I have never seen a more christian game in my life...
Accept Jesus or suffer in hell forever. Christianity blatantly tries to force you into complying with their customs with fear, and people see nothing wrong with it
Hey! Thanks for the comment, I spent some time praying and here is my response:
"Armor of God" is a far better Christian game in my opinion, this game I have a lot of regrets with, mainly in terms of how I presented it.
The game is not entirely Biblically accurate (hence why I start with a disclaimer). Hell isn't some torture chamber as depicted in some art or an empty wasteland of nothing as I depicted in this game. That's on me, and I apologize for the confusion.
In terms of your actual complaint, I would challenge a number of your premises.
Firstly, there is nothing wrong with sharing the bad news. Imagine a Doctor refusing to share the news of a life-threatening illness with a patient. I think we can both agree that it would be morally wrong for a Doctor to do such a thing. Now imagine a Doctor telling a patient about a life-threatening illness but refusing to share that there is a cure for the illness. Once again, I think you would agree that it would be morally wrong for the Doctor to do such a thing. Bad news is something that needs to be shared sometimes, it's not easy, but it is important.
Secondly, most people think of Hell as some form of eternal torture chamber. Based on your comment I think that's what you are saying (correct me if I'm wrong). The issue is the Bible never says people will 'be tortured in hell'. What the Bible says is that people will be tormented (Luke 16:28). Torment is regret without repentance.
For example, my Grandfather passed away a number of years ago (before I believed in Christ) and the last thing I said to him was a complete lie. That's eaten me up inside because I can no longer apologize to him and make up for lying about something so stupid and trivial. That feeling of being eaten up inside is torment, I wouldn't call it suffering or torture.
Another way to look at it is if someone gets caught speeding and gets a ticket. They might think of getting an app that shows where police are to not get caught in the future, or even try to think of talking themselves out of the ticket. That person regrets speeding, but that person doesn't repent of it.
So, what is Hell then?
Hell is continually sinning against God even in the eternal state because the people in Hell don't want God. Going back to Luke 16, the man depicted in Hell doesn't ask for a way out, he just asks someone to warn others. Jesus points out that the others have already been warned and wouldn't believe someone rising from the dead and warning them. That's because the problem isn't with knowledge it is with the heart and not wanting to believe. No amount of evidence will ever be enough for someone who doesn't want to believe.
There is a clear link between smoking and cancer, but people still smoke. Smoking isn't an issue of the evidence, it's an issue of the heart.
That being said, there are degrees of torment in Hell. Someone who is a casual unbeliever who lives what we might consider a good life isn't going to receive the same level of torment as someone like Adolf Hitler. No one is going to be put at a level of torment that is excessive. God is just and will judge accordingly.
God loves you; he loves you enough to let you go and make your own choices. If you'd prefer to live your life without him, he'll let you do so. If you reject him during your life, why would he force you to be with him in the afterlife? Forcing someone to love you isn't moral (I think we'd both agree on that). So rather than forcing someone into his presence for all eternity (in Heaven), it is more merciful for God to give that person what they want and let them go to Hell.
The truth is all of us deserve Hell, everyone has fallen short and sinned in some capacity. If it was up to us alone, none of us would get to heaven, that's the bad news the doctor must give. Thankfully there is good news in Jesus. Jesus paid the price of our sin on the cross. Imagine your life as a bank account, every time you do something bad, money is removed. Everyone would be in deep debt, but Jesus paid for it with a blank check. For the past, for the present, and for future. "For the wages of sin are death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:23). Furthermore, through him is the only way to Heaven "Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me' " (John 14:6).
Thirdly, I don't go to church because I'm afraid of Hell. I go because I want to be a better person and I have a love for Jesus and his teachings. The Bible is timeless in a way unlike anything else in existence, I can't think of a single other book that's just as relevant today as the day it was first written. I can't think of any other book that's had the positive, world changing impact that the Bible has had and continues to have. The Bible isn't some dusty old book full of threats and curses. The Bible isn't fear mongering. The Bible teaches to love each other, to love your family, your neighbors, the strangers, and even those who persecute you. The Bible isn't put in place to make people afraid, it's for self-reflection, growth, and to form the basis of a relationship with God. It's there for whoever wants to read it and whoever doesn't want to doesn't have to.
