Atheists go to hell even if they are good!?

[Freodin]

Unforgiven sin is eternally unforgiven. And thus the one on whom the unforgiven sin rests must be eternally separated from the Holiness of the One Who offered forgiveness, but was rejected.

See, that is the real problem with that approach.

There is no way to reject forgiveness. Forgiveness is one-sided. That is the meaning of "grace" and "mercy". It is given... it does not have to be bought.

 

[Zaac]

See, that is the real problem with that approach.

There is no way to reject forgiveness.

If you reject the One offereing you forgiveness, then you've rejected the forgiveness.

You're thinking with the mind of the world. We like to say "I forgive you but I'm not gonna have anything to do with you". That is not the picture of Biblical forgiveness.

Biblical forgiveness says "I forgive you and everything is as it was before the offense was made, and it is now as though the offense was never made".

The Forgiver and His forgiveness cannot be separated. You can't reject Him and accept the forgiveness that comes with Him.

Forgiveness is one-sided. That is the meaning of "grace" and "mercy". It is given... it does not have to be bought.

And it is GIVEN to those who want it. If you don't want it, He does not force it upon you.

God wants to be back in relationship with His creation. We broke that relationship by sinning.

He provided the means of fixing the brokenness by dying in our place. But we have to accept His gift of dying in our place for our sins. God wants folks to choose to love Him and accept what He did for us.

He doesn't force you to accept Him anymore than we want to force someone to love us.

 

[Skavau]

It doesn't matter if I believe it or not. God doesn't justly judge based upon what I believe. He judges based upon the truth HE has given.

God doesn't appear to justly judge at all based on what you've told us. That said, if it turns out that God does not exist or your understanding is wrong then it all along would have been nothing more than your belief.

But I do believe that a HOLY God is just in dealing however He chooses to deal with eternal unforgiven sin.

I am sure you think this is a moral defence - but it really is not. You reduce the meaning of 'holy' (not that holy has any real significant or objective meaning) and 'just' to nothing. God could effectively do anything he chooses to anyone and you would be under every commitment to just credulously label it as moral.

There are no atheists who have never sinned. And thus there are no atheists good enough of their own merit who deserve to be in heaven.

By extension earlier, you added that there is and can be no-one good enough to enter heaven regardless of their intent or actions throughout their life. Given that you believe everyone is inherently sinful at birthright the point of repeating it becomes futile. I know that you believe this. I am arguing against it as entirely barbaric and as nothing more than God punishing us for our own nature that he necessarily watched over, or directly intervened in.

God provided a way for you not to be condemned in your fallen state. The key is to avail ourselves of the remedy He provided.

The way provided is incoherent and immoral. If I didn't have inclination to debate, I might never hear anything more of Christianity. I would have no reason to believe in the concept of vicarious redemption and yet upon my passing I would be told that because of my inability to seek reconciliation with Christ I would be subject to nothing better than eternal torture. I would effectively be punished for my inability to believe in a truth claim and held accountable for my own nature (as directed by God).

This is a moral outrage and no person remotely versed in human rights and individual liberty can not speak out against this contemptible idea.

You're the one CHOOSING to sin. No one else does it for you. Thus YOU are personally responsible.

I would be choosing to sin as based upon my nature and wretchedness by birthright. As approved by God.

Godly morality rests in the holiness of God. The world's morality rests in the morality of the world. Again, an atheist may be moral in the world's eyes and never commit anything the "world" considers bad. But he rejects God. That's why everyone who has ever gone to hell and who will ever go to hell goes.

So now people go to hell for thought-crime, do they? You think the inability to come to the correct conclusion about God's existence and the existence of saviour as peddled in traditional Christian doctrine is reason enough for eternal torment?

I'll let God speak for Himself. His word says 19 One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” 20 But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’”[h] 21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?

Romans 9:19-21

This isn't a moral argument. This is just a reiteration that you don't think that God should be questioned. They are not the same thing and it is to your shame that you conflate them.

18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. Romans 1:18-20

This is just accusing me of being a liar. Not a mature debating tactic be it 'inspired' by scripture or not.

You weren't born with sin. You were born into sin and started to sin yourself.

This is a unique form of doublethink that takes its inspiration from semantics. I was born into sin then. I was still born with the inherent propensity to sin and indeed you have repeatedly stated that everyone will sin based on this. Does not change my point at all.

The sin is YOUR own. Just as the police hold you, and not someone else responsible when you break the law, God will hold YOU responsible for the laws you have broken.

