Re: A variation of Pascal\'s Wager-Question for Non Believers
"Let me ask you something. If a god-hating, baby-killing atheist can get into heaven for ten seconds of self-interested, passive participation, earning the same reward that a believer does for a lifetime of faith and good works, doesn't that kind of sour the product the Church is peddling?"
No. Here's the real reason why:
Christians are more than happy to accept the fact that very bad people can be saved through belief and extremely good people can be doomed through non belief because 98% of them are less than extremely good. If they are merely pretty good, it,behooves them to hope that God considers everyone, including the extremely good, unworthy of saving except though his grace.
In other words a pretty good person, knowing that there are a few extremely good people out there that he can't compete with, is better off saying that even the extremely good person is not perfect and not satisfying to God. And if he substitutes faith as the important criteria for God, he becomes equal with the extremely good person. The fact that he no longer has an advantage over the not good person in this scheme is a tradeoff well worth it.
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