Lastly, I'm not forcing you to do anything, you have free will and can make a choice for yourself. I've spent time struggling with questions like the one you raised before I came to faith. But I didn't let those questions sit, I searched out answers and have been convinced by the overwhelming evidence for the Bible, for Jesus, and for God.
I know this is a huge essay of an answer, but ultimately, I'd like to pose two questions to you.
If you were sick in the hospital, would you rather have the doctor lie to you or give you bad news followed by the good news?
If Christianity was true, would you be a Christian?
Thank you for taking the time for reading this, I'll keep you in my prayers!
In a way, Some of the things you make sense, but others don't. The problem with a disease is it will kill you. Christianity(or religion in general) is about things that happen after we die, a black box. and nothing that Christianity says will happen in the afterlife can be proven on anything other than possibly anecdotal evidence. People just claim that yeah, this book someone wrote 2000 years ago is based on the teaching of someone who died an entire generation prior(the bible was written 40 years after Jesus died, such a long time that a man can be born and die in that time back then), not to mention all the edits and additions that have been added to it. There's also plenty of logical condircitation that people seem to just explain away with an odd excuse. example: God allegedly wants us to both A, love him, and B, can just, not. The thing is, We are pretty sure about the second statement. (I currently am choosing to write this because, well, I was bored. and I didn't feel like moving on yet.) but not the first. It also doesn't help that as an omnipotent and omniscient being, he knew everything that was going to happen when he created everything. Therefore, any sin committed was allowed to happen by him. (Free will and an omnipotent being seem to contradict btw because one with unlimited power could see the future, though, in reality, free will is a hard thing to explain.) Hitler killed the Jews, yes, but that is in part due to the fact of his birth and circumstance. God could've just allowed Hitler to be born in some position where he couldn't have been harmed. My choice to not follow him is a part of his plan. If someone goes to hell, it is hypocrisy on his part. If hell even exists. Not to mention, prophets, I could go on and say that I had tea with god last Saturday in a dream where we played poker and I complained about his believers. By all means, I should be a prophet(He laughed when I mentioned this btw, and I felt embarrassed at that point;-;) yet my word is not as powerful as those in the past. And in the first place. Hundreds of misunderstandings arise because a human mind can't comprehend something such as god. Oh, and btw, the devil gets a really bad rap in this case. He's a sort of divine being himself ya know. He has literally 0 motivation to do anything with humans. same with god, because that should be beneath them. In the end, if god gave half a bull about what I believed, He probably wouldn't have just sat down and chilled. Faith is what it is, fairly blind. though I see why it exists. As he said himself. "Religions aren't meant to be right, they meant to unite people and urge them to do good. Hmm, We both know I don't need to say this. but, don't be too harsh?" They were always meant to provide a moral compass to people. as questionable as their methods are. some were just better at spreading. People should be focused on doing good, rather than believing. Logically anyway. Faith is just the glue meant to hold people together.
tl;dr :
if an all powerful being wanted something it can get it
an omniscient omnipotent being is ultimately partly responsible for everything
and faith was a tool by god to create more good. Not create worship. Hell isn't really a thing.
Thanks for the reply! I'm glad we can have a good conversation about this! This ended up being a pretty long reply since I wanted to get good detail in. I'm doing this not just for you, but anyone who is curious about the topic. I've spent the last few years of my life digging into these ideas and concepts. Some of these like 'prophecies' and 'why we trust the Bible' are some of my favorite topics!
TL:DR
There is evidence for the afterlife.
By the historical standard of evidence, the Bible accurately recorded the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
True love is only possible with a true choice to do so, which includes the choice instead to do something evil. With choice comes responsibility.
Prophecy is something very specific (history verifiably given in advance) and not just anyone can claim to be a prophet, they must prove it.
