Blog - Written by on Friday, January 16, 2009 10:08 - 2 Comments

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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