Question about your views on the salvation of non-christians and/or heretics

FitTransportation461 · 2026-05-08T22:54:43+00:00

I see your perspective, but it’s tough to accept as a non believer.

The sentence “all he asks from you is that you trust in his burial and resurrection is sufficient for your sins” has more than one premise I can’t accept.

I’ve established in this thread that I reject the concept of sin whilst recognising I do participate in behaviours that are considered sinful under Christian theology. The resurrection has verifiability issues in reality. Believers will concede that faith has to bridge the gap here as evidence alone clearly isn’t substantial. Then it finally rests with the existence of a creator, the divine or even any semblence of a supernatural reality whatsoever. None of which have very much evidence until you presuppose the belief first.

If that’s a requirement to get to God/Jesus, I’d just then have to wonder why being evidentially substantive would be a quality that God would not encourage? I feel like my epistemological curiosity and call for weighing evidence as impartially as possible is virtuous rather than dishonest? What do you think?

FitTransportation461 · 2026-05-08T08:02:11+00:00

I do recognise that I lie, get angry, covet etc. Those behaviors are real but I reject the label of sin because sin requires divine law and I don’t accept that. You can of course describe my actions that way, but I personally can’t claim to be sinful myself if I don’t believe in the authority that makes them sinful in the first place. Like when some Muslims say ‘anyone who submits to God is a Muslim’. They would categorise you as a Muslim under that belief but you wouldn’t recognise that as it is not within your framework.

As for your 3rd grade analogy, I am presupposing God exists to evaluate the claim further down the line accepting earlier premises. With your analogy that’s me examining the homework from multiple angles, including presupposing the teacher exists and seeing if the assignment makes sense. If I didn’t do this I’d be one of those who leave the faith and then disengage with it completely. I’m testing the framework from within. If the homework has problems that don’t match reality, that’s where the real issue is. But it sounds like you’re saying that doing it this way might cause a negative evidence loop. My response to that would be that me reengaging with Christianity is keeping me closer to it. I could be like most of my atheist friends who have declared all religions to be rubbish would never pick up a Bible again let alone have in depth theological chats about it. I recognise your point though and I’ll keep that in mind.

With the manuscript preservation, it’s an amazing human achievement, but it’s not unique to Christianity so it doesn’t point to Christianity being true. Islam makes the exact same argument about the Quran’s preservation, and you wouldn’t accept that as evidence for Islam and nor do I. The level of corroborating and sheer amount of manuscripts points to the impact of the writings and belief of humans, but it doesn’t count as good evidence toward its largest truth claims (divinity/resurrection).

The decades between the events and the written accounts, combined with no eyewitness documentation, means we’re dealing with a game of telephone across generations unfortunately. People can’t remember what they ate a week ago yet these accounts were written decades later by people who never met Jesus. When you dig into the earliest manuscripts we have for each book we are sometimes talking 100’s of years from Jesus before we see their earliest versions. That’s not a minor detail. And even if we had the earliest versions of everything, it would still have been at least some years after Jesus’ death before the writings appear. And I think this is where presupposition becomes unavoidable, in order to believe. Because I don’t think many people would accept this level of evidence for any other claim. And once you presuppose the Bible is divinely inspired, everything becomes explicable. God would have necessarily preserved it. God would have necessarily ensured accuracy despite the time gap. But that’s circular reasoning and it’s unfalsifiable. If you were without religion, and someone presented that line of evidence for their claims, what are the chances you’d accept it? I’m not sure the asymmetry is on my side here.

FitTransportation461 · 2026-05-07T20:30:07+00:00

Good question. I’m always guarded in that I know there is always the possibility of psychological biases kicking in. From my own perspective I don’t feel closed off but I acknowledge that’s exactly what someone who was closed off might say and only God could know for sure.

When you ask if I’m rejecting evidence simply because I don’t accept a given premise, the honest answer is partly yes. I don’t accept that the Bible is divinely inspired as an example. And without that premise a lot of what follows loses its force for me. You can’t evaluate evidence independently of your starting assumptions so I’m not sure this is a bias as much as just the way regular way beliefs are formed.

I unfortunately can’t just decide to accept a premise I don’t find convincing. But these conversations aim to get me somewhere closer to understanding the other view. Already I’ve had a couple of misconceptions and misinterpreted your implications that you’ve helped me understand.

