...to avoid the punishment we deserve...
And this is where the real problem is, IMO. We don't deserve it. I happen to think human beings are pretty damn amazing and are basically good. We are not morally rotten shitheads. Seriously, in your heart of hearts, do you really believe your a compete asshole shithead? Cause that's how your saying that god views us. We're so bad that we deserve to get tortured for all eternity. Really? That is some messed up shit.
We keep rehashing the same things, but rather than point back, we'll do it again as quick as possible.
Oh boy, here we go :) I'll try to reply to each idea point by point. But in the end I think we won't come to consensus because we have fundamentally different views of human beings - you feel they are rotten and I think they are basically good. I don't think we'll be able to bridge that large of a gap. But we'll dig in and see what we discover.
They are what God expects, not what we "think" or want to be true. I think that my company should pay me triple what they do, because I am pretty damn amazing as you say. But because I am not the creator of the company I do not get to make the rules, so I live within the system I am given. Now I can leave the company I'm a part of, but I can't leave God's creation. Even if I kill myself to leave Earth, I still have eternity to live by the rules he set up. Sorry man, but it is what it is, just like your boss would tell you when you railed against the rules. He who makes the world, makes the rules, we just get to live by them. Sorry you feel that's messed up shit, but as I responded when you've introduced the world to tyortism, that's just how it is. I get you feel you've got it figure out differently, and for your sake, I hope you're right. How cool would that be for you. I mean you and God could be hanging with all of us who all get to be there with you as you claim and laugh your ass off about how stupid we all were and how awesome God was to pull the ultimate punk on humankind and then say "Psych! I was just kidding! You all get to come to the party! Come on in!"
What I'm trying to do is to get you to think outside the box. That maybe god has a different nature than what you have been lead to believe. I actually study large (human based) systems at work so I understand at a deep level how the overarching system you find yourself in can influence thoughts, beliefs and behaviors. As someone that was a hardcore atheist from when I was 17 till around 40 but then had some experiences that pushed me back toward a belief in god, I was in a rare situation of believing in god, but not attached to any particular belief system since it'd been so long since I'd been a part of one. So I was left to evaluate each major religion, on it's own merits, without any "skin in the game". So that's where I'm coming from, hopefully that helps provide some context.
To use your analogy, I view the different major religions as different companies that I might go work for. They all say they will help me obtain my end objective (be closer to god, get into heaven). But they all have different systems in place. So in this sense, I do actually have some autonomy around which system I choose to live in. I'll give you the shortened version - I found that none of them were compatible the revelation that happened to me personally, and thus (to continue the company metaphor) started my own company where I could set up the system so it was consistent with what I had experienced directly and personally. Thus tyort1ism was born.
I'm going to try to answer the rest of your post without being totally unserious, but it is hard because I need to try dig deep "my heart of hearts" as you say and try to imagine the unimaginable. How would I behave in a system that the only guides, morals if you were, were limited by consequences I wanted to avoid, i.e. societal laws or the law of the tribe if we never got to civilization because we killed each other off due to our uncontrolled wanton desires.
This is simply not historically accurate. The ancient Greeks and Romans both established the rule of law, along with democracy and a republican form of government. Neither of these societies were christian at the time they did that. So how can we have (not just individuals) entire civilizations making positive strides toward civility in the absence of christianity? The other thing I'd point out is that since WW2, the number of deaths from war has been on a dramatic downturn. Is this because the % of christians in the world has been on a dramatic uptick? Again, that's just not the case. If anything, christianity is struggling with attrition within their congregation. In fact, if you really look at the data, as more and more people become less and less religiously affiliated (which is a clear modern trend), the less war and death we have. Huh.
Based on that, yes, if I look into my heart of hearts I believe I would be a compete asshole shithead. I believe we are morally rotten shitheads, because I've rarely met somehow who I got to spend time in some questionable circumstance who did not very clearly show me that when given the choice, men will pick the quick fix, the fast high, the fleshly pleasure and deal with the consequences, if there are any later. I would most likely accept come pretty crappy consequences just to have a cheap thrill now and then. This is the point God makes. We are animals, and driven by those carnal desires more than we know. We just like to tell ourselves we are better than that. And each of us can control those impulses for so long but we progress to a lower and lower level each time.
