For those that have not heard...

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

This came up on another thread just recently:

The question is:

What does God do with people when they arrive to heaven and have not heard his message?
For example, a Brazilian tribesman, deep in the jungle, is not going to hear the message of Christianity or Islam, etc. So how does God judge him?

There are two main answers to this question. I don’t know, there may be more.

Either (i) God judges them individually or (ii) They didn’t know, and they’ll be judged according to our doctrine anyway.

Now, 99% of people have response (i). That God judges us individually according to some measure of goodness, choice, deeds, or some other shit.
But this creates a monumental problem for the religion… Do you see it?

If they have not heard the doctrine (whether it be Christian, Jew, Muslim, etc.) then God judges them on some other basis. Good merit, good choices, deeds, who knows!? But the problem is that it throws out all doctrine. Believing Jesus Christ is the savior, bowing to Allah, etc. don’t matter now since God judges us individually on some other basis. Religion crumbles. Or rather, doctrine crumbles.

I struggled deeply with this for a long time. It is one of the primary reasons my faith, so to speak, evaporated.

What do believers have to say? Affirmations? Rebuttals?

2

You ask a Question that cannot be answered by a Mortal.

Beseech God Almighty Himself for such an answer.

Do not be discouraged when you are not given the answer, for some things may not be revealed.

3

Exactly. It’s like trying to figure out why he killed all of those babies and young men in Egypt. It’s just a mystery! :laughing:

4

I don’t think it is as big a problem as you are making it.

Option 1:

Given: People have directly felt God’s love within this lifetime.

Given: God implanted a certain degree of morality into all people (I can’t find the verse, but I do know it is there. Somewhere around the 10 Commandments, I think. OT, definatley).

So, it would make sense that those tribals would have a potential to somehow come into contact with God by cultivating that shred of innate morality and come to the Christian conclusion. That they fail to do so isn’t God’s fault, due to free will.

Option 2:

Predestination.

The bigger problem is that you are treating salvation as a given, something that can be achieved by many (even most) people. Why would you think that? God certainly doesn’t owe us anything and is under no obligation to try and save anyone.

But that’s just one non-Christian’s view of the situation.

5

Have you not seen the episode of the Simpsons where Bart spits over the side of the golden elevator to heaven?

6

The image of standing before a God-figure in heaven is apparently a powerful one. It symbolizes one’s existential self confronting the Ultimate. Who can imagine oneself standing in this situation without moral anxiety? Take this picture seriously, and your transgressions and failures will rise in clouds before you producing a sense of guilty unease. Or you will imagine the Accuser pointing at you like a prosecuting attorney to the same affect. Who but Christ can save you in this situation? You’d like to help the savage ignorant of Christ’s redemptive act, because you have no other hope yourself. Of course if God is Unconditional Love you have nothing to worry about and neither does the savage. But then what of the picture? It persists in our collective consciousness just the same, an eidetic reminder of our existential uncertainty.

7

Actually, if he is judging us according to some set of rules, whatever they may be, when we get to heaven, then he is obligated to let us know of the rules! If he is just and not deceitful, then he will let everyone know they rules on which they will be judged. That would be pretty shitty and weak of God when the Brazilian tribesman shows up in heaven and God was like… “Sorry, I didn’t let you know but you needed to believe in Jesus. You’re going to hell!” The tribesman would be like, “What the fuck!? Who is Jesus!?”

Check out Southpark: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lRuPoXJZlc

I laughed so hard at this clip!!!

“I’m afraid it was the Mormons… Yes, the Mormons were the correct answer.”

8

The rules God judges by are universal and there is no need for anyone hearing or reading a message with any of your physical senses. God’s Truth is either accepted or rejected in the soul and this Truth is simple and requires no special ability or knowledge. The only way to receive salvation is to be abase to the Truth and quite fighting it. This Truth is confirmed, founded and proven daily in nature by the laws of causality, so there is no excuse for not accepting this reality, yet the majority will not because they want to control that which they have no control over, thus the need for Hell.

9

Bane – When wondering about the cause of your frustration, I have to put myself in your shoes, which is not difficult. I just have to image the way I was once I gave up hope of there being a God. But I think that was important for my development… it wasn’t until I gave up hope, and walked a long way by myself, that I really messed up my life and made it possible for God to show me what it means to be saved. He let me go, just like a good father would. He knew I would learn from it.