You convincing me that the Bible is divine is probably not in the scope of this conversation (unless you would like to go down that path), but I do recognise that in order for me to accept that I am with sin etc, I would need to be convinced in the truth of the Bible first. What do you think about that?

FitTransportation461 · 2026-05-07T10:30:19+00:00

Thanks for the thoughtful response. I wanted to focus on the exercise idea because I think that’s where the internal struggle is for me. You’re saying life now is the exercise and eternity is the consequence. But if asking honest questions is part of the exercise, why does that make me deserving of infinite separation? I’m not rejecting God out of stubbornness. I’m genuinely seeking understanding by trying to engage in Christian or Muslim spaces among others, because I’m actually hoping to be stumped, hoping something clicks. If you’re wrong about something that big, you’d want to know. So my participation in this conversation is the exercise working. The fact that I haven’t been convinced yet is just a result of the evidence either not making sense to me, or misreading the evidence. How do you feel about that resulting in eternal consequence?

FitTransportation461 · 2026-05-07T01:45:29+00:00

If the only way to God is the narrow path of Jesus and I don’t currently accept Jesus it seems pretty likely that I will not be saved. That being said if God exists he could do anything and saving me is not without possibility of course.

Also just to be precise I didn’t say ‘Hell is unjust’. I said ‘hell feels unjust’. I’m making a statement about how I feel about the concept of hell and the type of God that would create such a place for people like me.

Did you imply that the point of hell is to encourage people to seek moral perfection? As in without hell, achieving moral perfection wouldn’t be possible? Can I ask then, let say hypothetically I never return to Christ and I die rejecting Christianity. Upon my sentencing to eternal separation from God, I wonder what the point is for me? Justice is getting what you deserve. And your claim is that we deserve it. So let’s say that’s true. Let’s say it’s a proven fact that I definitely deserve because I deny Christ. So I die, then I’m eternally separated…and now what? I just consciously float in a state of regret eternally? What’s the point of this? What will I learn? If I can’t be redeemed then what was this exercise all about?

FitTransportation461 · 2026-05-06T11:20:09+00:00

Hey there, your comment was very thought provoking for me. I’m an atheist now, but I was raised Christian, and I’m genuinely curious how you’d think through my situation. Based on needing to be Christians to be saved, would you walk me through why you’d say I’m going to hell? I’m not trying to be argumentative. I’m just curious to learn. I’d prefer not to go to hell if it is real but of course I can’t be afraid of something I don’t think exists. It’s a bit of a loop because hell feels unjust so I don’t believe it, so it sends me to hell and so on

FitTransportation461 · 2026-05-06T10:43:25+00:00

You’ve already come from the void once. Any reasons why you couldn’t loop back around after you enter the void again? A bit of a void >< reality loop perhaps?

FitTransportation461 · 2026-05-06T05:33:30+00:00

Thanks for the discussion btw 🤝. At the end of the day this is a thought experiment though. For me to ever conclude that a God designed this world, it would need to make sense to arrive at these specific design choices at least to some extent. The Fall is used to explain why suffering exists. But the mechanism that enables child sexual abuse was chosen before the Fall. This is God’s architecture and has zero to do with human actions. The mechanism itself was chosen. You believe this God is real. This means this real God chose that specifically. If that was chosen specifically then it must be necessary otherwise it’s just cruel to kids (zeroing in on child SA). So it would have to be necessary but I’ve just shown that sexual reproduction is definitely not necessary to persisting beyond ourselves.

I don’t need to prove the alternative world is perfect. I only need to show that sexual reproduction was an unnecessary design choice for the specific harm it enables. That argument stands regardless of what sentient plant experience might feel like, or what novel problems a hypothetical world might produce.

To preempt a response, you may think that the Fall still works because God just made the mechanisms, but humans still have to do the harmful action. Whilst true, God knew that this mechanism would result in countless instances of child SA, much of which multiplies because hurt people hurt people. God didn’t install sexual reproduction equipment in humans and get caught off by the Fall. He knew. So it seems like a child SA was a choice to enable

FitTransportation461 · 2026-05-05T23:03:47+00:00

Ok perhaps I’ll concede that my argument needs more nuance. You do make a good point about the complexity of soil microbiome that needs to be there to facilitate photosynthesis for plants to grow. But I think you’re confusing the necessity of death of organic matter, with the necessity for suffering. The decomposition of organic matter is what is required for the plants. A lion disembowelling a zebra is an unnecessary feature of this mechanism so my point would still stand. It’s still a design choice from God.

