Barriers to belief

Arghhh!

Originally posted by FMF
They would have to be more convincing and more credible. I would "know" it if it happened. The stuff you propagate, for example, is neither convincing nor credible. If I thought it was, I would tell you. I suppose I will perhaps just be convinced by something someday (although I don't expect or anticipate it) and the credibility of it will be a realization (resu ...[text shortened]... several times. Relatively recently. You keep asking the same thing over and over and over again.

If you cannot decide whether something is credible or not, how do you know that your 'realization' is truly credible? Do you just 'realize' that as well?

Originally posted by divegeester...
For example telling someone "God loves them so much that he became human and came to earth and paid a terrible price for their sin so that they can be with him for eternity" is, one the face of it fairly unbelievable to the human mind. But is nevertheless an appealing account of love, family, self-sacrifice, atonement, redemption and salvation.

Howev ...[text shortened]... rd, apocalyptically hateful and a platform for the potential believer to reject the initial premise.

https://www.openbible.info/topics/hell

Both ideas come from the same source. So since the second is nonsense, what does that make the first.

Originally posted by Fetchmyjunk
If you cannot decide whether something is credible or not, how do you know that your 'realization' is truly credible? Do you just 'realize' that as well?

You've asked about this thing before and I have answered it and duscussed it. Perhaps you don't remember. Or perhaps you are pretending not to remember.

Originally posted by Fetchmyjunk
I don't think truth by nature is always necessarily believable.That said, I think people build mental barriers to reject certain beliefs based on past experiences. For example, if you had a bad experience with someone from a specific religious group, you may reject that religion based on the experience you had with said person and not necessarily because that religion does not make sense to you.

A major barrier is not so much past experience but anticipation of a possible future experience. That is the resentment that God will have the final say and that as the Judge He has the power to enforce His authority over that final say.

I am convinced that resentment of God's final authority fuels some unwillingness to believe. To fight this future inescapable final authority is more important to some sinners.

Notice how sinners will gravitate inevitably to expressing hatred for the revelation of eternal punishment. Nothing else of God's love, mercy, longsuffering, patience or salvation can be seen. These divine attributes are discarded. Only final judgment for rejectiing God is seen and hated. Some only see the inescapable event of final judgment for unrepentance.

I think if you look beyond some of the existential fog, a refusal to admit final consequences for unbelief are in God's hands and not the sinner's, is a barrier to belief.

Originally posted by sonship
A major barrier is not so much past experience but anticipation of a possible future experience. That is the resentment that God will have the final say and that as the Judge He has the power to enforce His authority over that final say.

I am convinced that resentment of God's final authority fuels some unwillingness to believe. To fight this future ...[text shortened]... final consequences for unbelief are in God's hands and not the sinner's, is a barrier to belief.

This is a load of presumptuous ~ and disingenuous ~ nonsense, sonship, which seeks to evade discussion of the question rather than engage it. Please try to remember that you are talking about people who don't believe the stuff you believe, and not about people who do believe it but just don't want to admit it, or who believe it but simply don't like it, or some other daft and clumsy psycholigically bogus rhetorical trick you are seeking to filter this question through.

Originally posted by sonship
Notice how sinners will gravitate inevitably to expressing hatred for the revelation of eternal punishment.

People who don't believe in your ideology of "eternal punishment" simply do not believe in "eternal punishment". Do you really not get that? Do actually think they somehow DO believe it but just say that they don't?

Originally posted by Fetchmyjunk
I believe the Bible is divinely inspired, can't see how any other religious book is even comparable.

Why do you believe what you do, to be the truth?

So out of all the hundreds or thousands of religions out there, ALL of those are valueless, cruel deceptions designed by the devil to lure unsuspecting victims into its web. And only the bible tells the absolute truth. Even though a god, whom you ascribe as all knowing, omnipotent, and so forth, would not need such things as tests, like telling Adam and Eve not to eat that deadly apple, or telling Abe to kill his son, as a test to his loyalty since this all knowing god would have known before it created the universe exactly what any given human would do when presented with some kind of godly test but that didn't stop the writers of the bible from this glaring plot failure, they just keep writing bullshyte tales in order to control their population who got very well programmed indeed.

