Make them prove it

Admittedly it’s only a few days old, but so far no takers on my Everlasting Hell Challenge here on my blog [June 20, 2020 Update: I’ve since removed comments from this blog, but I had them for years and nobody ever even attempted to complete the challenge here on my website despite many people reading it], and only one taker on the website where I originally posted it and so far he hasn’t come up with anything substantial.

So with that in mind I want to give a piece of advice to all of my readers that has served me well in life. If somebody tries to convince you of something, make them prove it. Sounds obvious, yes, but too many people just take it for granted that, when somebody they trust tells them something, it must be true. The problem is, just because somebody is generally trustworthy, it doesn’t mean that they know what they’re talking about. This goes especially for matters of theology. For instance, most Christians are positive that the Bible teaches that non-believers in Christ go to a place of conscious torment called hell after they die, and that they can never escape it, even though the Bible doesn’t spell this out anywhere. Most Christians are also convinced that a good angel named Lucifer led a third of the angels in a rebellion against God and got them all kicked out of heaven and turned into demons (and Lucifer was renamed Satan), even though this isn’t found anywhere in the Bible either. I could go on and on with example after example of what I call Christian Urban Legends that Christians are convinced are in the Bible but are surprised when they find out they’re not. So I repeat, if somebody tries to tell you dogmatically that something is definitely true, always make them prove it. If they can’t, you are under no obligation to believe it.