Just be careful. The further away you get – the harder it will be for you.

Sorta like what Nietzsche said. Greater depths allow for greater heights. But the fool never knew true height. If he had – once there, he would’ve wished he never knew the depths – in which he was stuck. Who knows… maybe eventually he learned this, but we only got the stuff he wrote when he was stuck?

A field of snow with no footprints… that would be better.

As for the original post – I already answered your question in the “Lord calls the lowly” thread. You just don’t like my answer.

Take care.

10

In the OT it’s written that this law is not far from you but written on your heart. (Deuteronomy ch30, circa verse 14)

In his letters, Saint Paul says jews are to be judged by the law and gentiles are judged by the law in their heart. (Romans ch2, circa v14, and others)

But I think there’s an understanding that he who does more for his religion receives the greater reward. And one hopes higher forms of religion make salvation clearer and easier for the worshipper.

drbo.org/

11

Well I thought morality wasn’t the issue.

Every time I’ve asked a ‘believer’ “How do you get to heaven?”

They say some variation of “Accepting Jesus Christ as your savior.”

Ok, that’s fine. I can extrapolate that “along with accepting Jesus” you would have to live your life in such a way that is not contrary to his teachings, otherwise you aren’t truly accepting him. Also ok.

But when you bring this issue forward, to use the example of a primitive tribesman, and trace his life, how does it work?

Lets do a narrative :

Tribesman is born into a small village in the depths of a desert. Tribesman grows up learning to tan hides, make thread and weave clothing, polish pretty rocks to make jewelry, make arrowheads for hunting wild animals for food, etc. At some point he takes a wife in some sort of primitive, having-nothing-to-do-with-chrisitanity wedding ritual. They have children, and raise them in the ways of the tribe. The tribe probably has some sort of religion of its own, passed down from generation to generation by word of mouth ( no doctrine, no holy books, a more primitive sort of thing.) Tribesman has lived his entire life without seeing anyone outside his tribe and never leaving his village. He’s never heard of Jesus, or the Holy Spirit, or the Bible. One day he is strolling along to fetch water and a wall collapses on him, killing him instantly. He is buried with the traditional (religious) rites and ceremonies of his people. The end.

This has been his life. What I want to know is, when did this opportunity to know and accept Jesus happen?

Does Jesus appear as some sort of apparition right as the man dies, reaching out his hand and saying “I am the way?” And would the tribesman recognize this for what it is, or think it was the manifestation of his own ( and therefore ‘pagan’) gods?

Or does God, at some point in each of our lives, “talk” to us subconsciously or subliminally telling us to accept his son, and are we as mortals able to recognize the divine nature of this message? (Because if I heard a voice in my head telling me that they were the creator of the universe and their son died on a cross for me, I’d probably think I was going mad if I had never been exposed to christianity before. Because the concept is a bit “out there”.)

When does the revelation come?

How do you know it comes?

Can you give me a biblical reference (or real life reference would be better, since the bible is only accepted as canon by ‘believers’) that this indeed happens?

Where is it written that this happens?

The only time I have ever seen this argument used is when believers try to argue the point, and I would really like some evidence that it wasn’t made up just for the purpose of making this argument. I’m being honest here, I honestly and truly want to know, “what happens” and how you know it happens. Or is this just another matter of faith, that you have “faith” that god gives everyone a fair chance, but you don’t know? If that’s the case, I reject it just as I reject believing in a supreme being based on “faith” - so that explains nothing, either.

Assuming the revelation does come,

What of the tribesmen who reject something that goes against everything they have been raised and taught?

Are they then sent to hell?

Is this fair?

Thoughts.

Taking it one step further, assuming that this revelation does indeed come and you have a chance before death to be saved, why should you live your life by any sort of moral code up to that point? Clearly a human-sacrificing Aztec priest, a cannabalistic warrior, and other such ‘immoral’ peoples would be given their chance to ‘hear the word’ …and they can still get into heaven if they accept Jesus in the end? So the larger question is, why live our lives morally? What are we being judged by exactly? And can you cite me something that tells us exactly what the ‘criteria’ of judgement for getting into heaven is? If you cannot, if there is nothing in the bible about it, then where are you getting this idea from? Are you making it up? What made your word/ideas official religious law? Did God speak to you and tell you this is the case?