Faith is not blind. Faith is trust based on knowledge; knowledge is founded in evidence.
Truth exists, and the evidence points towards Christianity.
By claiming 'Hell doesn't exist' you are ironically making a blind faith claim and are doing the very thing you say you oppose.
This post is part 1 of my full reply and covers 3 topics, "Sin and the Purpose of the Bible", "Evidence for the afterlife", and "How we know we can trust the Bible".
Sin and the Purpose of the Bible:
To start off, you are correct that disease does kill you. However, sin kills us too. Sin is a term shared with archery meaning 'to miss the mark' or in otherwards, to live in a way other than what God intends for us. As I mentioned in my earlier post with Romans 6:23, "the wages of sin are death...". Sin does harm us whether we choose to recognize it or not. To build off what I said in my last post, whether you acknowledge the link between smoking and cancer or not, it does exist, and it does cause harm.
Next, Christianity isn't just about what happens after we die. It talks a lot about how to live a good life and glorify God in the process. For example, one of the largest continuous chunks of teachings we have from Jesus is the sermon on the mount (Mathew 5-7). Of the 20 sections, only 2 directly deal with the afterlife, the others deal with things such as controlling anger, not retaliating against people, loving your enemies, dealing with anxiety, and so on.
I have friends who've escaped alcoholism, who've overcome drug addictions through Jesus. Friends who've mended broken families and relationships through following what the Bible teaches. That wouldn't be possible if the Bible only talked about what happens in the afterlife. It concerns the here and the now.
Evidence For The afterlife:
The evidence for the afterlife is actually really fascinating. Over the past 40 years there's been 900 scholarly articles published in scientific and medical journals detailing a phenomenon called 'Near Death Experiences'. When someone is near the point of death (often clinically dead), they find themselves outside of their body and fully conscious. This has happened to people who are religious, and those who are atheist. It's happened to people all across the world too, not just in the west. What's interesting is those who believe in things like reincarnation don't see something aligning with that, they see a white-robed man with a book of accounts. Which lines up with what the Bible teaches. While that sounds wild, unbelievable, and fake, these cases end up getting published in journals because people see things that are only possible if they are truly in such a state. For example, a researcher named Kimberly Clark Sharp detailed the experience of a heart-attack patient named Maria. While Maria was unconscious, she floated through the ceiling and outside the hospital. She saw a shoe and after she regained consciousness was able to describe it perfectly. The hospital staff checked, and the shoe was there just as she described, down to the detail of a scuff mark over the little toe. There is no way Maria would be able to describe such a shoe unless she had actually seen it in the way she described. These are extremely fascinating and well documented; they point to us being more then material bodies and that we do have a soul. While people absolutely make false claims about this and pretend to have 'Near Death Experiences', that doesn't explain the cases like Maria's where something testable and verifiable was observed. It is clear that something happens after death.
How we know we can trust the Bible:
In terms of the how the Bible was written, it wasn't written all at once 40 years later by 'somebody'. The New Testament was written by 9 different authors and the earliest parts (such as creed recorded in 1 Corinthians 15) can be dated back to 6-months to 3-years after Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection. 1 Corinthians 15 actually is about the evidence for the resurrection too and names of people in that time period you could go ask to confirm the story, including over 500 people Jesus appeared to at one time. That's either the boldest lie in history or it's true.
In terms of historical writings, the standard for all texts (not just the Bible) is three criteria:
Was it written from eyewitness accounts?
Was it copied with extreme care?
Does it have archeological evidence?
With point 1, the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses (Mathew and John) or scribes recording what eyewitnesses saw (Mark and Luke). Each of these authors wrote without collaborating with one another (Mathew wasn't checking with Luke to see what he wrote in Chapter 9). The fact that they line up without contradictions further proves that they recorded events that really happened.
