Here’s a taste of what some apparently consider a persuasive argument.
One minute after you die you will be either elated or terrified…and it will be too late to reroute your travel plans. When you slip behind the parted curtain, your life will not be over. Rather, it will be just beginning—in a place of unimaginable bliss or indescribable horror.
— Erwin Lutzer
Ooh, false dichotomy. Also, I have to ask Erwin…how do you know? Have you died (he’s still alive and 84 years old)? Do you have reproducible observations of your two and only two possible afterlives? I think we can dismiss this argument on the basis of its fundamental illogic and its total lack of supporting evidence.
It’s nothing but threats and fear. Sorry, Erwin, you fail. Don’t feel too bad, though, it’s a universal property of all theologians.
Brahma would like to have a word with Erwin Lutzer.
He has just set his path of Reincarnation back by millions of years.
In his next life he could come back as a tapeworm or a spider.
It is not as bad as it sounds though.
Brahma is infinitely merciful.
You get as many kicks at the goal as you need to reach the end.
Theological “wisdom” – Right up there with military intelligence and jumbo shrimp.
Let’s not neglect that choosing the wrong flavor of one of the “two alternatives” is at least as likely to be harmful to one’s afterlife prospects. A hypothetical deity who sets up/tolerates the “hell/heaven” scheme underlying Lutzer’s facile version of Pascal’s Wager is likely to be at least as pissed off — and prone to implementing punitive measures — by worship of the “wrong” deity than of failure to worship a deity at all. Worse, the human agents thereof are still more likely to extend the prospective afterlife consequences into the present; by now, everyone should expect the Spanish Inquisition…
“One minute after you die…” I wonder if Lutzer has ever been in the room when some died unexpectedly in the hospital. Given what I experienced 54 years ago with a patient, I’m not sure when that minute begins.
Religious apologetics — the bluff that keeps on bluffing…