This sounds more antagonistic than I intend, but it seems the answer to all these questions is the same answer to the “How do you know there is a God” question - IE, you must have faith. So those of us without faith can dismiss that argument entirely. I am therefore asking for another.

12

Two points before the question is answered:

 First of all, it's purely academic. None of us here, and nobody we are likely to ever meet, is in this situation, so we have no personal stake in it. This is an academic question. 
 Secondly, 'fairness' doesn't really seem relevant- something being unfair doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and if Heaven was never proposed as that thing for good people (as opposed to saved-through-Christ) people, then there is no issue of fairness since the rules are being applied evenly. The problem must be with some claim about God's benevolence if He allows people to go to hell in certain circumstances. 
 Thirdly the problem is much broader than the tribesman situation. The tribesman who never hears about Jesus isn't any worse off than the intellectual who hears about Jesus, but has the Gospel presented in a mean, stupid, or fallacious way.  Just as it is not the tribesman's fault for not hearing about Jesus, it's not entirely a person's fault if they don't hear about Jesus in a convincing way. Also, conviction comes in degrees, so there's not a clear line between those who were presented to rightly or wrongly or not at all. The tribesman is an extreme example of a problem that will affect almost everybody to some degree or another. 

     OK, let me set up the metaphysics a bit to show the field the answer to the question has to operate in.   First of all, God doesn't send people to Hell.  Hell is the default outcome of Fallen man living as he does, [i]not[/i] Heaven.  Does the tribesman in your example still lie? Cheat? Steal? Lust after people inappropriate to lust after? Fantasize about harming his enemies, sometimes more than they deserve? All those other things that make humans stink, and not deserve heaven?   The answer must be yes if he's a real person, and if so, he does not [i]deserve [/i] to spend eternity in God's presence, and there's nothing unfair about that.  The idea that Heaven is for all of us except the bad people is not a Christian notion, it's something that became commonplace in Christian societies where almost everybody was saved.  This clearly is not the world we've chosen to live in anymore. 
   So the question must not be does the tribesman go to hell, the question must be, does the tribesman have an opportunity to make it to Heaven?  This brings us to Romans 1, 19-20:

Paul

   and Revelations 5:7

John

So, according to the Scriptures, there is something in nature that allows men to see God and to know how to behave, such that they have no excuse, and according to Revelation, this something is potent enough that people from every nation and language and culture will respond to it, and thus be saved.
13

Now that I have ridden myself of leaning on a bible to understand God I have come to the logical conclusion that this idea of salvation is not complete, it needs to be boiled down one more step to its simplest forum. I came to this conclusion when I asked myself………”How does one believe on Christ”. What does this mean, what are you specifically believing and how can one do this? The answer is in the proverb “I am the Truth and the way” which fits in perfectly with my early ideas that acceptance of Truth is what allows God to have a relationship with you, just the same as it is here in this flesh. I cannot respect or have a good relationship with my father if I don’t accept what he tells me to be True, so this form follows function.

Conclusion:

Salvation is acceptance of Truth; the Truth of reality in this life and this Truth is proven by cause and effect.

14

Uccisore, what I understand from your post is that the ability to go to heaven is based on “knowing how to behave” and essentially, behaving yourself, and that belief and/or faith in Jesus Christ is not a prerequisite.

However, this is not what I have been told time and time again by many christians (who repeatedly insist that the only way is through Jesus).

So are these people wrong then to say this, since you seem to indicate that heaven is accessible by moral behavior?

I offer myself as example here, in that I have never had Christianity presented to me in a way that I could accept it. I’ve never felt the spirit move within me or heard God’s voice …despite a very real desire and wish to find it when I was younger. From my “fire and brimstone” upbringing ( a horrible exposure to catholicism via fear tactics courtesy of my parents ) to the very kind and loving but also very insistent people who kept telling me the bible was the truth and that jesus loved me but never could offer any explanations to how they knew these things (and thus did not convince me of either, and eventually annoyed me with their pressing to the point where I broke off contact). So at this point, I remain an unbeliever. I guess my interest in this argument is because it peaks my curiousity in how it would pertain to me. I am not a tribesman living in a remote area, but I am a person mostly cut off from other people and all of my exposure to Christianity has been very negative, something that was always trying to be forced on me or used as a punishment tactic. So while I have ‘heard’ of Jesus, from what I have heard I do not accept him, or god, or the bible, because all I have heard seemed to be brainwashed fluff (regarding the people delivering the message, not the message itself.) Every time I asked a question that the bible couldn’t answer, the answer is “God has a plan.” or some other cliche variation. It was impossible to have a real discussion about it and eventually, I quit trying.

