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To: JamesP81
A person can't be 'told' to have faith. You can try it, but forced or coerced faith is no faith at all. You can never be made to have faith by someone else. As to its reasons, they aren't as important as the fact of actually having that faith.

But it is fact that most people share the faith of their parents and if not their parents then their peers. Most people in the world don't have the same innate opportunity to be members of the One True Faith that is yours.

God does not punish us just for using our minds. If he didn't want us to have one, we wouldn't have it. But using same said mind to come to a conclusion that He's just a fairy tale isn't going to fly come judgment day. That's a gross misuse of what you were given, and He's not going to reward anyone for that.

Er, so in fact the first sentence in that paragraph was false. God certainly will punish us for using our minds unless we come to the correct conclusion (and the overwhelming majority of those who have ever lived have no chance, culturally, of coming to that conclusion). Nice guy.

62 posted on 03/21/2006 12:04:22 PM PST by Thatcherite (I'm Pat Henry, I'm the real Pat Henry, All the other Pat Henry's are just imitators...)
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To: Thatcherite; Ken H
Er, so in fact the first sentence in that paragraph was false. God certainly will punish us for using our minds unless we come to the correct conclusion (and the overwhelming majority of those who have ever lived have no chance, culturally, of coming to that conclusion). Nice guy.

Romans Ch 1 deals with this issue pretty directly, and does so far better than I could in an FR thread. It's a good read that I'd reccomend to anyone looking for an answer to this question.

As for the rules, keep in mind that I wasn't the one that made them. If you don't like them, you'd better talk to Him. Fortunately, He's listening and you'll find that He is quite willing to talk back. You might even learn something.
99 posted on 03/21/2006 2:34:39 PM PST by JamesP81
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