These people observed live-changing events, those are far easier to remember. I can't tell you where I was a year ago today. I can tell you exactly where I was and what I was thinking when I learned my grandfather passed away. The eyewitnesses watching Jesus heal the blind, watching Jesus raise the dead, hearing Jesus tell of things to come and teach them how to live good lives. Watching Jesus be killed on a cross then rise three days later. These would be events you could not forget, not just some random day years ago. You also have to consider the eyewitnesses were teaching what Jesus said and did to people, it's not like they stayed quite for years then finally wrote it down one day. This would constantly be in their memory.
With point 2, the Jewish people were known to be meticulous copiers (the greatest in the world). They wouldn't copy line-per-line or word- per-word. They would copy letter-per-letter. They knew how many letters each section should have. So, they would go to the middle and count forwards and backwards, if it was incorrect, they would throw them out and start all over again. This can be further proved by the Dead Sea Scrolls. Prior to 1947 the oldest copy of the Old Testament we had was from 900 AD. Then the dead sea scrolls were discovered and dated to 100 BC conservatively and 300-400 BC if you're more liberal on it. They showed that the Old Testament had been reliably translated for over 1,000 years without error. That is the care that was taken with copying the Bible.
With point 3, there is a mountain of archeological evidence that supports the Bible. For example, the Book of Acts mentioned 39 countries, 54 cities, and 9 islands. All of which have been found and confirmed with archeological evidence. Often times the Bible will mention a group that existed, that is lost to archeology for long period of time only to be found again. My favorite example of this it the Hittites who had no evidence of existing for 1,900 years until the 1900s when we discovered archeological evidence of them. That entire time the Bible was correct and 'modern historians' were wrong. It is clear the Bible knows more about history then we do. This also applies to the sciences. The Bible isn't a science textbook (I can't learn to build a rocket to Mars by reading it) but every time it mentions something scientific it is correct. For example, most ancient cultures believed that the earth was sitting on something, the Greeks claimed Atlas was holding it up, the Egyptians claimed it rested on 5 pillars, the Hindus claimed it was balanced on an elephant on top of a massive turtle. Only the Bible (in the oldest book in it) correctly claims that it is floating over nothing, "He stretches out the north over the void and hangs the earth on nothing" Job 26:7, ESV.
Even if every copy of the New Testament was destroyed, we could still tell exactly what it said from other groups documenting the events going on. Such as Jewish documents like the Mara Bar-Serpian or Jewish authors like Josephus. Jesus is also mentioned by Roman authors who were literally trying to destroy the church like Pliny the Younger (who detailed torturing two Christain women to death), Tacitus, Lucien, Suetonius, and Celsus. There are also early Christian authors like Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, and Justin Martyr. All of this evidence is overwhelming and shows the Bible is accurate.
Either we accept the New Testament is valid historically or we throw-out everything else written in history.
I can get more into this as this is one of my favorite topics but let me just add this. There was a cold case detective named J Warner Wallace who was an atheist and started investigating the Bible using his cold case skills. He ended up coming to the conclusion that the Bible is true, and the evidence is in its favor. He's written a few books about the subject, most famously was "Cold Case Christianity". I highly recommend reading the book or watching some videos on it. I've linked two bellow:
In terms of "edits and additions" there's an entire field of study called textual criticism and thought it we can tell with near certainty what the original Bible said. We can tell where scribes made mistakes or where others tried to insert things. For example, I own 3 different full translations of the Bible, all of them points out that Acts 8:37 was added in later and don't have included in the main text. The idea of "edits and additions" isn't an issue for that reason, we can tell when those took place and will point them out. We don't try to hide them as we want people to be aware of those things. This helps the credibility of the Bible since we are not trying to hide things. Every time we translate the Bible, we go back to the earliest sources we have (like the Dead Sea Scrolls). Bible translation isn't one long game of telephone where errors get compounded over time. The Books in the Bible we have today are verifiably the same as the ones first written.
