems odd that God would set up a system whereby everyone fails the criteria he sets.

"And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God."Matt 10:18

I thought jesus was God...

If you desire to go to heaven, and you believe it to be a real place, then why not take the time to learn about how to get there? It seems you already read [some of] the bible.

I don't believe in Heaven. I was simply asking a hypothetical.

I was (perhaps ignorantly) under the impression that atheists do not believe in an afterlife. What makes you believe there is one (if you do?)

I don't believe in an afterlife.

EDIT: Also, if you are really, really ignorant of Christ (but I don't think you are, seeing as though you know enough about Him to quote Him,) God is merciful enough to reserve a "day" of teaching for those that truly did not know him - that is to say the 1000 year reign of teaching of Christ on earth. That "day" is reserved for people who had absolutely no way of knowing Him, or were completely ignorant of him for one reason or another.

So why didn't God make himself known to all people right from the beginning?

He wants ALL of His creation to be with Him. The reason why he doesn't kill off satan, or the common atheist or the Christian sinner is because He is the God of Life, not death. Your cliche god would kill all dissenters and have a slave race of blind followers. God actually wants people to choose to follow Him. He isn't threatened by dissenters, but welcomes the challenge of persuading them in realizing His majesty, allowing them to choose to follow Him. To me, that shows how powerful He really is. Your common scared god would just kill off those that oppose.

Howe can anything challenge a god who can do anything? And the god you describe does not seem to mesh with reality. In the Bible, god was appearing to people all over the place. Why doesn't this happen anymore?

A liar deserves the same fate as a rapist, or a murderer, or an adulterer, or a false witness, or a thief, or as a cheater, or as any transgressor is what he is saying I believe. In other words, you cannot claim that you are "good" just because you are charitable, yet you transgress against the holy ordinances of God. Therefore, because almost every human has sinned (save Christ,) no one can claim that s/he is "good" just because s/he does "good" things. If you lie, according to the word of God you deserve death. If you rape, you deserve death. All sin deserves death. Only by grace of God and faith in Christ can you gain salvation.


I highly doubt he was comparing atheists to rapist. C'mon!

Actually, if he was saying that God views all sin as equal, and that both atheism and rape are sins, then that means that in the eyes of God, rape and atheism are equally bad, yes?

And do you really think that God views a three year old who steals a mars Bar as being just as bad as a man who repeatedly tortures and rapes little kids before killing them? Do you see that as just?

Atheists were NOT compared to rapists. He was making a point that you cannot say you cannot claim to be "good" but you transgress universal divine law - that goes for lying, stealing, cheating, murdering, adultery, etc. Making a "logical" reasoning to disbelieve in Him is not "bad," it is your choice - a choice He gave you to fully execute. The consequences are what are considered "bad" i.e. Hell - or the absence of fellowship with God (not necessarily FIRE AND BRIMSTONE.)

So the bad consequences are what God imposes, where he sends us.

So the bad stuff is what God does to us, not what we chose.

In other words, Goid decides he doesn't like that we don't believe, so he punishes us in hell.

So I gotta ask, why does God want so badly for us to believe?

God gave you a critical mind to think and reason because He does not want a robot programmed to love Him. Would you want a child that was programmed to love you? That isn't love, it is programming. I can write a computer code for an AI to love me, all it takes is a few thousand lines of "coding." Would I want that? Absolutely not. It is fake. Nor does God want fake love forced upon the worshiper. Only cliche scared less than all powerful gods want blind followers/non-dissenters. If you reject God, own it! it is your choice; a choice He gave you as a thinking, logical, critically reasoning mind.

How many people are Christians because they are scared of hell?

And how exactly have you determined how to give a machine emotion with just a few thousand lines of code? Or does your code just fake it?

God gave you a critical thinking mind to either come to the decision to reject Him or accept Him. No one is getting offended, and no one is definitively and literally comparing atheists to rapist, murderers, liars, etc.

Actually, I showed above how they (indirectly) were.

If anything, atheists and "Christians" are in the same boat of iniquity. The only difference is the belief and faith factor. We are all humans.

Huh?

So typically, a atheist won't be permitted by God to go to heaven, since he does not obey Him or know Him.

But is it possible for a atheist to go to heaven? Yes, if you believe God can have mercy on whomever He wishes.

So is that a yes or a no?

It was still your choice to believe something was wrong with you.

It was your choice to "not buy into it."

It is your choice to believe that someone will suffer forever for a finite crime.

It is your choice to believe that suffering for said crime is immoral.

It is your choice as a reasoning thinking mind to come to all of these conclusions. Own it! If you don't believe OWN IT.

I did not choose to become an atheist. it was a conclusion that I came to after being faced with hard logic and reasoning.

Could you "choose" to become a muslim? I doubt it. A person cannot "choose" to change their religious beliefs. if change does come to them, then it is an irrevocable process that they have no conscious control over.

Not sure what the "doctrine of forgiveness" is, but if a judge chose not to sentence a rapist because he said he was sorry, then he would be an unjust judge.

Even if the rapist repents, the judge isn't going to let him go. The judge is going to say, "Of course you should repent, but the law must still be upheld!"

And if God chose not to sentence a sinner to hell because he repented, would he be equally unjuest?

Who says it's a finite crime? Who says that God is bound to your standard of morality?

Stealing a car is an infinite crime?

Not true. Jesus did not teach simple fluffy flappers as a transport to Heaven. Salvation cannot be asked for nor earned. It is human Grace as a gift from God.

Over the years many Western Christian sects have lured unsuspecting people in to the "Just ask for forgiveness" hook only to spring on them more strings attached than jelly doughnuts celebrating Michael Moore Has the Flu Day.

Doesn't Jesus say that he is the way, the truth and the life and that no one gets to God except through him? To me, that sounds like belief in jesus is the way to get into Heaven.

But you are saying that a person can not do anything that will lead to salvation for them. So how does anyone get into Heaven?

Who says the finite crimes have infinite punishments? It's very possible that finite crimes have finite punishments in hell. It just goes on forever because sinners don't stop sinning. Now, is it that surprising that sinners keep sinning?

Except that someone who truly repented will change their behavior. And will be guaranteed to have changed behavior in the eternal state.

So do sinners stop sinning or not?

And are you actually saying that someone who is sent to Hell for sinning is going to say, "Yeah, I think I'll keep it up"? And how does one sin in hell anyway?

You may find this interesting too. It's an argument for why hell is forever. Here's the most relevant excerpt.

"It clarifies and simplifies the argument that sin is an "infinite offense" against God requiring an infinite payment. Under the honor and shame paradigm, sin is particularly an honor offense against God, in effect an insult to His honor and place by means of disregard of His authority and rules.

The paradigm demands that such insults to honor be repaid with shame. In this instance it remains that the value of the response must be equitable -- hence Jesus, in his divine identity, remains the only adequate payment for this honor offense; his blood alone is adequate to take away sin. However, because it is a matter of quality and not quantity, and is an "either-or" rather than a mathematical-value proposition, it is no longer necessary to argue that a sin is an "infinite offense" or to even deal in terms of quantity.

Indeed, the matter of quality rests on that while all of God's honor is ascribed (due Him by nature), no ascribed honor of our own can match His (being born into a good family), and we are otherwise only capable of having what they call "acquired" honor. (For more see now my revision of our defense of the atonement and penal substitution.)"
-Source

Wow. God needs to punish people for all eternity if they insult his honour?

 

[FreeinChrist]

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