"If the Gospel is not good news for everybody, then it is not good news."

[John Dule]

It's a plainly true statement that is only remotely controversial if you use it to imply universalism. The Gospel is good news for everyone in the sense that everyone was damned under the law but now has the chance to be saved. It's not good news for everyone in the sense that everyone will be saved, and the Bible is pretty clear about that.

"Love God so that He will save you from what He will do to you if you don't love Him"

[John Dule]

It's a plainly true statement that is only remotely controversial if you use it to imply universalism. The Gospel is good news for everyone in the sense that everyone was damned under the law but now has the chance to be saved. It's not good news for everyone in the sense that everyone will be saved, and the Bible is pretty clear about that.

"Love God so that He will save you from what He will do to you if you don't love Him"

This reductive statement is as valid as saying the message of marriage is "Love your wife so she'll spare you what she'll do if you don't lover her." It is technically valid, in a bare minimum sort of way, but also precisely backward.

You think that logic is valid? That's the foundation of an abusive relationship. Although ultimately, I suppose that's what Christianity is-- an abusive relationship with an ever-absent father figure who only shows up every few years on pieces of toast.

I'm not going to respond to the rest of the gibberish you wrote because it sounds like something a patient would scrawl on the wall of their cell in a mental institution.

[John Dule]

It's a plainly true statement that is only remotely controversial if you use it to imply universalism. The Gospel is good news for everyone in the sense that everyone was damned under the law but now has the chance to be saved. It's not good news for everyone in the sense that everyone will be saved, and the Bible is pretty clear about that.

"Love God so that He will save you from what He will do to you if you don't love Him"

This reductive statement is as valid as saying the message of marriage is "Love your wife so she'll spare you what she'll do if you don't lover her." It is technically valid, in a bare minimum sort of way, but also precisely backward.

You think that logic is valid? That's the foundation of an abusive relationship. Although ultimately, I suppose that's what Christianity is-- an abusive relationship with an ever-absent father figure who only shows up every few years on pieces of toast.

I'm not going to respond to the rest of the gibberish you wrote because it sounds like something a patient would scrawl on the wall of their cell in a mental institution.

That isn't a very convincing response to what RI wrote, even as I suspect our understandings of Hell and eternal punishment might differ in some fundamental ways. Even so, you're better than this, and you're smart enough to know you've deliberately misrepresented what RI said by picking out four words and ignoring just about everything else.

But it self-evidently is valid. A marriage lacking in love is obviously not a marriage at all even if the state says it is. So with this analogy, the threat of a divorce is pretty meaningless if that is the consequence of a loveless relationship. That is not abuse.

Saying that you should do something for me out of fear for what I will do to you if you don't is a threat, plain and simple. It's not a valid reason for staying in that relationship.

Also, the fact that you sum up the God of Christianity as "an ever-absent father figure" pretty clearly shows you don't understand the basic underpinnings of Christianity, because to the Christian (unless said Christian is a deist), God is ever-present. But you are apparently convinced that any alternative understandings of God to your own are the thoughts of an insane person, so you've essentially rendered any dialogue impossible.

Seriously, your argument is that "Christians say God is ever-present, thus God is ever-present"?

[John Dule]

The Gospel is terrible news for Ed Miliband the smug and comfortable.

Also, yes, Dule, you are in fact better than these kinds of misrepresentations and two-cent insults. If you think (as you evidently do) that the Christian belief in an ever-present God is simply not supported by observable reality, then just say that so this conversation can continue to other topics.

I don't think anything I've said in this thread is even remotely unfair. There is no good reason as to why I should have to take a post like RI's seriously.

[John Dule]

I find it unfortunate that on this forum any attempts to engage in a question about philosophy of religion from a non-believer’s perspective is all too often immediately shut down as not intellectually serious.

Dule has made plenty of efforts to engage questions like this that are intellectually serious. Hell, he's being intellectual serious now. My issue with the way he's conduction this discussion isn't a perceived lack of intellectual seriousness, and I don't think that's Scott's issue either.

Go and ask most physicists what they think is the more mature approach to the universe.

I'm not sure which aspect of this conversation this remark is supposed to be germane to.

Sorry if I misjudged the tone of the responses to him, but that was what I gathered from them (especially as many of his comments were made in a, shall I say, typically Dulean fashion).

As for the second remark, it was more a general comment on how some posters seems to think that any attempt to comment on Christian metaphysics from a more rational, scientific point of view is ridiculed as being “edgy” etc. Again, apologies if this perception is incorrect.

Woah, edgelord. Neckbeard much? Get out of the basement and start handling poisonous snakes and speaking in tongues with the rest of us well-adjusted individuals.