The police are not responsible for creating me with the propensity to commit crime. Ask me however, who gets blamed when violent crime offenders are released early from their sentence and
go out to immediately commit another crime.

Unforgiven sin is eternally unforgiven. And thus the one on whom the unforgiven sin rests must be eternally separated from the Holiness of the One Who offered forgiveness, but was rejected.

So why does that necessarily involve eternal torture?

 

[Freodin]

If you reject the One offereing you forgiveness, then you've rejected the forgiveness.

You're thinking with the mind of the world. We like to say "I forgive you but I'm not gonna have anything to do with you". That is not the picture of Biblical forgiveness.

Biblical forgiveness says "I forgive you and everything is as it was before the offense was made, and it is now as though the offense was never made".

The Forgiver and His forgiveness cannot be separated. You can't reject Him and accept the forgiveness that comes with Him.


And it is GIVEN to those who want it. If you don't want it, He does not force it upon you.

God wants to be back in relationship with His creation. We broke that relationship by sinning.

He provided the means of fixing the brokenness by dying in our place. But we have to accept His gift of dying in our place for our sins. God wants folks to choose to love Him and accept what He did for us.

He doesn't force you to accept Him anymore than we want to force someone to love us.

I bolded the interesting part. You say it yourself... but you cannot accept it.

You cannot force forgiveness on anyone. You cannot force someone to accept it. You don't need to!

You just forgive.

 

[Zaac]

God doesn't appear to justly judge at all based on what you've told us. That said, if it turns out that God does not exist or your understanding is wrong then it all along would have been nothing more than your belief.

And if it turns out that everything is just as He says in His word, you're lost for all eternity. So why not hedge your bet on being forgiven for all eternity?

What's unjust about eternal unforgiven sin receiving eternal punishment?

I am sure you think this is a moral defence - but it really is not. You reduce the meaning of 'holy' (not that holy has any real significant or objective meaning) and 'just' to nothing. God could effectively do anything he chooses to anyone and you would be under every commitment to just credulously label it as moral.

Sure He could. But God's Holiness and justice DEMANDS that He do exactly what He says He will do or else He would be a liar and no different than man.

By extension earlier, you added that there is and can be no-one good enough to enter heaven regardless of their intent or actions throughout their life. Given that you believe everyone is inherently sinful at birthright the point of repeating it becomes futile. I know that you believe this. I am arguing against it as entirely barbaric and as nothing more than God punishing us for our own nature that he necessarily watched over, or directly intervened in.

You exist because God allows you to exist. You sin because God allows you to sin. God allow you to sin doesn't make God responsible for your sin.

But because He loves us so much, He gave HIS life and took our sin, for which we should be responsible upon Himself.

The answer to what you believe to be barbaric is to accept His reprieve. If it's barbaric for God to punish us for our own nature, what does it make us for rejecting Him and His deliverance of the remedy of our own nature.

What do you suggest a just God do about eternally unforgiven sin? It might be nice for you and others to come up with what you think are just alternatives. But God is God ALONE and has already deemed how things will be.

The way provided is incoherent and immoral.

BAsed upon what? What is YOUR measure of morality?

If I didn't have inclination to debate, I might never hear anything more of Christianity. I would have no reason to believe in the concept of vicarious redemption and yet upon my passing I would be told that because of my inability to seek reconciliation with Christ I would be subject to nothing better than eternal torture. I would effectively be punished for my inability to believe in a truth claim and held accountable for my own nature (as directed by God).

And that is exactly what will take place if you continue to reject the gift that He offers.

You seem to think that on some level you're capable of doing something that should make you worthy of not being subject to eternity in hell.

Can any of your works forgive you of a single sin?

As there are penalties for beaking man's laws, there is a penalty for breaking God's law.

He's given us a "get out of jail free card". But some are too stubborn and hard-hearted to take it because they can't believe that God let them spend eternity in the lake of fire for breaking the laws that He allows for them to break.

This is a moral outrage and no person remotely versed in human rights and individual liberty can not speak out against this contemptible idea.

Again, you're speaking from the perspective of man being his own god. Your human rights and individual liberties don't mean a squat of beans if the One in charge says so.

It's just like folks thinking they can go be captured by terrorists and then suddenly thinking quoting language from the Geneva Convention is gonna keep the terrorists from harming or killing them.

God is God alone.

I would be choosing to sin as based upon my nature and wretchedness by birthright. As approved by God.

