re: #613 freedom_fighter

I find it to be morally incoherent that people who have conducted themselves with scrupulous kindness and altruistic care for their fellow human beings should be sent to eternal torment in the absence of an embrace of a religious dogma, while serial killers and mass murderers can make a deathbed or pre-execution conversion and be gifted with a slot in Heaven.

You failed to answer this question: What faith is it that believes that a person who lives a good and decent life qualifies for a positive afterlife (heaven)?

You find this morally incoherent because you don’t realize the magnintude of human sin. You look at religion as a side note, just some “dogma” where I am just suppose to follow X set of rules, check the block etc, but the most important thing is to live a good life, be kind and generous to my fellow man. And while those things are commendable (especially from a human viewpoint) they are like “filthy rags” to a righteous God. If you were created to glorify God and live to worship Him, have a personal relationship with Him and love Him and you rejected Him instead your entire life, how can you not see that this is a bigger deal than the fact that you were “pleasant” to people, paid your taxes on time, and helped elderly across the street? That was not the point of your existence. As to the number of murderous converts on deathbeds, I doubt this number is high anyway, but what concern is that of you. I am accountable for God for my actions not my neighbors. Either way, most “good” people, who would have all their deeds exposed would be shown to be not so “good” anyway.

Any God who would condemn people who had lived exemplary lives to eternal torment simply because they failed to state the Christian equivalent of the Muslim shahada, and yet would admit into Heaven the most execrable of individuals, merely because they recited such a mantra before they shuffled off their mortal coils, would have to be, in my view, petulant, prideful, and ultimately immoral. I cannot see where such a God as you describe would deserve the admiration of decent people, much less their prostrate fealty and obseiance.

Your position condemn Gandhi to Hell. And yet admits Adolph Hitler, who stated in 1941 to his chief of staff, General Gerhard Engel, that he would always remain a committed Catholic, to Heaven.