This post is part 2 of my full reply and covers 6 things 'the issue of evil', 'True Biblical Prophecy', 'Misunderstandings Over the Bible', 'Why God Cares About us', 'Faith is not blind', 'The Bible is Meant to be True', 'Responding to Hell Isn't Real '
The Issue of Evil:
In terms of the logical contradiction you bring up, I would again challenge your premise on it. Yes, God wants us to love him. But true love can only exist if you have the true choice to do so. There's a reoccurring idea in fantasy of the 'love potion'. At first it seems like a wonderful idea, get whatever man or woman you want, and they will unconditionally fall in love with you. But the more you think about, it the more horrifying it becomes. They are being forced against their will and true desires to love someone. That 'love' isn't truly love at all. For that reason, God lets you choose to walk away from him.
My girlfriend and I recently broke up, I'd love to still be with her, but I can't force her to be with me, that's wrong. Forcing someone into something isn't love at all.
That gets me around to your bit about free will and sin. There's an old philosophical problem concerning gains vs a heap sand. Basically, there's no distinguishing mark between when you start counting the number of grains of sand and when it becomes a heap of sand. If we consider 1,000,000 grains of sand to be a heap, then take one away so we have 999,999 grains, it wouldn't make a difference and we would still call it a heap. A similar thing exists with the problem of evil. Let's say that God stops 1% of all evil that would have happened tomorrow, we'd probably say that's too much evil still occurring. Let's say God stops another 1% the next day, and the next. At what point would we consider the amount of evil to be tolerable? Either we'd end up in a place where we can make no choices for ourselves since God doesn't let us, or some evil would have to be allowed. Furthermore, whose to say that the amount of evil currently in the world isn't already that tolerable amount? This connect back into the love potion idea I was talking about earlier. We have the free will to choose our paths, to do good or to do evil. There's no point in having the choice to do evil if we cannot actually do it. Furthermore, what if one act of evil prevents a future far eviler act? For example, if WW2 didn't happen when it did, nuclear weapons would have been utilized in such a conflict without a true understanding of the consequences. WW2 was bad enough; I'd hate to imagine how much more destructive it would have been if the Nazi's and USSR had nukes at the ready.
I recently went through the Book of Job with some of my friends. In it, God gives an answer to why bad things happen. His answer is that the world is more complex than we can comprehend. We weren't there when the world was formed, we didn't set its bounties nor its qualities. God was and did establish those things. God then proceeds to take Job on a tour of the sciences and details tons of knowledge about the world and the universe. Things that all are correct and some of it we have only been able to confirm recently. For example, in Job 38:31 God asks Job if he has the ability to loosen Orians belt. That is a reference to the constellation, and when we look at the outer two stars of the belt, they are drifting apart. We couldn't tell that scientifically until the 19th century and there's no way ancient people could have figured it out earlier. They would have to be told by someone (God) who does have that knowledge since he set that in motion.
Evil also shows us how broken we are as a species. The depths of human depravity are a nightmare, but it also shows how much we need hope and a Saviour. That's even before we get into the moral argument and how evil can only be defined on objective terms (I'll touch on that later).
I also felt it worth mentioning that God did not create evil or suffering. Those are a result of our rebellion against God and disobedience towards his commands. While God is not the author of evil, sin, or suffering, he is able to use even the most difficult and painful situations for good. "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose". Romans 8:28, ESV.
Hell is not "hypocrisy" as you mentioned, it is your choice to deny God and choosing not to let Jesus take away your sins by accepting him as your lord and Saviour. If you don't want to be with God, him forcing you to be with him in the afterlife would be hell to you. You would be miserable, and your free will would have been ignored or denied. Imagine breaking up with someone you never want to see again, then they kidnap you and force you to be with them the rest of your days. It doesn't matter how wonderful those days maybe, it maybe your dream vacation every day. But you would not be happy as you are being forced into it with someone you do not love.
To end this section, I want to address what you mentioned in your TL:DR of 'an omniscient omnipotent being is ultimately partly responsible for everything'. This line of argument completely overlooks the aspect of free will. We have the ability to make choices that impact us and others. While God is ultimately sovereign, he chose to give us that gift of free will, which means we are responsible for our actions and the consequences. There is also a difference between allowing something to happen and causing it to happen. Responsibility only exists with causality.
