Reply #90: Zeb, do you have any thoughts or feelings of your own?

[MikeH]

I really and seriously doubt that you do.

Everything I have seen you say is in strict accordance with your very narrow, rigid, fundamentalist understanding of the Bible and overall way of thinking.

I really have to wonder how you or anyone can really live with believing the kind of God you believe in. How can you love and joyfully serve that kind of God?

How can you get any joy and enjoyment out of life if you know that many of your fellow humans are headed for hell if they happen to miss out on accepting Christ in this lifetime? How can you accept the awful duty of telling others about Christ, motivated by such a concern?

Zeb, I am not exactly certain where you are on the political spectrum, but I see your rigid thinking and regurgitation of talking points from the Bible and from other fundamentalist Christians to be no different from the stubborn loyalty of the 30% of Americans who still support shrub, or from the attitude of shrub himself, "stay the course in Iraq".

In fact I really don't see your rigid adherence to the Bible and to fundamentalist Christianity to be any different from the unquestioning loyalty and obedience which "good" Germans gave to Hitler, the Fuhrer. Both you and the "good" Germans unquestioningly submit to a higher authority.

It is not much of a leap from believing in the kind of God you believe in, to committing atrocities against others, supposedly motivated by your concern about their "salvation" and their "own good". In fact that seems to be the precise motivation of atrocities committed by Christians in the past, such as the Inquisition, the Salem witch burnings, etc.

As Voltaire said, as long as people believe absurdities, they will continue to commit atrocities.

I know that I, for one, am not going to be intimidated into accepting your God's so called "gift" of "salvation" under the terms which you believe he offers such "gift".

Even if I do accept your God's "gift" for purely selfish reasons, i.e. for fire insurance, I know that I would be living a lie to really accept it. For instance, I totally reject the grim obligation and duty to worry about whether other people are "saved" or "unsaved", and to tell others about Christ motivated by such a concern.