Well then we have different hearts. My case in point - when I was an atheist, I was still a good person, I didn't sleep around on my wife (or even contemplate it as a real possibility), I was a good father to my child, I had a successful career, I had strong friendships that I honored by treating them well and with respect, I paid my taxes, I didn't murder anyone, I didn't extort anyone or steal anything, etc... Now that I am a believer, I still don't do any of those things. It IS possible to be a good person without the influence of christianity.
And I'd also point out how breathtakingly arrogant a claim like yours really is. If people can only be moral through christ, then you cannot believe that any person of a different religion is moral. I personally know a lot of muslims, jews and atheists. They are ALL good people. On their behalf I am giving you a big middle finger. I'm kidding around a bit here, but you see the problem, no?
I need to ask you some questions because this next part requires me to make sure that what I would find a problem, you find a problem.
From the moral standpoint, do you feel the path we have taken on publicly acceptable speech, general decorum and respect for one's person is OK? You can use our public discourse our our entertainment as the continuum for this. Do you feel that the increased name calling, use of vulgar and offensive language that has occurred over the last 200 years is moving in the right direction to say that morals are improving or at least staying the same? With regards to seeing others naked, having sex or conducting other acts that most would probably morally indicate should be private versus being "fun" is driving to a standard you would call morally better or the same? Do you feel more and more graphic representations of things like murder, rape , incest, child abuse, hate attacks is in alignment with a mankind who is able to control themselves and are not rotten shitheads?
Some people act badly. Most do not. This is how it is and how it's always been. Just because 5% (or 10% or whatever) of the population acts badly does not give you the right to paint all people with that same brush.
Re: more and more graphic representation of things like rape etc. I don't find that stuff appealing to watch. But here's the irony - while the images of it are on the increase the actual incidents of violence is down, way down. So I'd call that a definite improvement. I can turn off the TV if someone character is being portrayed as being killed. I cannot turn off someone murdering me in real life.
If Christian norms did not exist, and with my inborn morality, I would simply feel that we are a more morally corrupt world today than we were 50 years ago, than we were 100 years ago, then we were 1,000 years ago. The steady progression is down, but I believe you suggest at some point we will reach a point where we stop going further and further into rotten behavior and arrive at a level that is still morally acceptable, so that's why I ask the questions. Because I'd expect your answers to everything above to be that you love it all. That you enjoy watching a snuff film every now and again with your friends. That you kick back with your wife and watch a violent rape scene of another man's wife and say "honey we should try that some time. after all man is so moral". (or maybe only movie directors are immoral and use a brainwashing potion to get us to watch and pay money to do so).
Again, you are positing "if christian morality did not exist, there'd be no morality at all". That is a breathtaking insult to every Muslim, Buddhist, Jew, Hindu and atheist that actually does live a good life according to the moral codes in their belief system. Again, that's a problem.
God does not "view" us that way. God "knows" we are that way. And the fact that he just does not leave us to our own desires to do vile things to each other at increasing levels is amazing. We deserve to get tortured for all eternity simply because God cannot tolerate to be in the presence of anything less than holy perfection. Again, you may not like it but you are not the creator so tough shit on the rules. I guess you could be upset that God cannot tolerate us in his presence. I could also entertain the thought that it would have been nice in that case that he just put us a nice island and let us keep going as we were and just stayed away from us and let us do our own thing (which is what man wants God to do anyway, just leave us alone and let us do our thing), but again we hit a piece of God's nature, that he is perfectly just, and sin must be punished. So yes, you can walk down the domestic abuser track again, though it's not like that with God, but to rationalize it humans will go there, cause damn we want it to be our way, and we get nasty when it's not. We name call, we get angry, we ask people how dare they tell us how to live, but yeah, there's nothing in that behavior to indicate that maybe we have a propensity to me morally rotten shitheads when given the choice.
And here we have the major difference. If we're not worth being in his presence, ITS HIS FAULT! He created us. We are like this BECAUSE OF HIS DESIGN. If you feel you are shit, that's because that's how your god made you. Maybe you are the type to grovel at the feet of a boss with shitty rules in hopes of a promotion. Me, I'll find another boss.
Unless I'm wrong about you... maybe you personally WERE completely good and absolutely pure and holy and then you decided "well screw this, I'm gonna be a rotter". Did you ever do that? Cause if you did, well then maybe yeah you deserve to rot in hell. So did you?