Consider this example, if I am trying to talk a guy who is considering suicide by jumping off of a bridge, and he jumps. I may have allowed that to happen (I could have tried to grab him and pull him away or something). However, you could not claim that I have responsibility for the fact he jumped since he made that choice on his own. I could have even been the one who constructed the bridge, who dug the valley that he fell to his death in. But you still could not claim I was responsible for the man jumping from it (otherwise everyone who's built a bridge would be in big trouble). We have free will and God respects that. So, if we want to do something stupid, dangerous, sinful, evil, he allows us to do that for the reasons I've outlined in this section. That being said, we cannot blame God or cast responsibility on him as it was our choice to do those things. It was our choice, so we bare responsibility.
True Biblical Prophecy:
Prophecy is something very specific (history given in advance) and not just anyone can claim to be a prophet. Deuteronomy 18 lays out the rules, someone claiming to be a prophet is not to be trusted unless they have prophecy that has come true. Until prophecy comes to pass, we don't take that person seriously. If they do prophecy something that doesn't come to pass, or ends up being false, that person is a false prophet "...you need not be afraid of him" (Deuteronomy 18:22, ESV). To be a prophet you need to have a 100% success rate, which is only possible if you have that foreknowledge given by God. The Bible has well over 1,000 prophecies, ~300 that were related to and fulfilled by Jesus. Every prophecy has either been fulfilled or is still waiting to be fulfilled (see the Revelation Of John). There is no prophecy in the Bible that ended up not happening. These aren't vague prophecies either, for example, it was prophesied that Jesus would be crucified, this prediction came before crucifixion was even invented and confirmable by the Dead Sea Scrolls (which predate Jesus), see Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53. In Daniel 11 hundreds of years of future wars are predicted and play out in exactly the way he prophesized.
Furthermore, new prophecy must be consistent with the Bible. God is all knowing, he's not going to have a prophet make a claim in his name, wait thousands of years, then tell you something different or opposite. This is one of the major ways we rule out false prophets. As Galatians 1 points out, there is only one Gospel. The Revelation of John goes further and says that we cannot add or take away from the Bible.
So sure, you can claim to have a conversation with God over coffee. But unless you are able to back that up by making a specific and verifiable claim about the future (like Daniel 11) no one will believe you about that. And since you are saying God told you something that completely contradicts the Bible, you would be labeled as a false prophet always.
Funny enough, your objection to prophecy shows precisely why the Bible has these rules are in place. If you are going to object to the idea of prophecy and prophets, then you need to actually deal with the Biblical definition of these things. Otherwise, you end up with what is called a 'strawman' where you create a weak position to knock it down rather than dealing with the actual position. You've done that a lot in your response, this just so happens to be the most egregious of them.
Misunderstandings Over the Bible:
Misunderstandings do exist, healthy debates exist over what specific parts of the Bible mean. Yes, God is beyond our comprehension in some ways. What I do for a living is beyond the comprehension of my dog. That doesn't mean I somehow don't exist and what I do for a living is a logical contradiction. There is a less of a difference between my dog and me, and God and me. That's why we have the Bible, it is God explaining to us a number of things. How to live good lives, how to be better people, how to worship, and why we should have faith. Just because misunderstandings exist doesn't mean we shouldn't try to understand. Since every claim it makes that can be verified is, we can trust what it says about everything else. If you choose not to believe in 'Near Death Experiences', that's fine. Since the Bible is accurate in everything else we can test, we can have faith that is it true when it talks about Heaven and about Hell.
Why God Cares About us:
God cares about us since we are his creation, and we are created in his image. We are not God; we are not on his level in any capacity. Technically we are beneath him, yet Jesus still was a servant to us and washed our feet. Jesus led by example, and we are following what he did. The ideas of being 'above' or 'beneath' something doesn't directly correlate to whether you care about it or not. You can pick what you care about. God chooses to pick us, to love us (love is ultimately a choice). Just because you don't understand why God does something doesn't invalidate it. My dog doesn't understand me, does not mean I don't exist.