So what hope is there for me or people like me, then? Is God going to eventually intervene in some way because he loves us and wants to give us a chance to be in Heaven? I am not a spiritual person, but I am a moral person - I obey the moral laws of Christianity better than most Christians I know, I just do it because I think that many of them are the ‘right thing’ - not out of any sort of devotion. I consider myself to be a “good person.” But I am told this is not enough. I would love to hear more from you,

Anzh

15 
 I'm sorry, I tried hard to avoid giving that impression. Look, if a merciful judge decides to give a lesser or commuted sentence because someone was raised to be a criminal from birth and didn't know any better, that does [i]not[/i] mean that the rest of us are excused, or that obeying the law is somehow irrelevant. We're talking about a specific class of people here, and what we can know about them is:

People from all walks of life and cultures and regions will be among the saved. 
The nature of the world is such that nobody is excused for their actions. 
The intercession of Jesus (both on the Cross, and ongoing) is absolutely essential for anybody's salvation.

They are right, and that doesn’t conflict with what I’ve said.

 I can't say how it would pertain to you.  For one thing, your salvation is none of my business. For another, there could be unknown factors at play, ranging from the way you were exposed to Christ, choices you've made in your own life, exposure to false teachings, your own ego, anything. You're a person, not a formula, so I can't add up a series of factors and get "Heaven" or "Hell" as a result.  However, it's important to note that God is a person as well, and salvation is a product of his Mercy and Grace. As such, there is no Heaven formula you can calculate, like the acceleration due to gravity or some such.

If you’re speaking of when you were a child, then beliefs ought to be forced upon you as a child, and you ought to be punished when you’re wrong. If you’re speaking of some other, abusive context, then you have my sympathies, again I don’t know you. You could be a victim of of real religious abuse, you could be a spoiled brat who resents his parents for making him (or her for all I know) get up early Sunday mornings. Both kinds of people would say things like what you say above, the desire of some people to be treated as victims makes it harder to percieve the real ones these days.

Yeah, that's a common problem in the west.  Coming here is both an escape from that problem, and a taking of responsibility. That is to say, [i]you [/i] now control what you are exposed to, which has it's ups and downs, to be sure. 

Mmhmm, I know what you mean. When I grew up, my exposure to Christianity was at an intellectual level of say,  1.  Bare miniumum.  When I got older, I started asking questions that rated at 2, and so I couldn't get answers.  Then, I found atheists and other skeptics that rated at a 3, and started swinging the way you have.  Since then, some stuff happened, and I realized that the scale actually ranges from 1 - 10,000 or so, so now  [i]all[/i] that stuff from back then seems equally foolish, and I see that people of several perspectives religious and non-religious, operate on the highest levels.  I speculate you play video games (as do I), so you'll get my relation.

I reckon He already is. I’ve been talking to you as though you’re quite young, and the reason for that is that you’ve painted a situation in which other people are mostly responsible for what you’ve been exposed to. The first step to earning your fate is to acknowledge that despite the past, now you own the responsibility for what you experience.

If you choose to persue it, the intellectual side of Christianity runs as deep as you could possibly want it to. It’s not necessary for salvation simpliciter, but it may be necessary for some individuals like you or I.

16

I see …though I am still failing to understand clearly here, because while you do say that belief in Jesus is necessary, you also say that people from “all cultures and regions will be among the saved.” How is that going to work exactly? In cultures and regions that do not have christianity and have not heard of Jesus?

As for my personal situation : I understand why my or anyone else’s parents would try to impose their beliefs on their offspring and I think that is very natural. However this went from my early childhood all the way until when I left for college, using “Church” as a punishment for any wrong doing or as a threat. Essentially, when I was young, my entire life was held at ransom - “If you don’t go to church willingly and obediently, then you’re grounded.” And such. When that did not work, it became more “Get in the car and go to church now, don’t make me get the belt.” The belt of course being their favorite implement of physical punishment. I was probably 13 or 14 at that time. This did not make me see religion as something fulfilling and spiritual and good, but rather as something I had to do or suffer the consequences.