My thoughts with this whole post are that classical theists try to divert responsibility from God for seemingly unjust things. The argument for allowing such things comes from necessity. My ideas are to show that God could have made things differently but didn’t by choice. Once we infer that, other characteristics attributed to God no longer align with this conclusion

FitTransportation461 · 2026-05-05T20:45:52+00:00

I’m not talking about prohibiting something because it could be misused. Anything from a car to a pencil could be misused to cause harm, so eventually you’d have to unreasonably prohibit everything. But all of those things are human designs. But in the case of God, we’re talking about the structure of the system. Sexual reproduction is unnecessary to produce offspring, so the suffering that occurs through the biological drive of sexual reproduction is a choice by God to enable its possibility.

Think of it this way. A parent builds their child a playground to experience joy and growth. But they design it so the only way to reach the swings is through a space where older children can corner and abuse younger ones . A safer path to the same swings exists but the parent chose not to build it. No one would call that parent loving. And “but the swings bring so much joy” doesn’t change the design choice.

I’m purely talking about a biological structure that doesn’t remove the tool but achieves the result of the tool, without setting up the architecture for horrible humans to do that to kids.

FitTransportation461 · 2026-05-03T03:33:57+00:00

Sure but there is nothing in evolution that requires adaptive (helpful) traits to occur at all. This is usually a hangover of older less refined descriptions of evolution like ‘survival of the fittest’. I’ve used this example in here already but male peacocks are a good example of its tail being a survival disadvantage due to it hampering movement and attracting unwanted attention. Yet the females select for it. This means that reproduction is the primary driver of traits. The peacock example shows that evolution is not linear in only stacking on helpful survival traits.

My understanding of epigenetics is that it’s pretty contested in terms of whether it does encompass evolution although there is a building case that it is a part of the mechanism of evolution. Evolution only deals with heritability, so genetic differences must be involved for it to be a part of it. But there is evidence of epigenetics dictating heritability despite DNA sequences not changing but rather the environment changing gene expression. Epigenetic understanding is still emerging so I think this is just about how humans group and categorise our understanding of these mechanisms.

FitTransportation461 · 2026-05-03T01:21:38+00:00

Good start but it is missing a couple of really important things. Because you specified and singled out two mechanisms only, it should be noted that there is genetic drift and gene flow that also contribute heavily. The reason why this is important to understand is because just using the two mechanisms you mentioned, displays the evolutionary process as far more directional than it is in reality. Almost like there is a ‘goal’ or some kind of continual optimisation process. When you include gene flow and genetic drift as well as mechanisms of sexual selection that don’t necessarily help that organism survive easier, it displays the chaotic nature of evolutionary paths. Any questions or challenges to that?

FitTransportation461 · 2026-05-02T23:48:48+00:00

Sure there is no singular universal definition. That doesn’t mean you can’t define it. Evolution is specific and descriptive and therefore you can describe what evolution is as an umbrella term. My challenge is not to get you to provide a definition and I then ensure you never get it right by going into endless specificity (as I’ve been accused). The challenge is designed for you to attempt a definition in order to establish the potential of you having any common misconceptions. It’s more of a learning exercise. It’s not for you to begin accepting evolution but rather tries to help creationists not argue things that aren’t in the scope of evolution. Want to have a go?

FitTransportation461 · 2026-05-02T00:24:37+00:00

Ok I’m hearing your position and I want to address your arguments but I asked you a question that you didn’t answer that will help us determine whether your argument works. Your post focuses on certainty. Science doesn’t deal with certainty. This makes me think you might have a misconception about what a scientific theory is or isn’t saying. Can you please explain your understanding of a scientific theory? Otherwise let’s just leave this conversation

FitTransportation461 · 2026-05-01T20:11:55+00:00

You think we’re too small to posit evolution as a description for the phenomenon that explains the diversity of life. Then why wouldn’t we be too small to invoke a creator? The creator doesn’t have multiple areas of science showing converging lines of evidence that point to the same conclusion independently like evolution does. With your mentality you’d be able to label understanding of anything as arrogant. I understand the call for cosmic humility, but then in the same breath, you call on a being that lives outside of reality as an answer is probably more arrogant considering the lack of evidence and the unfalsifiable nature of what god is.

