@FutureSE
Thank you for being honest. One concerning thing I noticed with your objections is they are skeptical toward the ancillary elements of Christianity but don't touch on the lynchpin of it...
Concerning any future arguments, just as the biblical God hardened the heart of the Pharaoh in Exodus, apparently he has hardened mine in confounded disbelief. The pharaoh is again a situation where the biblical God directly intervened in free will, but this time he killed innocent children because well, he's God and he can. <-- This situation runs rampant in Genesis, it's almost like a perfect God couldn't get his creation right. Perhaps, if the absent father had spent positive time with his children, drowning them all for disobedience/blood mixing (spawning nephalim) wouldn't have been necessary. For a loving and all powerful, all present, and all knowing God, it seems strange that he would handle things in such a manner. Much less send someone to hell for eternity for simply not knowing he existed. This situation makes me feel really bad for the Sentinelese people off the coast of India as they're all going to hell and don't even know a hell exists. Plenty of other savages were never exposed to Jesus, despite his saying " I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Imagine waking up after you die and just thinking "Shit, now I'm on fire, FOREVER, and who's this Jesus guy who is so upset with me because I didn't know his name?" All this as pitchfork carrying demons stab you in the butt with said pitchfork and cackle with raucous laughter. This depiction of hell comes from Dante's Inferno by the way. There is actually precious little mention of hell in the Bible. The Jewish religion, from which modern Christianity sprang, doesn't possess a true hell like Christianity as Sheol was more just underworld where everyone went presumably to party and reminisce about the silly things they had done while alive). The other roots of Christianity, Zoroastrianism, claimed hell was a temporary place meant to burn out the impurities acquired in life, similar to forging the impurities out of iron. I've also had the question about mentally handicapped people that sin and can't understand the concept of Jesus, seems like they get a free pass. Doesn't really seem fair to me.
I take the Bible to be a literal text as it only makes sense that it should be so. Otherwise, individuals of a lesser mental caliber wouldn't stand a chance at its comprehension and would be predestined to make the wrong choices. With that being the case, if there were a perfect God, I don't know why he would need a revision to his Holy book with the New Testament and the Blood Covenant. It's also even stranger to me that the Gospel's directly conflict in several accounts. Admittedly, this wasn't directly apparent to me but upon rereading them after this fact was pointed out, Jesus's burial and resurrection accounts are definitely contradictory and that's merely only the most glaringly obvious to me. I can appreciate the sentiment and I certainly know you mean well. As it is though, I will not respond to further public chat about religion on this board as there is certainly a time and a place (I enjoy the conversation) but where it is bothering others isn't it. If you wish to continue, please PM me but be aware that I love to argue, this isn't the first debate I've had on religion, and while I was impressionable at some point in the past, I am perfectly comfortable not having answers and it will take direct tangible evidence to change my mind. Merely stating personal experiences will not do it as I haven't experienced your life. If personal experience and coincidence works for you, great. The way I see it, if there was an all loving and all knowing God, he would know exactly how to reach me and, just like I would with my children, I would expect him to at least try through a method he knew I would find undeniable. There is my standard of proof, have God speak directly to me (or to the world) in a way that can't be written off as faith or coincidence. Then and only then, I'll believe.