However once I started college it became rather ridiculous, I wasn’t a child anymore, I was over 21, living on my own, and made my own decision to NOT attend church - I had no interest in it, and seeing as it had always been something that had been force-fed down my throat. My parents helped me financially a bit with my tuition, but there was always the threat of “If you don’t go to church every sunday, then we’re not paying your tuition!” And “If you don’t go to church every sunday, we’re taking the car! (They had given me an automobile previously for school commuting, but they held it over my head for years afterward.)”

I don’t want to argue right or wrong of what they did -
My personal feeling is that it was more than was necessary, particularly once I was no longer living with them and it was clear I had chosen another path for myself. You however may feel that they were completely justified in telling me every day from age 5 to age 25 that I was going to hell and whipping me on the back with a leather belt if I ever argued that I didn’t want to go to church or didn’t believe in God. Parenting differs you know? And I am not interested in ‘right or wrong’ only results. The result is, Religion was Punishment (or rather, the acceptance of Religion at least in a shallow way was the avoidance of punishment).

Eventually this got to be too much, and I cut myself off from them, gave them back everything they could hold over me, moved as far away as I could get and built my own life without their conditional support. I do love my parents, and I think its a great shame that their refusal to accept my ‘atheism’ or ‘skepticism’ injured our relationship so much. But there you have it.

Anyway, the point for me is that I feel rather tainted. Whenever I think of god, jesus, the bible, church, any of it, always in the back of my mind is my childhood and how religion was, put very simply, something my parents used to control me. My atheism is a related but separate matter, I’m one of those I-need-proof peoples – way too much science fiction I guess XD.

But I digress big time XD.

I guess my difficulty is, I like clear conlusions and you could tell me that it was raining outside and I’d open the window to check. I don’t take anything on ‘faith’ and something as big as this, I need to feel it. When I was young and the punishment was intense, I remember crawling into the chapel on my knees begging God to help me find faith, to help these weekly trips have some meaning, then later just to touch me so I could know he was there. And nothing - maybe my skepticism has blocked any of the receptors that you would need to feel such a thing. I’m completely clouded with doubt, and I really kinda feel like I’ve done what I can to try and accept these things…I’ve read the bible several times, I’ve even subsequently voluntarily attended churches of different denominations, trying to feel something, anything. I’ve tried prayer, but eventually stopped because I never felt anything. I just can’t bring myself to believe that there is anything out there, as much as I want there to be, you know?

About 6 years ago, when someone gave me the “God has a plan” line for a tragedy in my life, I went, I tried to pray, I tried to find that faith, that something - but I just could not. I essentially just broke it off like, Ok God, I’m here, I’m listening, I’m willing, I want to be filled with this faith and joy and belief but I’ve come as far as I can. Your move, God.

There hasn’t been an answer. All I can guess is, I’m doing it wrong, and I know that the way religion was presented to me is probably part of the reason.

So does this mean that, despite being a moral upstanding citizen, helping the poor, the suffering, being a genuinely benevolent person (at least, I think so…) obeying the laws of man ( and God, though as I said, not out of devotion just out of ‘agreement’) that I will (according to Christianity) be condemned to hell because I can’t make the conceptual leap?

17

I’ve been out of town the last week. You guys have been tearing into this thread! Nice job. Ill add my two cents as soon as i can. -Bane

18

I didn’t give up hope.
I woke up and was true with myself.
That’s the key.
I was really honest with myself
and what my heart and mind felt.
(Sorry to sound Dualistic, as I am not, but it makes my point.)

I was in post-Christianity denial. But I made it out a better person.
Why would one go do stupid things and make mistakes after having made this huge change?

My life has been a very exciting and much more colorful, meaningful, and “purpose filled” once I began being true to myself and what I believed.

You take care too. :slight_smile:

19

True Dat! (That is true or “I agree”)

Yup. Response #2 (The tribesman goes to hell anyway) is unfair. It also means that God can be unfair and deceptive. This is certianly possible, but contrary to most ideas of God.

Yup. I like your example of using any one of us. Another example or variation on the main question is, “What happens to tiny babies that die?”

This hypothetical tribesman example was made to demonstrate an individual that has NOT had the opportunity.

Even if we were to have a sciptural answer for the tribesman, he is a thinking full grown person. What about babies that die? What about people that don’t have the intellectual capacity to understand these issues? They are judged on wether they were good or bad and yet they have no concept of it.

20

To accept something, one must have some sort of coherent knowledge of what they are accepting. Right?