How to Get to Heaven (According to Jesus)

"And he [God] had caused the cursing to come upon them ... wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them." -2 Nephi 5:21 (Book of Mormon)


In the Bible, there are eight passages where Jesus specifically states requirements for entrance into Heaven. Below I will post each passage, as taken from the 2010 New International Version of the Bible.

1. On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.” -Luke 10:25-28

Summary:
-love God
-love your neighbor

2. A certain ruler asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.’”
“All these I have kept since I was a boy,” he said.
When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” -Luke 18:18-22

Summary:
-do not commit adultery
-do not murder
-do not steal
-do not give false testimony
-honor your father and mother
-sell everything you own and  follow Jesus


3. “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’
“Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples." -Luke 14:26-33


Summary:
-hate your father and mother
-hate your wife and children
-hate your brothers and sisters
-hate life itself
-give up everything


4. Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. -John 6:53-54


Summary:
-eat flesh
-drink blood


5. He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. ³ And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. -John 18:2-3


Summary:
-become like little children


6. Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
“How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” -John 3:3-8


Summary:
-be "born again"


7. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven." -Matt 5:17-20


Summary:
-your righteousness must surpass that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law


8. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. -John 3:16


Summary:
-believe in Jesus


Final List:
-love God
-love your neighbor
-do not commit adultery
-do not murder
-do not steal
-do not give false testimony
-honor you father and mother
-sell everything you own and follow Jesus
-hate your father and mother
-hate your wife and children
-hate your brothers and sisters
-hate life itself
-give up everything
-eat flesh
-drink blood
-become like little children
-be "born again"
-your righteousness must surpass that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law
-believe in Jesus


What are some of the things we end up with? Love everyone and hate everyone, be born again and become like little children, and two references to giving up all your stuff. Oh, and of course, believe in Jesus. How many people do you know who will go to heaven?

ctrlaltdel-online.com

Fallacies: Pascal's Wager and Special Pleading

"Their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up."
-Hosea 13:16

This entire fallacy can be summed up in the question, "What if you're wrong?" The argument is then made as follows. If there is no god, you've lost nothing. If there is a God, then the believers get and infinite payoff and the nonbelievers get and infinite punishment or negative payoff, as shown in the following table:

Table of Payoffs	Believe in God	Don't believe in God
God doesn't exist	0	0
God exists	+∞ (Heaven)	−∞ (Hell)

Theists claim that, even if the probability of God existing is unknown, believing has an infinitely better outcome than not believing, therefore you should believe in God just in case he exists, because it is a safe bet. There are innumerable things wrong with this wager. This will be a long post.

Begging the Question

This wager commits the fallacy of begging the question by assuming the conclusion in the premise. What if the god that exists is not the Judeo-Christian god, but is instead a god who rewards only those who have demonstrated logical prowess and skeptical thinking? Then only those who do not believe in god would go to heaven. The probabilities for either god's existence is unknown, making the expected outcomes for belief and non-belief undefined. This situation can be demonstrated as follows:

Table of Payoffs	Believe in God	Don't believe in God
God doesn't exist	0	0
Conventional god exists	+∞ (Heaven)	−∞ (Hell)
Anti-conventional god exists	−∞ (Hell)	+∞ (Heaven)

Special Pleading

Special pleading is when you claim that a particular chain of logic applies to all things except whatever fits your argument. By making this argument, you invoke special pleading by ignoring the fact that this argument could be used by anyone from any religion. It is equally valid to suppose that you believe in your god for your entire life, then when you die, it turns out you were wrong, and the real god is one of a different religion. Now you're in the same boat I am. There are obscenely many different religions in the world, most of which claiming that you must believe to be rewarded in the afterlife. Every single one of those religions could make this claim, and, if you accept Pascal's Wager, you would be forced to accept all of these claims. What if I told you that you have to give me ten dollars every Saturday for the rest of your life. If you do, then when you die you get to live in a palace and experience pure pleasure forever. If you don't give me this money, then after you die 36 dogs will pee on you forever in the afterlife. You can't be sure, but compared to an eternity, its worth paying me right? This demonstrates just how flawed Pascal's Wager is.

More Than Nothing to Lose

Pascal's wager tends to assert that by believing in a god, you lose nothing. For one thing, you go through life believing a lie, which is a bad thing in itself. Most believers spend time in a church or synagogue or mosque and contribute a lot of money as well. Those massive churches and cathedrals you see around town are funded by those donations, and all of that is a waste if the god does not exist. Religious organizations are tax exempt, so all of that money could instead be going to schools and healthcare. Additionally, when you accept the mindset where you can just answer a question with 'God did it' you have little incentive to continue exploring the question. This limits us in both scientific inquiry, science education, and morality. Rather than actually thinking about what you do, you accept an arbitrary code of conduct, which may be fundamentally flawed. For anyone who says there is no downside to people believing, I encourage them to read up on the details of the story of Andrea Yates. She had five children, and their ages were approaching the teens. She was worried they would stop believing in God and did not want them to go to Hell. She murdered her five children because she reasoned that she would endure the fires of Hell if it meant that her children could be saved. Religion is not benign.

IV. Apostasy as the One Unforgivable Sin

According to this argument, the only way to go to Heaven is to believe, and if you do not then you go to Hell. This implies that if I spend my entire life doing only good deeds, and then I die because I jumped in front of a bus to save an orphan, I am sent to Hell where I will suffer an eternity of torture. On the other side, I can be a serial rapist who has killed 35 women, but as I'm getting shot down by the police, in the last three seconds of my life, if I say and mean, "Oh my god, I realized I was wrong, I believe now," then I go to an eternity of bliss. This is fundamentally flawed and immoral.

Hopefully this post has demonstrated just how flawed Pascal's Wager is. You admit not to know God's will, you have no idea which god, if any, exists, you do have something to lose by spending your life believing in a god, and your claim posits a completely immoral system of solifidarianism or salvation by faith alone. The argument is in many ways flawed.

cectic.com