Hide and seek losers go to Hell

 In this post we will be exploring the following reasons people give for being an atheist:

Reason 8: Child abuse (Polled 21 votes)

Reason 9: Religion is not natural, it is learned (Polled 20 votes)

Reason 10: I was not allowed to think freely (Polled 15 votes)

Reason 11: If God existed He wouldn’t hide (Polled 9 votes)

Reason 12: The lack of intelligence was unbearable (Polled 8 votes)

Reason 13: The very idea of Hell is immoral (Polled 7 votes) 

Reason 14: I asked for a sign and was not given one (Polled 3 votes)

Reason 15: Extreme hide and seek, losers go to hell (Polled 3 votes)

Reason 16:  The division of the church (Polled 3 votes)

Reason 17: Too many gods (Polled 2 votes)

Reason 18: The religion turned smart people into idiots (Polled 2 votes) 

Reason 19: Your religion is based on where you were born (Polled 2 votes) 

Reason 20: The religion was based on fear (Polled 1 Vote)

Reason 21: Heaven sounds terrible (Polled 1 Vote)

Reasons that did not receive votes but I have heard them before: 

Reason 22: It was my parent’s/guardian's religion, not mine (Polled 0 votes)

Reason 23: God expects too much (Polled 0 votes) 

For a supposed being so invested in forming a relationship with humanity, God couldn’t seem to do worse to make that supposed reality evident. Reading documents that God supposedly produced, either directly or indirectly, one might be led to expect to witness overt acts of God on the regular, or at the very least some effort, on behalf of God, to form a relationship with each person. Especially if a relationship is essential to every person’s deliverance from a future ripe with eternal suffering. Otherwise, it seems at best that God doesn’t care and at worst that He wants us all to suffer eternally. 

Let’s say we can manage to get past the lack of effort on God’s side and assume that, for whatever reason, the burden of effort is meant to fall solely, or at least at first, on the shoulders of each individual. Well, I guess we better start searching for God then, but there are yet more issues. 

There are some 4,300 religions in the world (according to www.theregister.com ) and it would take over a lifetime to vet them all. 

Let’s say we can get past that and by the works of the Holy Spirit we are somehow led to Christianity. We are now faced with between 30k to 40k different denominations of Christianity (depending on the resource). Many of the denominations are divided because of interpretation differences that cause different denominations to worry for the salvation of the others. Meanwhile, most of the denominations claim to be led by the Holy Spirit and so claim they are right and the others are wrong. 

Let’s say somehow you manage to find a denomination that you feel is true to the essentials of Christianity. You are now likely faced with a God who is claimed to be infinite, thereby the nature of God is unfathomable to your limited human brain. Furthermore, God is claimed to be the essence of goodness, therefore your understanding of the nature of God will always be flawed to some extent because you are cursed by sin to not always be able to distinguish good from bad in every situation. 

Just by considering these things, it becomes evident that should correctness in an understanding of God be important in any way, such as being important to not being thrown into Hell, then we are all likely doomed regardless of what we do or do not believe. 

This raises two important questions that threaten the value of hoping for the existence of a benevolent God.

First, why would a benevolent God make it important for us to have specific information about it when it is nearly impossible for us to get said information? 

Second, why wouldn’t a benevolent God make its existence and nature abundantly clear to each person, especially if such information is so important? 

As for the first question, which lies at the root of several reasons people give for being an atheist, we need to consider another question first, namely, does the religion in question require correctness in one’s understanding of God? A strong argument can be made that correctness in an understanding of God is not necessary so far as Christianity is concerned. 

Christianity is based on a story wherein God comes unto humanity in the flesh, and the religious leaders cling so tightly to their limited and flawed ideas of who God ought to be that they do not recognize their own God and so have Him killed for blasphemy. Meanwhile the sinners and less religious are more than happy to let go of their ideas of who God ought to be and accept Him for who He is. God, in turn, blesses those who were humble enough to let go of their flawed understanding, the sinners and less religious, and condemns those who clung to their flawed understandings of God, the well educated religious leaders. 

If salvation were a matter of having a correct, or at least mostly correct, understanding of God, God would have blessed the religious leaders and condemned the others, but that is not what happens. What happened instead would seem to suggest that salvation must be a matter of having humility enough to acknowledge that your understanding is limited and flawed so that you can receive correction and have the opportunity to accept God for who He is. 

This is not universalism, for not everyone will accept God over the idol of their flawed understanding. Additionally, many may receive correction but reject God even still. However, it does open the door to salvation for all people; people with a completely wrong understanding of God, people with no understanding of God, people without sufficient information to even believe a God exists at all. All of these people have an opportunity to accept God for who He is via their humility. 

