Unrelated to the topic at hand, but Yuu, could you stop replying to posts sentence by sentence? For one it creates unnecessarily huge posts, and secondly most sentences relate to each other, so you only have to reply to the point made, not to every sentence separately. That'd make your replies far more easily readable.
Thanks.
The sentence by sentence thing is the reason why some forums don't have the quote button.
It's the reason Daxx doesn't come here anymore. huehue
Old Spacebattler habit. :/
I'll try and fix it as much as I can.
Sorry.
Umm... Andrew Lansley?
I know that you, as a really strong believer in your religion might find it hard to believe, but people don't exactly get to choose whether they believe in this stuff or not. I've been an atheist/agnostic my entire life, and the closest I've ever come to religion was a childhood belief in Santa Claus. It is as impossible for me to imagine myself believing in god as I'm sure it would be for you to imagine yourself not believing in god.
Even if I wanted to be religious I would at best be paying lip service. Whatever it is inside some people that makes them turn to religion just plain doesn't exist in me.
It's actually not that much of a stretch. There's been numerous cases of people from secular backgrounds that joined religious organizations and became quite dedicated to them. There's also the case of people who came from deeply devout backgrounds but eventually grew to be quite set on agnosticism or atheism.
Of course, it's not the majority by any stretch, but the phenomenon does exist. Heel face turns can happen to the most unlikely of people.
How does that fit into your worldview? Are you willing to accept that what I'm saying is true, or are you just going to rationalise it as me not having 'seen the light' or being stubborn or whatever else?
Indeed, it is certainly possible that a person who spent their life in a highly secular society to be secular for their entire life, especially if the only religions they had in contact with can't answer their questions or worse were outright actively malicious to them or to many others. In that case, they'd be judged according to their consciousness.
However, it is also equally true that people simply choose to not accept what they've heard, even if they know its true on a deep or subconscious level. Maybe it's because of pride, or a grudge, or greed, or maybe something else. Only the person can dig into themselves to find out, and only if they choose to do so.
Of course, there's also the possibility that the person doing the missionary work is not doing it properly or acting without proper devotion, at which point the missionary is the one liable due to their lack of sincerity for their work and will be the one to answer on that last day.
In the end, us regular humans are unable to see within other people's hearts and have made mistakes ourselves, we don't have the right to judge with ultimate certainty the ultimate fate of other people. The only thing we can do is teach them what should be done, the consequences of not doing it, the benefits of doing it, and so on. When all is said and done, missionaries and people of the faith can merely be guides to others: the ultimate choice is up to the person him/herself.
