Innocents in Hell, Guilty in Heaven?

One of the standard Xian interpretations of what gets a person into heaven is faith in Jesus Christ alone. It is largely for this reason that so many people become missionaries - to carry his word to them, to save as many of them as possible. But this leads to a moral quandry; I'll present the two main sample cases.1) Natives around the world before the arrival of western explorers: For millenia, they had absolutely no knowlege of Christ, no contact with Christians, or anything of the sort. Even in this century, there have been isolated tribes that have been discovered for the first time. What kind of loving god would damn entire native nations, some of millions of people, generation after generation for something that they had no capability to deal with?Please justify your response with passages in the bible that don't contradict with the passages from which you get your "faith alone" belief.2) Serial killers, who repent on their death bed and accept Jesus, can live their whole life doing not just bad works, but horrid works. Then, last minute, with no time left, they suddenly "see the light", and get to heaven. Meanwhile, all of the natives, listed in #1, are hellbound, despite how good of lives they may have lived.How do you reconcile these?(Edit: just for clarification, this is a legitimate question. Most Christians that I have posed it to have prefered to dodge, so I have begun to wonder if they actually have resolved it in their own minds.)------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."[This message has been edited by Rei, 11-25-2003]

Are you trying to claim that native Americans, for example, already knew in their hearts not just about the Christian God, *and* Jesus, but all of the things that the Christian God finds correct and incorrect?For example, Paul states, "They are fully aware of God's death penalty for those who do these things, yet they go right ahead and do them anyway. And, worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too.".Do Christians actually believe this, concerning native peoples? That they are inherently aware of the Christian God, and of Jesus, and his resurrection, and all of the things that the Christian God likes and doesn't like, and are "fully aware" (i.e., having full conscious knowlege) of his death penalty (including socieities which do not practice any sort of death penalty) for certain acts?------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

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1) Do you not find it strange that you have A SENSE OF JUSTICE- demonstrated by the very posing of this question(namely, how could God judge someone who (as you would probably say) never has a chance of being introduced to Christ.

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Grace, didn't we already have this discussion? Social norms, such as standards of justice, are memes and are selected by memetic selection.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

Apostlos,Thank you for your response, but I feel like you still haven't touched the issue at all: "How is it possible for a person to come to specific knowledge of Christ's sacrifice without being told about his life, or even that he existed?"You keep insisting that it's some sort of "humanistic elitism" to suggest that they're not on a level playing field. I am forced to ask again: What does God do to reveal himself, and why is it not reflected in the population?If God *has* revealed Christ to all of these people, where is the evidence? Are we to believe that hundreds of millions to billions of people all had Christ revealed to them, and all chose to reject him? And, are we also to believe that all sides were on a level playing field, but Europe ended up almost entirely Christian while the Americas didn't have a single Christian indian tribe, no matter how small? Can a level playing field even remotely reconcile such an imbalance? If so, how?Apart from Calvinism, I don't see a reconcilation of this issue from you at all.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

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I already answered your first question in both of my posts. I also answered your second question in my most recent one. But for clarification let me say that if you will review both of my lengthy posts you will see that great multitudes of people had God revealed to them, not necessarily the specific person and work of Christ

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Clearly you didn't answer the questions well enough or clear enough, or I would not have felt the need to ask you to restate.I'll ask you more directly: You seem to think that Christ is inherently revealed to native tribes. Can you name a single tribe that was *found already as Christian*, or any new world archaeological evidence to suggest that there ever was a tribe that was Christian before missionaries got there.. I don't care what happens after missionaries got there - we're talking about whether these people were being damned in the millenia before missionaries arrived.

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In addition to this, there is no evidence to suggest that they multitudes have never heard when the groups in question have perfectly followed the pattern God sets forth in Romans 1:16-32.

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We're not talking about a "pattern" - we're talking about specific rules and commands. We're talking about a monotheistic religous view with Jesus Christ as the savior (even if by another name) with specific proscriptions for belief, sexuality, gender roles, church service, and even style of dress. No native Americans had this.

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. I tell you in truth that there very many people in this country fulfilling some kind of religious duty in the name of Christ who have never truly accepted the person of God and received salvation through Jesus Christ.

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The 'No True Scotsman' fallacy.

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If I have failed to provide enough information in either post, then it is up to you to show me where my post is inadequate.

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How can I do that apart from asking questions on where I need things clarified? What sort of a debate is it in which one person makes a "point" that is too vague to be understood, and when the other person asks for clarification, you simply tell them to read again?I'll enumerate the questions again. If you refuse to answer them, I'll considered them unanswered, and thus significant points against your worldview. I want a specific answer for each question.1. What does God do to reveal himself (specifics, please! No more generalizations).2. Can you name a single tribe that was *found already as Christian*, or any new world archaeological evidence to suggest that there ever was a tribe that was Christian before missionaries got there.. I don't care what happens after missionaries got there - we're talking about whether these people were being damned in the millenia before missionaries arrived.3. Do people go to heaven for a "pattern", or for belief in a specific set of rules and commands (a monotheistic religous view with Jesus Christ as the savior (even if by another name), with specific proscriptions for belief, sexuality, gender roles, church service, and even style of dress)? If the latter, can you name a *single* *specific* native tribe which managed this (something that innumerable Europeans did, even with your "No True Scotsman" fallacy)?------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

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There is an obvious order (which if i might add did not come about, as Gaylord Simpson said, by slight successive changes to an organism) in nature that reveals an orderly creator.

