A Troubled Man wrote:
Is the "advice" we get from believers threats or warnings regarding Heaven and Hell?
IMHO, it's neither. It's just obnoxious arrogance. Sometimes clearly conscious and intentional, other times obviously unconscious and just reactionary to what the religion itself teaches people to believe. But it's obnoxious arrogance in either case.
A Troubled Man wrote:
Is it moral or immoral for believers to reiterate their "advice" to others?
Not when they hold it out as if they know it to be truth. It's entirely a faith-based religion. Therefore to hold out their faith as though it represents some sort of established truth is actually quite dishonest. And being dishonest is supposedly immoral.
So all evangelists who preach to people that the things they claim are 'truth' are actually dishonest liars. If they had an once of honesty they would confess that this is merely something that they choose to believe as a matter of pure faith.
And as soon as it is recognized and confessed to be faith then the evangelism is over.
After all, what are they asking me to place my faith in?
They are asking me to place my faith in the hope that I'm at odds with my creator to such a extreme degree that my creator had to have his only begotten son butchered on a pole to pay for my hatred of God.
Why in the world would I ever want to place my
faith in such a sick and perverted thing as this?
So once it is confessed to be nothing more than a faith-based hope, I can easily explain why I would never hope that such a horrible negative situation was the truth of reality.
And the evangelist is then dead in the water with nothing left but their own personal hope that they hate God so much that God had to have his only begotten son butchered on a Pole to pay for their disgusting unworthiness.
I honestly can't imagine why anyone would want to believe such a thing unless they are some sort of emotional masochist trying to spread emotional terrorism to others.
A Troubled Man wrote:
Would you conclude the "advice" is reason to reject any religion that offers it?
I think that can depend on what the advice is.
My advice to Christians is that, IMHO, it's not healthy for them to hope that they hate God so much that he had to have his only begotten son butchered to pay for their disgusting unworthiness, and that it's even less healthy for them to go around lying to other people proclaiming that their faith-based hope in these ancient fables represents some sort of truth of reality.
Not only are they preaching that they hate their own God but they are also preaching that everyone should hate their God as much as they do. And they are actually being quite dishonest to claim to know that this is the truth of reality (if they do indeed claim that).
And like I say, the moment they confess to not know whether it's true, then all they have left is an extremely sick and disgusting hope that they are trying to get other people to hope for as well.
So my first question to any evangelical Christian is the following:
1. Do you know for certain that what you believe is true?
If they claim to know that it is true, I'll call them a liar right to their face and tell them to get lost.
If they confess the truth that they only believe it as a matter of faith themselves, then I'll ask the second question?
2. Why would you believe on pure faith that you hate God so much that he had to have his only begotten son butchered on a pole to pay for your disgusting unworthiness?
Over the years I've heard many different answers to this question when I ask it.
They range from people confessing that they actually did hate God and they had committed horrible crimes before they were "saved", but now they see the light and love God.
Well that may work for some people but I don't fall into that category so their experience has nothing to do with me. There was never a time in my life when I hated God, and I've never done horrible criminal things. So their life's experience has nothing to do with me whatsoever.
Other people will claim that they never hated God and that this isn't what the crucifixion is all about, blah, blah, blah.
To them I simply say, "Fine, but you still have a faith-based belief that I am not personally interested in wasting my faith on"
The whole Christian brainwashing scheme of trying to convince people that if they refuse to cower down to Christianity they are rejecting God, is IMHO, the most disgusting and dishonest religious scam ever created by mankind.
IMHO, no moral or righteous God would ever stoop as low as Christianity stoops.
Therefore it is my conclusion that Christianity cannot have anything at all to do with any moral God.
It's disgusting. And I make absolutely no apologies for pointing this out.
