I am interested to see why people chose christianity over other religions.

What is the benefits if being a Christian?
What do you think about other religions?
Why did you choose christianity?

who chooses their religion?

the best atheist argument against religion is a lack of free will. at least at the extremes. some Pygmy born on an island in a tribe in 1800 had no chance to be a Christian and accept jesus christ. Someone born into the Dugger family had no choice but to be raised conservative christian.

this is the reason i've always discounted the need for baptism and acceptance of jesus (in a literal sense) as a prerequisite for salvation, and have instead applied more of a "point system" to measure the good/bad of the totality of one's life.

I mean, the point system causes just as many problems as an arbitrary system based on belief.

Arrange everybody in a line based on their "goodness points". At some point you're going to have to draw a line between two people on who goes where, and it's going to come down to the most minute detail of their life that tipped the scale into the "good" side rather than the bad side. Other than not washing their hands one more time the person going to heaven is going to be identical morally to the person going to hell.

Even when I was searching for religion the only "Hell" I ever accepted as legitimate was total annihilation. The idea that one would be tortured forever is just nonsensical if you want to call the thing that made it "good" in any meaningful sense. Annihilation though, that's basically neutral. No suffering or goodness, and if you just wipe them from the memories of everybody who goes to heaven then what difference does it make?

i dont understand why that's a problem. worrying yes, problematic no. when you have a binary choice, there will always be divisions made that people disagree with. who gets a lollipop for their book report. Who gets a raise in a dept. Or who gets a trophy, EVERYONE DOES, just for participating. and how "fair" is that? how fulfilling is that? heaven should be as fulfilling as an MVP trophy, not a 3rd place team trophy.

but you're also comparing 1 person to another, which is a bit fallacious. your good deeds are weighed against your bad deeds. you can't be separated from another human simply by a washing of the hands, even at 100 billion people. we all do far too much for that. we think too much. the people we interact with are incalculably different than the people another person interacts with.

Religion is a regional phenomenon.

These are very hard questions to answer succinctly. I guess that Christianity just made the most sense to me compared to other metaphysical viewpoints, and it's definitely comforting to believe that the God of the universe revealed Himself, and laid out how He wants you to live your life. Humans need to be virtuous and disciplined to live a good, flourishing life.




I wonder if there's any book out there that might contradict this viewpoint.

in your humble opinion what happens to a person born on a remote island in the year 1200? 1200 years after the Crucifixion, 200 years before white people would make first contract, 400 years before missionaries arrived, 10 or so generations before they knew the words "bible" or "jesus"?

they live, and die, and go to hell by default?

what will happen if/when humanity loses sight of the word and the bible is gone, 1000 or 2000 years from now? 100% of them die and go to hell?

i dont expect a concrete answer, just your thoughts. if i thought that christianity was a religion that damned people by happenstance i wouldn't be christain. i find the very idea to be absurd, and an outlier to the "well its god's plan" normal response. if a girl dies from cancer at age 8 in america it's hard to see the plan, but conceivable. but creating whole groups of people just so you can make a binary choice on the direction of your religion and damn over 50% of the population bereft of their personal conduct, even though personal conduct is a prerequisite in the bible? naaaah fuck that.

Ive always been told that if you hadn't heard of Jesus you would be judged based on the criteria of the old testament, i.e. the parts written on your heart.

Still seems silly though, but thats the canned answer I always seem to get.

seems to present a distasteful arbitrary line.

i prefer old testament criteria and i find it does not discount Jesus presence on earth (a common counter to not needing his forgiveness for absolution). he still marks a stark change in God's wrath, he is still God's tangible connection to humanity, he is still an immaculate conception, and he still repeatedly did miracles. he was killed unfairly and raised to represent God's forgiveness. something Christains should still seek, as it represents either the Bible's version or the ratio of good to bad. god's forgiveness could simple be a fraction, of sorts.

I think the Catholic church explains it pretty well:



It seemed like you were implying that someone who has heard the gospel, and then rejected it, gets judged by the sort of life they have led, which is obviously contrary to orthodox Christian teaching.