And in your choosing, YOU are responsible. He's provides the assistance for you to avoid the punishment. The question becomes are YOU willing enough to let go of your contempt that God would dare to give you the freedom to do something and then hold you responsible for what you CHOSE to do, and just accept the remedy?

So now people go to hell for thought-crime, do they? You think the inability to come to the correct conclusion about God's existence and the existence of saviour as peddled in traditional Christian doctrine is reason enough for eternal torment?

God judges the heart. We commit sin all the time that we don't even know we have committed. You couldn't keep count if you wanted to. That's why ALL are worthy of eternal separation from his Holiness. But He made a way for us avoid that separation.

This isn't a moral argument. This is just a reiteration that you don't think that God should be questioned. They are not the same thing and it is to your shame that you conflate them.

I didn't say that God can't be questioned. I like having a good fight with God. Helps me to get stuff off my chest some time. But I know enough about God to know that He doesn't change. He is absolute truth. And absolute truth does not change. I can question Him all I want. But at the end of the day, if I trust that He is GOD, and He IS, then I will trust that He is ALl-KNOWING just as He says.

And if I trust Him, I'm definitely in the end going to trust His ALL-KNOWINGNESS over what I think I know.

This is just accusing me of being a liar. Not a mature debating tactic be it 'inspired' by scripture or not.

It is what it is. And It's God's word, not mine. But again, God has provided the remedy for you to be forgiven of that lie too.

This is a unique form of doublethink that takes its inspiration from semantics. I was born into sin then. I was still born with the inherent propensity to sin and indeed you have repeatedly stated that everyone will sin based on this. Does not change my point at all.

And it does not change the fact that all are worthy of eternal separation from God because of the sin that is committed.

The police are not responsible for creating me with the propensity to commit crime. Ask me however, who gets blamed when violent crime offenders are released early from their sentence and
go out to immediately commit another crime.

Man was not created with the propensity to commit crime. Man was created with a free will. Man CHOSE to commit crime because man listened to something that convinced man to not trust the word that God had given.

And folks are still using that same tactic today.

You don't want to trust what His word says because you think it's barbaric. Adam and Eve were persuaded also.

But God has provided a remedy for your sin. Do you want It?

So why does that necessarily involve eternal torture?

What should it involve? Is there much incentive to want to stay out of hell or the lake of fire if you were told it's just gonna be like the Ritz Carlton?

 

[CaliforniaSun]

The older I get, the idea of a redemptive human blood sacrifice becomes more repugnant to me. It literally is offensive to me. The entire idea that I am somehow a serf, subjected to the ownership of a god, who loves me enough to create me, but just enough to send me to eternal torture, unless of course I believe in his "son" who he kills as a blood sacrifice for my "sins," seems like pure, mythological fantasy. To each their own I guess.

 

[Zaac]

I bolded the interesting part. You say it yourself... but you cannot accept it.

You cannot force forgiveness on anyone. You cannot force someone to accept it. You don't need to!

You just forgive.

Ungh ungh. What I have said is your concept of forgiveness is different from the Biblical concept.

Biblical fogiveness is sought from the one who has been wronged. If you have wronged God by sinning against Him, then Biblical forgiveness demands that you go to Him to be forgiven.

 

[Zaac]

The older I get, the idea of a redemptive human blood sacrifice becomes more repugnant to me. It literally is offensive to me.

What happened on the Cross should be offensive to you. An innocent man was tortured and killed so that you and I could be forgiven of our sins and receive eternal life if we accepted the gift Jesus offers.

The entire idea that I am somehow a serf, subjected to the ownership of a god, who loves me enough to create me, but just enough to send me to eternal torture, unless of course I believe in his "son" who he kills as a blood sacrifice for my "sins," seems like pure, mythological fantasy. To each their own I guess.

Then you attest that you're ready to receive the alternative. No one can really stop you from choosing to go to hell. You just made known that you know the Gospel story, but it seems like pure, mythological fantasy.

Hopefully something will cross your path that points you towards Christ and His saving grace. But His forbearance will not always be available.

 

[Freodin]

Ungh ungh. What I have said is your concept of forgiveness is different from the Biblical concept.

Biblical fogiveness is sought from the one who has been wronged. If you have wronged God by sinning against Him, then Biblical forgiveness demands that you go to Him to be forgiven.

Yes, you can seek forgiveness. And you can give forgiveness without it being sought.

In fact, this is what the Bible says: "... and forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. "

We ourselves forgive summarily everyone who is indebted to us... if they ask or not. And God is asked to do the same, in the same way.

