Quote:
Originally Posted by Jibninjas
I would definitely say that the reward/punishment view is wrong. Although many people turn it into that.
You need to look at it in terms of natural consequences. God is letting you know what you need to do to have eternal life, and the consequence of not following down that road.
If I told you that putting your hand in the fire will burn you, and you do it and get burned. Did I punish you with the burn? No. If you don't put your hand in the fire and don't get burned, did I reward you with not getting burned? No.
To say God rewards/punishes implies that things could be different. The rules are not arbitrary, they are what they are as a natural extension of God's nature.
The big problem with the bolded is that God just plain hasn't given me the warning. What's more is, he's set things up so that I can't avoid putting my hand in the fire. I know you say he has in fact communicated with me, but ifThe Bible meets my standard of authenticity, I really have to look at all the other (contradictory) religious texts too, so I'm still left to work it out for myself. Since God endowed me with a sense of reason and parents who didn't indoctrinate me, it's inevitable that I would dismiss all religion.
By saying that I have a choice, you are pretending to know my character better than I do, I hope you understand why this is very irritating. I think you're wrong but I'm not going to tell you that your mind works differently to how it does.
Last edited by sickofants; 01-08-2011 at 05:52 AM.
Reason: reword last sentence, still not happy
