**Btw, If you believe that the world is only 6,000 years old, then I suppose this question doesn't apply to you.
For the rest of you: I am not a Christian, I am an Indigenous Germanic Polytheist. I have always wondered something about your god and your, for lack of a better word, mythology (not saying that your Lore and Stories are "fake" as the definition of the word "myth" is a story or fable based on culture or spirituality).
For over 50,000 years, Proto-Indo-Europeans had been practicing their polytheistic "pagan" beliefs, all of which were related to each other and descended from one polytheistic belief system in a pantheon coming out of Africa. For a couple hundred thousand years before that, people had been practicing animistic, shamanic, tribal traditions in Africa. It is also theorized that over 1.5 million years ago, when we weren't "homo-sapiens" but our predecessor, homo erectus, started to develop myth, lore and beliefs in gods and spirits.
The bible also explicitly says that anyone who doesn't accept Jesus Christ doesn't enter heaven and, by default, goes to hell. That would mean that 1.5 billion years of people are doomed, simply because they were born in a time when monotheism, at least in the god "Yahweh" hadn't existed. This belief would continue to not exist until hundreds of thousands of years later, somewhere between 2,000 and 600 BC, not to mention that the worship of "Jesus" wasn't actually organized until 300 AD.
If God is so loving, merciful and just, why would he create all of these people for thousands and thousands of years to be simply doomed to Hell, not having the slightest opportunity for salvation, and then when there is the opportunity the people who apparently "need" the salvation are people who weren't raised in a Christian household and were raised with their own set of beliefs and religion, and aren't going to convert unless if a) by forceful conversion and threat of genocide or b) belief in divine intervention, possibly by near death experience?
I suppose what I'm asking is, how can a loving, merciful, just and fair God create millions and millions of souls and people, only to have less than a handful of them not be damned? Why waste the energy? And why create souls just to make them suffer for eternity because they were born in the wrong place, wrong time or both?
For the rest of you: I am not a Christian, I am an Indigenous Germanic Polytheist. I have always wondered something about your god and your, for lack of a better word, mythology (not saying that your Lore and Stories are "fake" as the definition of the word "myth" is a story or fable based on culture or spirituality).
For over 50,000 years, Proto-Indo-Europeans had been practicing their polytheistic "pagan" beliefs, all of which were related to each other and descended from one polytheistic belief system in a pantheon coming out of Africa. For a couple hundred thousand years before that, people had been practicing animistic, shamanic, tribal traditions in Africa. It is also theorized that over 1.5 million years ago, when we weren't "homo-sapiens" but our predecessor, homo erectus, started to develop myth, lore and beliefs in gods and spirits.
The bible also explicitly says that anyone who doesn't accept Jesus Christ doesn't enter heaven and, by default, goes to hell. That would mean that 1.5 billion years of people are doomed, simply because they were born in a time when monotheism, at least in the god "Yahweh" hadn't existed. This belief would continue to not exist until hundreds of thousands of years later, somewhere between 2,000 and 600 BC, not to mention that the worship of "Jesus" wasn't actually organized until 300 AD.
If God is so loving, merciful and just, why would he create all of these people for thousands and thousands of years to be simply doomed to Hell, not having the slightest opportunity for salvation, and then when there is the opportunity the people who apparently "need" the salvation are people who weren't raised in a Christian household and were raised with their own set of beliefs and religion, and aren't going to convert unless if a) by forceful conversion and threat of genocide or b) belief in divine intervention, possibly by near death experience?
I suppose what I'm asking is, how can a loving, merciful, just and fair God create millions and millions of souls and people, only to have less than a handful of them not be damned? Why waste the energy? And why create souls just to make them suffer for eternity because they were born in the wrong place, wrong time or both?