 

[CaliforniaSun]

What happened on the Cross should be offensive to you. An innocent man was tortured and killed so that you and I could be forgiven of our sins and receive eternal life if we accepted the gift Jesus offers.



Then you attest that you're ready to receive the alternative. No one can really stop you from choosing to go to hell. You just made known that you know the Gospel story, but it seems like pure, mythological fantasy.

Hopefully something will cross your path that points you towards Christ and His saving grace. But His forbearance will not always be available.

I said the idea of a human blood sacrifice, not the actual event. Please don't conflate the two. Much like the idea of the tooth fairy, I used to believe it, then I got older, and I didn't. This is how I feel about religions/gods/supernatural/theism/etc.

As for innocent people dying, it's unfortunate, often violent, and happens every day. Again, it's the idea of a human blood sacrifice will somehow atone for every "wrong" thing I think, say, do, or witness, seems silly to me at this point. And what's so amazing about offering your son/yourself, to be killed, knowing in three days it'd all be over? Not so impressive.

As for crossing my path with Christ, I've been there, done that. Ten years ago, I would be arguing just as you are now. So, my hope for you, then, would be that someday you'll cross paths with reason, and adjust your faith to fit the evidence.

 

[selfinflikted]

As for innocent people dying, it's unfortunate, often violent, and happens every day. Again, it's the idea of a human blood sacrifice will somehow atone for every "wrong" thing I think, say, do, or witness, seems silly to me at this point. And what's so amazing about offering your son/yourself, to be killed, knowing in three days it'd all be over? Not so impressive.

What never made sense to me, is why all the superfluous rigmarole in the first place? Couldn't god have made things so all this fluff wasn't even necessary?

 

[Skavau]

And if it turns out that everything is just as He says in His word, you're lost for all eternity. So why not hedge your bet on being forgiven for all eternity?

Because I am not credulous and I am not intellectually dishonest. Your criteria also does not take into account the possibility that Islam could be true and by the account of Islam both you and me are destined for eternal torture.

What's unjust about eternal unforgiven sin receiving eternal punishment?

It is disproportionate. The term 'eternal unforgiven sin' was made up. It punishes people merely for acting upon their own nature as bestowed upon them by God. You necessarily believe that God knows and has always known that everyone would 'sin' (in accordance with their own state) and yet chooses to create these people knowing that they would always fail.

Sure He could. But God's Holiness and justice DEMANDS that He do exactly what He says He will do or else He would be a liar and no different than man.

You're already on record defending this God's 'right' to torture people for not believing the correct information. It is not a big step forward (or backward, all things considered) to defend his right to lie and deceive his creation.

You exist because God allows you to exist. You sin because God allows you to sin. God allow you to sin doesn't make God responsible for your sin.

God is de facto responsible for my sin on consequence of him creating me with the propensity to sin.

But because He loves us so much, He gave HIS life and took our sin, for which we should be responsible upon Himself.

An incoherent pseudo-solution that insists upon redemption through thought. It ignores the fact that accepting said redemption is done based on intellectual and evidentary reasons and those who do not accept it are not rebelling or rejecting it, but merely disbelieving the entire story as true and relevant.

The answer to what you believe to be barbaric is to accept His reprieve. If it's barbaric for God to punish us for our own nature, what does it make us for rejecting Him and His deliverance of the remedy of our own nature.

I am not 'rejecting him'. I don't believe God exists. I am no more rejecting God than I am Allah. I am no more rejecting the promise of salvation than I am the promise of Jannah. This is why it is an incoherent setup. It insists solely upon a method of redemption based upon believing specific things and smears those who don't and can't believe in those things.

What do you suggest a just God do about eternally unforgiven sin? It might be nice for you and others to come up with what you think are just alternatives. But God is God ALONE and has already deemed how things will be.

God should recognise that he created and oversaw an imperfect creation and punish and reward people in consideration and understanding of their weaknesses and strengths. None of it necessitates or needs eternal torture. Insisting that they must be either perfect or absolute conformists for redemption is incoherent at best and capricious at worst.

And that is exactly what will take place if you continue to reject the gift that He offers.

It is disturbing as to how much piety you can speak of such barbarity. You are literally endorsing thought-crime. You hold up God as a supernatural version of Sauron, or the 'dear leader' of North Korea. You want live under the banner of a celestial dictatorship, you're welcome.

You seem to think that on some level you're capable of doing something that should make you worthy of not being subject to eternity in hell.

No-one, not even Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot are deserving of eternal torture. Its methods are brutal, sadistic and its purpose is self-defeating and meaningless.