Therefore, being born in the right place, being born to the right family, being born with an innate belief in God’s existence, finding the correct religion, finding the correct denomination, or the reception of a clear sign of God’s existence, all are rendered unnecessary. Additionally, the forced indoctrination of children, restrictions on free-thinking, restrictions on skepticism, restrictions on doubt, or restriction on accepted scientific findings, these too are all unnecessary. 

Where salvation is a matter of having intellectual humility, there is the freedom to be wrong. Where there is the freedom to be wrong, there is no fear of damnation. Where there is no fear of damnation, people enter a relationship with God because they choose to, and not because they feel forced to against any desire for the contrary. 

Some would counter saying salvation is just a matter of accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior, however, a complete and faultless understanding of Jesus is just as unachievable, especially if Jesus is God incarnate. Which understanding of Jesus do you have to accept? Does it count if someone’s concept of Jesus is not God? What if their concept of Jesus resembles Hitler?

Should salvation be a matter of accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior, it must be through humility enough to let go of limited and faulty understandings so that you can accept Jesus for who He is, just as in the story of the gospels.

As for the second question, apart from the lack of necessity for God to make His existence obvious for the present (as explained above), I speculate a few possible reasons for God's potential inactivity. 

First, God might have been so active in the past because He wanted to equip humanity to be able to partake in their redemption. 

Second, He might have been so active because He wanted to keep the humans who were willing to work with Him alive and willing. 

Jesus would have come to finish the job; to finish equipping humanity with everything we need to partake in our redemption. Furthermore, eventually the humans willing to work with God no longer faced threats of being completely wiped out. 

So once God no longer needed to equip humanity or prevent humanity from wiping out any hope of its redemption, His intervention was no longer as necessary.

Third, as mentioned before, by not making His existence clear to everyone, choosing to follow Him becomes more a matter of preference than a feeling of obligation. It would seem that God would rather us choose to follow Him out of our desire rather than a feeling of obligation (lest God just make His existence obvious to everyone). 

Fourth, the Bible focuses only on those moments in human history when God was supposedly active. So when we read the Bible, it feels like God is super active, but there are hundreds of years between many of the stories. 

Finally, there is my case. If there is a God, I’m not sure I am meant to know for certain. Otherwise, I would have never felt the need to go on this journey and write this document which may prove helpful to others as they struggle to make decisions about their beliefs. I think I may be as uncertain as I am for the likes of them. Perhaps others are in the same boat.

I am not afraid of not knowing. As I’ve said before, should there be a God, we are all doomed to die with flawed understandings of it. The God we will all meet after death, should there be a God at all, will be different from what anyone expects. 

Those who will not enter Heaven will likely see a God they do not recognize and believe Him to be some force of evil. They will mistake Heaven for Hell and so go looking for Heaven elsewhere in a world under the sole authority of humanity. That world will be Hell, and the suffering therein will be purely a product of humanities selfishness, lack of foresight, and well-intended atrocities, as God grants them their heart's true desire, a world without it, a being that could help humanity navigate these flaws and shortcomings, in it.

As for those who enter Heaven, they will bring forth the potential of creation and worship God through exploration, inventions, and the ways they use their authority to service creation. 

Scientific research will no longer be hindered by corporate greed nor will it come at the cost of the environment. It will flourish and bring life in ways we could never imagine now. 

Humanity will explore the endless wonders of the stars and go on discovering the limitless wonders of God's creation for eternity.

In the next post, we will be taking a look at the flaws and eyesores of the Holy Bible and the effects they have on the worth of hope for the existence of God.

Next Post: The holey book

Previous Post: The imaginary God

Questions for my readers:

What are your thoughts on the premise that humans are not equipped to acquire a complete understanding of God? 

What are your thoughts on the premise that, should God be the essence of all goodness, humans, in their limitations and corruption, are incapable of a faultless understanding of God?

What are your thoughts on the assertion, based on the previous premises, that correctness cannot be a factor in salvation lest humanity be doomed?

What are your thoughts on my suggestion that salvation may be more a matter of having humility enough to receive correction than a matter of believing the right things about God? 

What are your thoughts on the notion that salvation based on accepting Jesus as Lord and Saviour also requires a certain amount of correctness in understanding?

What are your thoughts about my speculations as to why God may be less active, or otherwise less evident, in our modern times?

What are your thoughts on my take on the nature of Hell?

What are your thoughts on my take on the nature of Heaven?