The conscience is something you choose to obey. You don't choose what it tells you is right from wrong. In that regard, it is more like an automatic reflex. It weighs in with right or wrong whether you want it to or not. But you can tell it to shut up.
So...are not suicidal muslim extremests who blow themselves up following the conscience of their fundamentalist beliefs? How not?
No suicide bombers are following their religious beliefs not their conscience. The two are different. Their conscience tells them that life is sacred and killing others is wrong. But they override that conscience with their desire for virgins and their dissatisfaction with this life.
"Which makes this god's catch-22,eh?"
It is not God's desire that everyone sins. But it is what we do.
Under these christian precepts, you can be a useless, evil bastard your whole stinkin' life, but if you repent in the last stages of your life, you can be saved. What a great way to promote being an evil bastard most of your life.
A person that in love with evil, isn't likely to come to Jesus anytime. And you never know whether you will live to see tomorrow.
But I am thankful for every evil bastard that suddenly woke up and repented whether he did it early in life or at the end.
When Jonah unwillingly preached to the Ninevah (a city renowned for being full of evil bastards), Ninevah repented and here's the rest of the story...
Jonah 4:1 But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry. 2 And he prayed unto the LORD, and said, I pray thee, O LORD, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil. 3 Therefore now, O LORD, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live. 4 Then said the LORD, Doest thou well to be angry? 5 So Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would become of the city. 6 And the LORD God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd. 7 But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered. 8 And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live. 9 And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry, even unto death. 10 Then said the LORD, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night: 11 And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more then sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?
Wow! I'm new here.
This is as hotly debated a topic as I've ever seen. Consider me an "undecided swing voter".
If somebody here can prove to me that THERE IS A GOD or prove to me that THERE ISN'T A GOD I would be eternally grateful. I'm just a mortal who is looking for answers.
No suicide bombers are following their religious beliefs not their conscience. The two are different. Their conscience tells them that life is sacred and killing others is wrong.
Now whose the mind-reader? That's not how I read the Koran. Is this, perhaps, a christian conscience you are channeling? Ask it how to square this with "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."?
It is not God's desire that everyone sins. But it is what we do.
Which makes it a sort of pointless exercise in hypocrisy to be continuing to point out that heathens and/or orthodox jews can go to heaven by living sin-free, according to the dictates of their conscience, doesn't it?
But I am thankful for every evil bastard that suddenly woke up and repented whether he did it early in life or at the end.
I'm perfectly aware that christian theology does not much concern itself with how much evil its biblically based policies can inflict on the world. That's one of the glories of receiving absolute, unimpeachable TRUTH into your heart, like Torquemada, for example, who constantly affirmed his christian love for the souls of the people whose mere bodies he tortured and destroyed, as slowly, painfully, and creatively as has ever been seen on this planet.