Ok, Ive studied philosophy and ethics from GCSE level through to A level, just so you know where most of my thrology comes from. The rest is me and my understanding of how God works, and form other sources that have 'enlightened' me and spoken to me.
How can "God" or whatever or whoever judges us when we die have the right to decide if we are evil or good if we don't believe in him and "his" teachings.
Essentially this falls under fire quite a lot, and the way i see it is that it is not something we can contest, purly disliking something, and therefore choosing not to beleive in it based upon this, doesnt make it any less real.
put it this way...
I dont agree with the way that Gorden Brown has run this country and the taxes he has imposed. Now, with that in mind, me choosing not to like his parameters, doesnt make any difference to his existence at all. its something that IS, and cannot be a basis for disbeleif purly because we dont like it.
Just because he "created us" doesn't give him the right to make that choice, as such it would be double standards of him to post the "free will" arguement up.
without free will, true life cannot exist and instead we would purly be robots doing the whim of God, which wasnt the point of us being created. That or we would be slaves to the whim of our instincts, like the rest of the animals on this planet.
Judging us by our actions is by judging our life and the circumstances.
God is outside of time and space. He is all knowing, all seeing, and all present. basicly, each one of us is judged situationally, rather than, as the english courts do, judge everyone by one established set of rules.
If i had a child with someone (dont say anything, any of you
) and didnt tell them what was right and what was wrong, and then left them to their life, would it be within my rights after say 50 years to say "youve been living your life wrong" if I gave no initial guidelines?
Basicly, this throws the question of an inate conscience, and gut feeling. We all have a sense of right or wrong, from a very early age, and within a year of two of birth know if our actions are 'right or wrong'. This God -given (IMO) conscience, I beleive is a spiritual guideline of which we should follow, its that tugging of the mind when you feel guilty or know that you shouldnt be doing what you are doing. The conscience is situational.
The 10 commandments stuff, given to moses I believe? Where are they? Why did he not come down himself and tell us them? Why only that one person? How do we not know moses was smoking something potent at the time and made it all up! You think an update would be in order after a few thousand years
The ten comandments were written on two stone tablets to be given to the hebrews whilst tehy were in the desert. (i wont go into the full details).
These became religious relics and were brought into many wars in the name of religion (again bringing the name of God to justify a situation) and were kept in temples that have now been destroyed.
In all seriousness, i cant answer where they are anow, however They have either corroded away, or have been detroyed/ hidden.
Again, i could give a lecture purly on the ten comandments, but i wont...
they are a guide on how to live your life rightiously, not set of rules that if you break, you will go to hell.
I have broken many of them myself.
I mean all this at the end goes back to my original belief, that unless he came and showed me he existed I cannot believe in such a thing.
The quandary that remains is that IF God revealed himself to us now we would have no choice but to beleive in his existence, and it would not be faith, rather knowledge. The dificulty is that if God interveined day in, day out, we would not learn to fend for ourselves or learn fromour mistakes, why would we need to? God would sort it out.
If God does nothing, then we will screw ourselves up big time.
Consider a parent who loves his children. Sometimes you have to let them make their mistakes in order to grow and develope, however they do need guidance along the way.