The devil rebelled against God and failed. As a result, he hurts people as a way of trying to hurt God. One common trope in storytelling is when the bad guy goes after the hero's family as a way of hurting him or her. I like to think of it like that. If the devil can keep us from God he will, if he can make our lives miserable through sin or distractions he will. If he can try to hurt God through hurting us, he will.
God does care about what you believe, just like me, he created you too. And you certainly have some interest in the subject, I don't know why else you'd have a long form essay conversations with a complete stranger over the internet. Everyone's testimony starts somewhere, everyone's journey to faith has a point where they weren't in faith. There are millions and millions of people who had doubts and questions like you, but they came to faith in Christ in-spite of that.
Faith is Not Blind:
Faith is not blind (saying so is actually a personal pet peeve of mine). Faith is trusting in what you have reason to believe is true. Or putting it another way, faith is trust based on knowledge founded in evidence. That is the Biblical definition of faith, for example, consider John 20:30-31 "Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name". In that passage, John clearly states that belief is built on evidence, "...written so that you may believe...". There is a mountain of evidence to support Christianity. From the archeological evidence, the verifiable examples of history given in advance (see the dead sea scrolls and what they said about Jesus), the philosophical arguments, the lives still being changed by Christ today, and so on. You can claim the evidence is inadequate for you, but you can't claim it doesn't exist, nor can you claim that faith is blind.
The Bible is Meant to be True:
Christianity is meant to be correct. Jesus claimed to be 'the way, the truth, and the life' (John 14:6). There's no purpose in claiming to be true if you do not also indent to be right. I agree, we should focus on doing good, but the concepts of "Good "and "Evil" must be rooted in something. That's the moral argument I mentioned earlier in my response. Good and Evil have to be defined in some objective way otherwise they become meaningless. People have tried to define Good and Evil on their own terms and it has led to some of the greatest atrocities in history. When we look at the last century, we see a lot of atheist regimes enacting what they thought was 'good' and what was punishing 'evil'. We see Hitler in Nazi Germany murder millions, we saw Stalin in the USSR murder millions, we saw Mao in China murder millions too. It's estimated that the atheist regimes murdered between 90 million and 100 million people because they thought it was 'good' and 'right'. The concepts of good and evil can only be justified when they are linked to an objective level, and are unchanging. The only way to do that is through religion. Otherwise, they become loose and flimsy concepts where anything can be argued as 'good' or 'evil'. Morality itself would become nothing more than an opinion.
Note: I am not saying that atheists cannot be moral people. I'm saying that they cannot justify it. For example, most people can use a smart phone, but very few people understand how the operating system (OS) that runs the phone works. You can use mortality, but you can't justify it. When you try to make up your own definition of morality, you end up with something disconnected from the truth. That's how we get Hitler, Mao, and Stalin believing what they did was 'good' and not 'evil'.
Responding to 'Hell Isn't Real'
Lastly, in your response you have claimed 1) That the afterlife is a black box and we really don't know what happens and 2) Hell doesn't exist. You can't believe in both of those things. You cannot both claim to know and that it cannot be known. If you want to play an agonistic card and claim that we 'don't know' that's one thing and I would argue the evidence points to us knowing. However, claiming that 'Hell Doesn't Exist' is a legitimate blind faith claim since you don't have any evidence to support it.
Closing:
As I closed with last time, I'm not forcing you to do anything, you have free will and can make a choice for yourself. All I'm asking you to do is consider the evidence that does exist.
If you are still reading this essay of a response, I very much appreciate it. I'm willing to answer any questions you have on this.