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Ah, so order implies a creator? So, then, the Mandelbrough Set must be a god, because Mandelbrough certainly didn't program all of the intricate detail (he simply ran a basic iterative formula, and the complexity created itself. Are the basic laws of chemistry a god? Because you run them on subzero water, and the simple laws create complex organized structures. Is the standard population equation ( f(x)=kx(1-x) ) a god? Because when you graph the convergence points of the equation over varying values of k, it splits and steadily trees off, diverging to chaos, and then out of the chaos jumps... 3! convegence points... which subdivide and return to chaos (etc). Is the sun a god? Because by following basic physical laws, it can create incredible ordered and yet complex internal behavior that have allowed it to keep a consistant fusion and illumination process over the ages. Fractals, earth's dynamo, Conway's game of life, the weather, you name it: simple rules applied once create simple results, but simple rules applied iteratively often create complex results.You skipped two questions, and your first one doesn't address the subject at hand (how native Americans and others who were not exposed to Christianity were suppossed to be on a level playing field for acceptance of Christ and following his commands, and thus on a level playing field for heaven)Try again.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

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As far as I can tell, everything in that enormous list you wrote deals according to the laws of nature, which is why if they are repeated again, you would result with the same answer every time.

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Actually, with the non-simulated phenomina (simulated phenomina are not subject to quantum uncertainty), you run the same simulation twice, and you get different results each time (such as forming snowflakes). Errors magnify themselves - thus, the order that you get still has chaotic elements. That's the beauty of simple rules applied iteratively. The universe has basic simple rules - and they're applied incredibly iteratively.

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If these things were not ordered, the one testing would generate various answers every time he tested, correct?

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Quantum uncertainty alone accounts for that (i.e., no particle has an *exact* position and velocity, it needs to be represented with a wave function which provides the probability distribution for it being in a certain location with a certain velocity).

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If you have time, would it be possible to post definitions and functions of the above listed in common layman's terms? I would be grateful. I will try to devise an asnwer to your other 2 questions and post them asap.

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Sure. Let's go down the list. I'll point out that I did a mix of mathematical phenomina and natural phenomina that, although based on relatively simple rules at a basic level, the fact that the rules are iterative causes them to produce incredibly complex phenomina.The Mandelbrot Set: The Mandelbrot set is a simply the iteration of a simple equation: P=P^2+C, where P is a complex point (I.e., a point that has the form A+B*i, where i is the square root of negative one; A is the real component, and B is the imaginary component), and C is an arbitrary complex constant. You iterate (i.e., repeat) this equation until it either "diverges" (i.e., the magnitude of point P becomes greater than some arbitrary value), or exceeds an iteration count (i.e., will likely never diverge). For points that exceed the maximum number of iterations, you plot them as black; for all others, you plot as the color a value for the number of iterations it took to diverge. You start out with an image like this; by zooming in, you find all sorts of amazing complexity coming from this incredibly simple equation - including new, slightly different Mandelbrot sets hidden inside the original. Complexity from simplicity. The mandelbrot set is known as a "fractal"; to play around with other fractals of this type, try the program "Fractint". There are many other types of fractals out there, such as IFS (Iterative Field System) fractals - all are complex phenomina created by simple rules.I think you know what the sun is (although you may not be familiar with the complexity (and yet in many cases, amazing order) of its internal reactions. I'm also sure you aware of the complexity of patterns in freezing water. Earth's dynamo is the process which generates its magnetic field. It is simply due to the motion of molten metal in Earth's mantle, but the process is so incredibly complex that it is hard to model. The weather, as you also probably know, is subject to what is commonly called the "butterfly effect" ("a butterfly flaps its wings in brazil, and a hurricane hits the east coast years later when it wouldn't have before"). It's actually worse than this: The universe itself is inherently uncertain, so it doesn't take some arbitrary action of a butterfly to throw off calculations .All natural phenomina are based on four fundamental forces (and we've linked three of them together: Strong, Weak, Electroweak (electromagnetic), and Gravity (there's also some other issues that come into play, but this is the vast majority of the universe here). All of these complex (and yet ordered) phenomina come from these basic forces - no divine intervention keeps snowflakes forming, or keeps the sun burning, etc; it is all explained by basic physics. Now this doesn't mean that a God [i]can't[i] intervene - it just means that it isn't necessary for this complex and yet ordered behavior.Conway's Game of Life is what is known as a cellular automata. You have a flat grid of points which can have a small finite number of states (in Conway's case, two states (on and off)), and a rule is applied at each cycle. In Conway's case, the rule is that if the cell is off and it has three neighbors on, turn it on. If the cell is on and it doesn't have either two or three neighbors on, turn it off. Otherwise, leave it as-is. It creates really neat behavior, such as gliders (cell clusters which move themselves), puffers (which self replicate or expand to infinite, etc. It is Turing-complete, so it can even simulate itself. Read about more complexity in it hereHere's a page about chaos and order in the population (logistics) equation (another very simple equation). Note the period of intermittency that emerges from the pure chaos inherent in the equation.Hmm, did I leave anything out?------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."[This message has been edited by Rei, 12-11-2003]