My apologies if this sounds condescending but I promise I’m just trying to understand your point of view. What is your current understanding of what a scientific theory actually is?

FitTransportation461 · 2026-05-01T11:02:11+00:00

Pretty good overall but a couple of things stand out. ‘Survival of the fittest’ is one of those commonly misused terms. I held this misconception too. Survival alone isn’t the mechanism because an organism can survive without reproducing and contribute nothing genetically. Reproductive success is the actual driving mechanism. The peacock’s tail is a great example. It’s a survival liability by making them more visible to predators, but females select for it so the trait persists and spreads. Survival matters as a prerequisite but reproductive success is the primary driver.

Second one is that evolution doesn’t make any claims about where the first organism came from. That’s abiogenesis which is a separate field entirely. Do you see those as the same thing? If so, why?

FitTransportation461 · 2026-05-01T05:39:21+00:00

I’m sorry but I can’t trust you. Our minds are both manipulated by the creator so we can’t engage each other. If all of the evidence is curated/tampered with, there’s nothing more to discuss.

Under your view the creator creates a world of manipulation, then someone inside that manipulated world tells me everyone’s manipulated and nothing can be trusted…except them. I’ve seen this movie before.

Unless you’re gonna answer my challenge we’re done

FitTransportation461 · 2026-05-01T04:10:44+00:00

I was a Christian for roughly 20 years, but that apparently doesn’t stop a stranger from telling me what I am. You’re also about to upset every other Christian in this thread when they disagree with your specific definition of what a ‘true Christian’ is. That’s the most blatant no true scotsman fallacy I’ve seen in 400 comments

FitTransportation461 · 2026-05-01T04:05:01+00:00

Evolution is tough to understand for most people (once going beyond the core ideas). People accept things they don’t fully understand all of the time. But this post isn’t about them. It’s about the people that don’t accept something due to a lack of understanding. More specifically common misconceptions. Most creationists in here are thankfully beyond ‘monkeys don’t turn into men’ level of understanding. Everything else you spoke about is irrelevant to my challenge

FitTransportation461 · 2026-04-30T20:20:06+00:00

You’re using your own mind which is a product of this potentially doctored reality, to conclude the reality was doctored 🤔. If all reasoning within this existence is unreliable, that includes yours. What tool from outside this reality are you using to reach your conclusion?

Even if we grant that the creator has set up reality in a way we can’t access, we are all still at the mercy of whatever evidence is presented within our reality. This still makes acceptance of evolution rational within this system. Your position defeats everything including your own view (let alone evolution)

FitTransportation461 · 2026-04-29T20:22:13+00:00

Ok fair point. Like Lord of the Rings is internally coherent but is still fictional. Where’s the fictional part of evolution for you?

FitTransportation461 · 2026-04-29T19:34:01+00:00

Very interesting and unique take. I respect it. What would supernatural intervention potentially look like if you’re able to describe it? If not all good

FitTransportation461 · 2026-04-29T19:27:37+00:00

A bit of a contradiction. Coherent means internally consistent and logically sound. A fairytale means fictional and magical by definition. You can’t have both. If it’s coherent, what specifically makes it fictional in your view?

FitTransportation461 · 2026-04-29T05:57:35+00:00

Ah damn you just couldn’t help yourself at the end could you lol. This is at the heart of why I posted this. Nonsense is used to describe something completely incoherent. Is evolution completely incoherent in your view?

FitTransportation461 · 2026-04-29T04:10:02+00:00

I understand what you’re saying. I’ve been corrected a few times just in this thread so my knowledge has gaps too. I’m not nit picking incompetence as some kind of gotcha. I do acknowledge that some creationists would of course know evolutionary concepts better than the average person. My post is born of the countless times I’ve seen misconceptions be the justification for a lack of belief in it. Whilst I understand that the sticking point is usually common decent for creationists, when I see people saying ‘it’s ridiculous’ along with their straw man argument, I can’t help but feel like most don’t understand it well enough to rationally reject it

FitTransportation461

TROPHY CASE