For me it is a moot point, because I cannot bring myself to think that a kind and loving creator being would burn me forever simply because I didn't blindly accept one man's opinion that he was God.
It's sort of a contradiction in terms. The benevolent, merciful torturer of his own children. There is no morally righteous God if it values blind faith over reason, and assigns EITHER of them a moral value. Faith nor reason are inherently good or bad. Plenty of men have faith and commit terrible atrocities, some men have reason (flawed reason) and commit terrible atrocities. Faith has nothing to do with morality. Then you get into the No True Scotsman argument- no Christians are evil because they accepted Christ, but those who commit evil didn't really accept Jesus into their heart. If the main selling point is that no matter what I do, as long as I accept Christ I get into heaven, and if I don't I am cast out, that right there tells me that the true value is the church coffers and the church pews never being empty. The main moral value in organized religion is money and political power.
The flowery "we're all evil, just as bad as murderers, if we don't accept Christ" argument is total hooey. That means every person who lived before Christ is in hell. Oh, but we can make exceptions, yes? Sure we can. See God made a special pact with everyone before Jesus, the old covenants and such. And those poor native Americans that never heard about Christ? Well they can't get into heaven but they can be judged on their merits and sent somewhere less bad than hell. Goody, so they are denied eternal paradise because they were born in the wrong place? Isn't that God's fault, not theirs?
If all else fails, Noah's ark. I urge someone to collect all the species in their own locality, nevermind the whole of the Earth, and build a ship and herd all the animals on it, and then after the flood is over, re-distribute them across the lands in such a way that only certain species are found on certain continents, and islands! Don't forget islands! Noah must have used the ship just to find all the animals. Must have taken a long, long time, too, unless he has Santa Claus "visit every Christian household in one night" super speed powers. Because "with God, all things are possible" means it doesn't have to make any sort of sense, and I'm a terrible person for thinking logically. That's evil and I'm going to hell.
Finally, if God has a divine plan, created me, and knows my heart, then he intended me to be a skeptical of him. He's also done a very good job of convincing me that he isn't real or he isn't involved at all. The crime of not believing in ancient mythology shouldn't be a perpetually damning offense. If there's one thing I know, more than anything else, is that not believing in something is NOT A CRIME.
Re: According to christian beliefs, where's Gandhi now?
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