“I was an agnostic. However, the question has to be, if scripture is correct, and the account of Christ dying and coming back to life is correct, then the choice is simply to believe. That’s it.”
Yeah but what’s so great about eternal life? And what is so terrible about death followed by oblivion that one must be afraid of it? See the problem is if death were merely oblivion then eternal life does not seem quite so mean an alternative. According to scripture and many other religions there’s only two places you can end up. Eternal bliss or eternal torture. Let’s face it, fear is a motivator to faith. Fear of eternal torture if one does not surrender and believe. Do you want your spouse to marry you and love you because you will torture her if she does not? No! You would be a sick puppy if you hung that threat over her head! There’s something wrong with God if he has to threaten us with eternal torture to get our love and obedience. There can’t be anything wrong with God, he is perfect. Therefor there is either no God or we have him all wrong and he does not have a heaven or a hell prepared for us. When we die he just sends of back to the void of oblivion where we came from.
I think the biggest detriment to belif is the concept of hell. No loving God would send a person to an eternal torture chamber no matter what that person has done. The concept of hell has to go. And why eternal bliss? Why not live a good virtuous life as a reward in itself and let that be enough?? What’s wrong with that? And let the law, imperfect as it is take care of evil doers in this life? There does not have to be perfect justice in an afterlife where everyone gets what’s coming to them. The essence of virtue just might be accepting that many wrongs will never be redressed in this life or the next and neither will all virture be rewarded.
“Yeah but what’s so great about eternal life? And what is so terrible about death followed by oblivion that one must be afraid of it?”
You have a false dichotomy here. If it is true that eternal life exists, then both heaven and hell are true as well.
“Let’s face it, fear is a motivator to faith.”
Something either is or it isn’t. Death is inevitable to us all. The question whether or not eternal life exists does not care about whether you fear hell or not.
“There’s something wrong with God if he has to threaten us with eternal torture to get our love and obedience.”
Where has he threatened us? It is a fact. If heaven and hell are true, then the consequence is that those who do not go to heaven go to hell. It is no different then the fact that gravity causes an object to fall.
It is not because God hates us, that Hell exists. We can choose to be without him and the result is that we go to hell, or we can choose to be with him and go to heaven.
“There can’t be anything wrong with God, he is perfect. Therefor there is either no God or we have him all wrong and he does not have a heaven or a hell prepared for us.”
How so? If God is good, then he has given us a choice. We can choose to love him of our own free will, or we can choose Hell, to be without him.
“I think the biggest detriment to belif is the concept of hell. No loving God would send a person to an eternal torture chamber no matter what that person has done.”
So let’s review this. God loves all of us. However, would you want to be with him if you hate God? Think of when you are with someone you despise. It is difficult and it is torture. This is why God gives us the choice. If we insist on living our lives without him, then we will get exactly what we have sought for all of our life.
“The concept of hell has to go. And why eternal bliss? Why not live a good virtuous life as a reward in itself and let that be enough??”
What is the good virtuous life? Have any of us lived the good virtuous life?
“And let the law, imperfect as it is take care of evil doers in this life? There does not have to be perfect justice in an afterlife where everyone gets what’s coming to them. The essence of virtue just might be accepting that many wrongs will never be redressed in this life or the next and neither will all virture be rewarded.”
So you do not believe in Justice? God, as you said is perfect. This means that he is perfectly Just. Saying that God should turn a blind eye to your sins is saying that God is imperfect, and flawed.