Punishing Puppets

I recently realized another flaw in the Abrahamic religions.

Suppose for a moment that the Christians are right. Now, image a man spends his entire life devoted to Christ, spending all his days at a Church and following the Bible. But one day when he is an old man, he decides to convert to Islam. Two minutes after his decision he is hit by a car and killed. He goes to heaven, finds the Christians are right, and is sent to hell for eternity, despite his lifetime commitment to Christianity.

Yet according to the Christians, they believe god is omnipotent, so he has control over what happens to that man. So wasn’t god completely in charge of whether or not that man would go to heaven or hell? Had he had the car hit him two minutes earlier, he would have sent him to heaven for an eternity of bliss. But in just two minutes, god decided to send him to suffer an eternity of unfathomable agony in the bowels of hell.

Whereas imagine that the Muslims are right, and a man spends his entire life devoted to Christianity, but has a similar epiphany two minutes before he dies and becomes Muslim, and ends up in heaven. Once again it’s not a person who gets themselves into heaven, but god who manipulates those people on whether or not they get into heaven.

If a deity exists, he controls whether or not they are born into a culture or family that worships him, and controls whether or not the person discovers him.

So in the end, if there is a god, more specifically a god of a certain religion, he himself is entirely responsible for who gets into heaven through how he manipulates what happens on Earth. So why send puppets to heaven or hell for what they have no control over?

-madhatter0719

  • http://askegg.myopenid.com/ askegg

    Exactly. If there is an all knowing God out there, then his plan for the universe deliberetly included billions burning in hell for eternity. What kind of outcome requires such immeasurable suffering and pain? How does the theist reconcile a supposed all loving God with such behaviour?

    Surely such a beast is not worthy of praise and worship?

  • http://www.peteberwick.net Pete Berwick

    EXCELLENT! You nailed it on the head with this one, well done!

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On the 17 June 2012 I took part in a radio interview with Jared Orme (@conversionradio) of “Conversion Radio” in Minnisota regarding the contingency argument. The invitation was a response to my blog post and twitter conversation with Jared regarding apparent flaws I saw in the argument proposed, so he invited me onto his show for a chat.

I am told this interview went to air sometime later, however due to technical error Jared had lost the original record. I present it here unedited, although I did remove the pre and post chatter and some minor stuff in the middle where advertisements would have been placed. Listening back, there are points I wish I had communicated better and some I should have attacked much more forcefully. Oh well, maybe next time?

Please note there were some problems with the recording on my end as the Skype plugin I used did not seem to capture my microphone. In order to compensate I have compressed the recording, which gives it a rather loud flat sound. I am afraid this was the best I could do with the time, knowledge, and resources at my disposal.