Can any of your works forgive you of a single sin?

Yes. People forgive people all the time for their discretions when they reform through good behaviour.

As there are penalties for beaking man's laws, there is a penalty for breaking God's law.

But I don't believe in God. I have no belief in said 'law'. How is it coherent for God to expect me to adhere and recognise his precepts when I don't even believe that he exists?

He's given us a "get out of jail free card". But some are too stubborn and hard-hearted to take it because they can't believe that God let them spend eternity in the lake of fire for breaking the laws that He allows for them to break.

That is only half of the setup. I despise the 'lake of fire' on the basis of its unyielding and infinite promotion of sadism for thought-crime. A God that would propose this is frankly not worthy of worship.

Again, you're speaking from the perspective of man being his own god. Your human rights and individual liberties don't mean a squat of beans if the One in charge says so.

There we have it then. You concede the point. Morality means nothing to you. Humanity means nothing to you. The only thing that can be relevant to you is God and you literally believe humanity to be nothing more than tools for God's grand endeavours. You propose a morality of systematic obedience and capitulation to authority. You claim that so long as God decrees X then it is right. You do not, or cannot say that things such as murder, theft, rape, slavery, torture etc are wrong because of their impact on the lives of other people. You say that these things are wrong just because God says so.

You distort the term 'moral' to mean 'obedience' and the term 'immoral' to mean 'disobedience'. If you really, truly believe that this is true then you could have no objection to anything God could ever say. If hypothetically, God was to decree murder as valid - you could have no mechanism to disapprove. If God was to state that rape was wholly acceptable - you would have no reasoning in your library to dispute that. The terms justice and compassion, just like morality can have no meaning in your dichtonomy. It creates an applicable converse to the opposite of Dostoyevsky's famous quote in the Brother's Karamazov. I'll say: with God, all things are possible.

It's just like folks thinking they can go be captured by terrorists and then suddenly thinking quoting language from the Geneva Convention is gonna keep the terrorists from harming or killing them.

Wow. You just compared God to terrorists. Good work.

And in your choosing, YOU are responsible. He's provides the assistance for you to avoid the punishment.

Is this then a sick joke by God? He deliberately infects us with the propensity to sin (providing us with a sinful nature) and then decides to punish us for it. The clause that allows people to receive pardons has no consideration whatsoever for those who did not know the pardon exists, or rather those who did not even know or believe that we had a 'sinful nature'.

God judges the heart. We commit sin all the time that we don't even know we have committed. You couldn't keep count if you wanted to. That's why ALL are worthy of eternal separation from his Holiness. But He made a way for us avoid that separation.

So, that's a yes then. God does approve of thought-crime and you appear to idolise that. You are living in a literal 1984 and feel proud for it.

It is what it is. And It's God's word, not mine. But again, God has provided the remedy for you to be forgiven of that lie too.

It is accusing me of being a liar, regardless of whether you think it as God's word or not.

And it does not change the fact that all are worthy of eternal separation from God because of the sin that is committed.

Except you haven't queried why our sins command eternal seperation.

Man was not created with the propensity to commit crime. Man was created with a free will. Man CHOSE to commit crime because man listened to something that convinced man to not trust the word that God had given.

"You weren't born with sin. You were born into sin and started to sin yourself."

God created us with full knowledge that we all would sin. He has always known this and yet still proceeds to punish us for it.

You don't want to trust what His word says because you think it's barbaric. Adam and Eve were persuaded also.

But God has provided a remedy for your sin. Do you want It?

I would not even if I believed your doctrine to be true become so self-serving and credulous as to surrender my moral precepts on the basis of promise. You believe in a doctrine that sends millions of people to eternal torture for the 'crime' of not believing in God. You are literally in support of a supernatural dictator that knows what I think, how I think, and will convict me of thought-crime. You are for the surrender of all humanity to this barbarity and you ask me, rather naively, if I'll bow my knees?

What should it involve? Is there much incentive to want to stay out of hell or the lake of fire if you were told it's just gonna be like the Ritz Carlton?

Annihilation.

An interesting reveal though. You implicate yourself as self-serving by asking such a question. Is the only reason you're obedient to God is fear of his punishment?

 

[Skavau]

What happened on the Cross should be offensive to you. An innocent man was tortured and killed so that you and I could be forgiven of our sins and receive eternal life if we accepted the gift Jesus offers.