Or this all knowing and loving god killing all the landform life on Earth to spite some bad humans. Come on, how can you read this utter bullshyte and still believe it, here in the 21st century with 300 years of solid science behind us telling us quite firmly Earth is not 6000 odd years old but closer to 6 BILLION years, well 4.5 but who'se counting? Funny how an obscure tribe in a desert would have been given the truth of god but you have to know at the same time there were already thousands of societies already extant who for some unknown reason, this alleged god of yours decided NOT to tell this universal truth.

So we have to assume, seeing this allmighty god, this loving gracious god WANTED it that way where only some obscure desert tribe got the good word while the rest of the entire planet is doomed to hell and damnation.

Why don't you think about it with your OWN mind, get over the programming and life a real life that doesn't require constant referal to a non existant bible god.

You think miracles occur but some kid gets well and is pronounced a miracle cure but 300 MILLION dead from ONE disease, TB, and most of them god fearing christians, THEY ALL DIED. Yet here is this one kid who got well, and now your god saved that one kid but turned its rhetorical back on one third of a BILLION people with a dread disease.

REALLY loving god you have there.

Originally posted by FMF
You've asked about this thing before and I have answered it and duscussed it. Perhaps you don't remember. Or perhaps you are pretending not to remember.

You have answered a question that I haven't asked you before. You must be confusing me with someone else.

Originally posted by sonhouse
So out of all the hundreds or thousands of religions out there, ALL of those are valueless, cruel deceptions designed by the devil to lure unsuspecting victims into its web. And only the bible tells the absolute truth. Even though a god, whom you ascribe as all knowing, omnipotent, and so forth, would not need such things as tests, like telling Adam and Eve ...[text shortened]... ack on one third of a BILLION people with a dread disease.

REALLY loving god you have there.

If the Bible is not true, what do you view to be the truth?

Originally posted by FMF
People who don't believe in your ideology of "eternal punishment" simply do not believe in "eternal punishment". Do you really not get that? Do actually think they somehow DO believe it but just say that they don't?

I don't share your belief that the Bible's truth is an "ideology" in regard to either eternal salvation or eternal judgment.

Understand that I don't have this belief of yours in "my ideology" here.

Originally posted by sonship
A major barrier is not so much past experience but anticipation of a possible future experience. That is the resentment that God will have the final say and that as the Judge He has the power to enforce His authority over that final say.

I am convinced that resentment of God's final authority fuels some unwillingness to believe. To fight this future ...[text shortened]... final consequences for unbelief are in God's hands and not the sinner's, is a barrier to belief.

"I am convinced that resentment of God's final authority fuels some unwillingness to believe."


If God does not exist, why would one resent a final authority that equally does not exist.
Once again you are merely revealing the deep rooted misunderstanding you have of an atheistic mind set.

Just to clarify 2 misunderstandings you have repeatedly made in these forums, one about Hinduism and one about atheism:
1. Hindus do not believe that each reincarnation creates a separate soul. They believe it is the same soul that is reincarnated, even if there is no memory of the previous lives lived. No matter how many times you post otherwise, this continues to remain the case.
2. Atheists 'do not' believe God exists. They do not secretly believe in Him and then reject him or turn away from him out of resentment. Atheists simply do not believe he is there. No matter how many times you post otherwise, this continues to remain the case.

Originally posted by Ghost of a Duke
No matter how many times you post otherwise, this continues to remain the case.

Do you think perhaps his rejection of these obvious truths, is because he once had some bad experiences with some atheists? Or is it his anticipation of a possible future experience should he choose to accept the truth?

Originally posted by sonship
I don't share your belief that the Bible's truth is an "ideology" in regard to either eternal salvation or eternal judgment.

Understand that I don't have this belief of yours in "my ideology" here.

The ideas and claims you propagate are merely an "ideology" ~ about things like morality, justice, punishment, and the abjectly misanthropic outlook regarding your fellow humans you promote ~ to people who don't have the same belief in supernatural things that you have. Surely you must realize that?

Originally posted by divegeester
Of course truth isn't always believable, but this has nothing to do with the nature of the truth and more to do with nature of the recipient and the way the particular truth is packaged and presented.

For example telling someone "God loves them so much that he became human and came to earth and paid a terrible price for their sin so that they can be ...[text shortened]... apocalyptically hateful and a platform for the potential believer to reject the initial premise.

Truth is stranger than fiction.

For example, if you had told me 10 years ago that Trump would be President, Bruce Jenner was really a woman, and the Cubs would win a world series, would any of us believed it?