Gregrios wrote:On the off chance that you guys arn't just being patronizing and really want to know, I'll explain.
Free will is a filtering tool for determining the sincere from the insincere for acceptance into Heaven.
If God proved himself everyone would choose Heaven.
Therefore making it impossible to seperate the sincere from the insincere.
Beleiving in God on pure faith can only be posessed by the sincere.
....but choosing God out of proof is a decision made by the mind and not by faith.
The problem with proving himself to the world and letting everyone into Heaven is that by doing so he would be letting the insincere enter the kingdom of Heaven and letting all hell break loose within Heaven itself.
Let me put it to you this way:
A nuke has went off and you have an underground room where you have the essentials for living. You can choose one of two people to come in and live with you. One person is your best friend who you've known and trusted for your whole life while the other person is someone telling you all the things you want to hear but you have no idea what his true intentions are. Who are you going to choose?
I don't think I can explain it much better than this.
ok, so as you see it, faith is necessary for going to heaven, accepting god and obeying his commands is not enough. (I'm not going into the whole love-thing just yet, I know there's that as well)
To be almost brutally honest, I don't even know what this faith is really supposed to be. To me it looks like something along the lines of "My parents have told me god exists and they would never lie to me, everyone at the church has told me god exists and they should know what they're talking about, everyone I know believes in god. God has to exist, why else would everyone believe in him?" If you were to substitute 'Australia' for 'god', and 'geography class' for 'church' it wouldn't sound bad at all, but god is so improbable judging from what we can observe and the stories about him are so full of contradictions that I think it's something of a miracle that people believe in god at all.
Does that make me insincere? I don't see how, it just makes me a person who doesn't accept everything I'm told without questioning it. (And supposedly god is responsible for me being that way as well) For all you know everyone would be sincere if god were to prove his existence. Right now this distinction between 'sincere' and 'insincere' seems to be one of "believe what you're told about god without questioning it" and "ask inconvenient questions about what you're told about god". And btw, isn't god supposedly omniscient? Wouldn't he be able to tell whether a person is sincere or not anyway?
And wouldn't it be a short-term problem of people who previously did not believe? I mean, one generation later the proof will be there for everyone to evaluate from birth onwards. They could hardly be accused of being turncoats. And if it's such a big problem, well, just reincarnate everyone who wasn't already a believer at the time of the Proof and give them a fair chance or something.
As for your example, how about letting both of them in? Maybe cut down a little on the rations and draw lots about who gets to sleep on the couch and it'll work.
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