You are in no state to begin sharing your concern for innocents. You adhere to a doctrine that promotes eternal torture for what we think. This is even more perverted when one remembers where you live. In one sentence you will insist that human rights means nothing and that God may do as he pleases and in the next sentence reveal your compassion for the blood shed by a specific innocent.

You live in a nation that abhors torture. You live in a nation that abhors any talk of 'thought-crime' and you live in a country that works for its people. You then use all the resources of that country to preach barbarity about how you think that it all could be done away with and disregarded if God deemed it appropriate. You are more in common with the Mullahs of Saudi Arabia than you do your homeland.

 

[Zaac]

Yes, you can seek forgiveness. And you can give forgiveness without it being sought.

Sure you can. As an unforgiven person who has not accepted the gift that Christ offers, you can do whatever you want and it essentially mean to you whatever you want it to mean.

But ultimately, whether folks like it or not, it's what it means to God.

In fact, this is what the Bible says: "... and forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. "

And that is said by CHRISTIANS who have gone to God for forgiveness FIRST who understand that God expects us to forgive because we have been forgiven.

God is the standard. He has not wronged you and has nothing to be forgiven of. We wrong Him and must go to Him to be forgiven because that's the way He deemed it to be.

We ourselves forgive summarily everyone who is indebted to us... if they ask or not. And God is asked to do the same, in the same way.

[/QUOTE]

You're placing the cart before the horse. The Scripture again is how God expects CHRISTIANS to respond. Christians forgive because they have gone to God FIRST to be forgiven.

 

[Zaac]

What never made sense to me, is why all the superfluous rigmarole in the first place? Couldn't god have made things so all this fluff wasn't even necessary?

Sure He could have. All He would have had to do was take away that free will that man is so fond of and forced us to obey everything and to love Him.

 

[Freodin]

Zaac: "As there are penalties for beaking man's laws, there is a penalty for breaking God's law."

Skavau: "But I don't believe in God. I have no belief in said 'law'. How is it coherent for God to expect me to adhere and recognise his precepts when I don't even believe that he exists?"

This is another interesting point. In fact you are a little off here, Skavau: you can be punished under a law that you don't know or don't accept.

But Zaac is completely wrong here. The whole point of Christian theology is just the opposite: that there isn't a penalty for breaking God's law.

 

[Freodin]

Sure He could have. All He would have had to do was take away that free will that man is so fond of and forced us to obey everything and to love Him.

So, why doesn't he?

 

[Skavau]

Zaac: "As there are penalties for beaking man's laws, there is a penalty for breaking God's law."

Skavau: "But I don't believe in God. I have no belief in said 'law'. How is it coherent for God to expect me to adhere and recognise his precepts when I don't even believe that he exists?"

This is another interesting point. In fact you are a little off here, Skavau: you can be punished under a law that you don't know or don't accept.

But Zaac is completely wrong here. The whole point of Christian theology is just the opposite: that there isn't a penalty for breaking God's law.

Well sure, you can be punished for not knowing the law here but my main point there was to query why God would expect atheists to adhere to his law when they didn't believe he exists. If someone breaks a little-known law in the real world, the question would still stand. They genuinely would not know it.

Regarding your second point, it is half true. Those that know God's law and break it are not held accountable for it and those that do not know God's law and break it are held accountable for it.

Strange is putting it mildly.

 

[Freodin]

Sure you can. As an unforgiven person who has not accepted the gift that Christ offers, you can do whatever you want and it essentially mean to you whatever you want it to mean.

But ultimately, whether folks like it or not, it's what it means to God.



And that is said by CHRISTIANS who have gone to God for forgiveness FIRST who understand that God expects us to forgive because we have been forgiven.

God is the standard. He has not wronged you and has nothing to be forgiven of. We wrong Him and must go to Him to be forgiven because that's the way He deemed it to be.




You're placing the cart before the horse. The Scripture again is how God expects CHRISTIANS to respond. Christians forgive because they have gone to God FIRST to be forgiven.

Well... goes to show that again Atheists can be more moral than Christians... we can forgive without being forgiven.

 

[Freodin]

Well sure, you can be punished for not knowing the law here but my main point there was to query why God would expect atheists to adhere to his law when they didn't believe he exists. If someone breaks a little-known law in the real world, the question would still stand. They genuinely would not know it.

Regarding your second point, it is half true. Those that know God's law and break it are not held accountable for it and those that do not know God's law and break it are held accountable for it.

Strange is putting it mildly.

Strange indeed. It seems that there is just a single unforgivable crime: not asking for forgiveness.