Ritalin M. Popsicle
September 1, 2003, 10:36 AM
Fundamentalist Christians often say that God's hands are free from the blood of those condemned to hell because we "choose to go to either heaven or hell. It's not God's fault we chose hell."
If that is true, then God is much like Monty Hall. There are two doors we can pick from, one clearly labeled "Heaven" and the other clearly labeled "Hell". Monty Hall urges us to pick Heaven. The audience calls for us to pick Heaven. But we, being the misguided souls that we are, pick Hell anyways. It's our own dumb fault. But is it really?
Let's go back to when God supposedly created the Universe. Now, God is supposed to be an omniscient being. He knows absolutely everything that there is to know. So when God creates X, God knows that Y will occur because of it. God knows exactly the chain of events that will happen when God creates X. God can alter that chain of events at any time by simpling altering X. But God chooses to go ahead and create X, knowing full well what he's doing. He's setting in motion a chain of events that only he has control over. Every cause has an effect, as every good Creationist will tell you. Every Y is the result of a long series of causes that all leads back to X, what God originally created. So do we really have free will? No. We are slaves to God's plan. Calvinists aren't far from the truth. If God really does exist, he simply must intend some people to go to Heaven and some people to go to Hell, and that's that. Nothing can change it except God, and he chooses not to.
So the Monty Hall analogy does not work unless:
A) God is not omniscient. Or...
B) God did not create the universe.
Neither of which are propositions that I think Christians will jump on.
A little background information on myself. My name is Ritalin M. Popsicle, and yes, this is my first thread. I hope to become a regular on this board, we'll see how it goes. I am not an atheist in the strictest sense; I am a Tibetan Buddhist, which pretty much makes me an apathetic agnostic (we don't know if there's a God and we don't care). I'll be happy to answer any questions regarding my beliefs at any time. Well, that's enough ranting for now. Hope to hear back from you.
If that is true, then God is much like Monty Hall. There are two doors we can pick from, one clearly labeled "Heaven" and the other clearly labeled "Hell". Monty Hall urges us to pick Heaven. The audience calls for us to pick Heaven. But we, being the misguided souls that we are, pick Hell anyways. It's our own dumb fault. But is it really?
Let's go back to when God supposedly created the Universe. Now, God is supposed to be an omniscient being. He knows absolutely everything that there is to know. So when God creates X, God knows that Y will occur because of it. God knows exactly the chain of events that will happen when God creates X. God can alter that chain of events at any time by simpling altering X. But God chooses to go ahead and create X, knowing full well what he's doing. He's setting in motion a chain of events that only he has control over. Every cause has an effect, as every good Creationist will tell you. Every Y is the result of a long series of causes that all leads back to X, what God originally created. So do we really have free will? No. We are slaves to God's plan. Calvinists aren't far from the truth. If God really does exist, he simply must intend some people to go to Heaven and some people to go to Hell, and that's that. Nothing can change it except God, and he chooses not to.
So the Monty Hall analogy does not work unless:
A) God is not omniscient. Or...
B) God did not create the universe.
Neither of which are propositions that I think Christians will jump on.
A little background information on myself. My name is Ritalin M. Popsicle, and yes, this is my first thread. I hope to become a regular on this board, we'll see how it goes. I am not an atheist in the strictest sense; I am a Tibetan Buddhist, which pretty much makes me an apathetic agnostic (we don't know if there's a God and we don't care). I'll be happy to answer any questions regarding my beliefs at any time. Well, that's enough ranting for now. Hope to hear back from you.