Hmm, Well, I'm just someone who has a tendency to like to talk I suppose. I find discussions interesting. Although I might not be the best at explaining myself. I don't know much about the bible itself, so I won't attempt to argue against you for that,(that's not my place.). Anyway, Firstly. Free will means the ability to make your own choices. A sort of control over your own actions. Now, assume free will existed, and that in a particular morning, I decide I'll have cookies and tea for breakfast. Now, let's assume God rolls back time, and just let's the morning repeat. I would make the same decision. That would mean that my actions would be predictable. In fact, prophecy also says the future can be predicted. But that's where my argument comes in. An omnisicient being could see everything that will ever happen in the future. That's a part of knowing everything anyway. So when God started creating things He would know how the future would turn out. That means anything that happens was within his intention.(This part is hard to explain so I can try a different way if you need). For example, when he created the devil. he knew that one day that devil would go on to... become evil I guess?, and created him in a way where that outcome would be inevitable. When he created us, he knew some of us would love him, and some of us would hate him. and some of him would like to stop and chat over coffee with him while playing some game.
Hmm, I would say I'm.. curious of god, yet pity him in a way, I'm not sure how I would eudure being immortal myself. Or having that much power. What was it like when he first awakened?, did he feel things?, Was he scared?, confused?, How is it like having always existed?, things like that. That's just a bit of me though. I don't have an intention to mock faith, though I apologize if I do. Ahhh Right, I remember why I went on this tangent. You see, personally, I'd always been curious if I could create a soul. In an AI to be specific. One advanced enough to be considered human. However, let's say the AI, being so human to have free will, had the choice to go rogue and destorying us all. If I could see the future, like God could. and knew the AI would one day do exactly that. Is it the sin of the thing I created or a tragedy brought by my own hands? Of course, some believe we humans are somehow special having a free will and all, but well.(I don't want to use an example where I make a baby or genetically engineer one knowing they would became a dictator or something ;-; )
Oh, also, At least hitler was a catholic. Baptized too.(like 90% of Austria at the time).
Morality is rarely black and white. and examples of tragedies being enacted in the name of God are all too common.(The cursades for example, racism during colonialism being another.) Of course. retrospect is 20/20 and it's unfair to judge history using our sense of morals. But I find it unfair for you to say things such as dictators were atheists, most people in power used religion to justify their atrocities. it was very common in monarchies as well. and not just for Christianity itself.
Is the double jump intentional? it feels like a bug. also the gaps you have to jump over are just slightly too wide and end up feeling more frustrating than challenging.
I love the general aesthetic and mood, the sounds are great, the animations are solid, but the gameplay itself just isn't very fun. I found myself bored before finishing it.
Thanks for the feedback! Yes, double jump is a bug and shouldn't be possible. I'll bump up the player speed slightly to make the jumps easier. Gameplay was something I really struggled with, I'll see if I can fix anything before the jam ends.
Updated the player movement speed, redesigned some of the levels to have multiple exits and added a new enemy type. Hopefully these changes help to make the game more interesting!
![Journey to Hell [Project 2021 - 10]](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzczMTMxMTUucG5n/original/sEphg6.png)
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Funfact school is hell
<3
I have never seen a more christian game in my life...
Accept Jesus or suffer in hell forever. Christianity blatantly tries to force you into complying with their customs with fear, and people see nothing wrong with it
Hey! Thanks for the comment, I spent some time praying and here is my response:
I know this is a huge essay of an answer, but ultimately, I'd like to pose two questions to you.
Thank you for taking the time for reading this, I'll keep you in my prayers!
In a way, Some of the things you make sense, but others don't.
The problem with a disease is it will kill you. Christianity(or religion in general) is about things that happen after we die, a black box. and nothing that Christianity says will happen in the afterlife can be proven on anything other than possibly anecdotal evidence. People just claim that yeah, this book someone wrote 2000 years ago is based on the teaching of someone who died an entire generation prior(the bible was written 40 years after Jesus died, such a long time that a man can be born and die in that time back then), not to mention all the edits and additions that have been added to it. There's also plenty of logical condircitation that people seem to just explain away with an odd excuse. example: God allegedly wants us to both A, love him, and B, can just, not. The thing is, We are pretty sure about the second statement. (I currently am choosing to write this because, well, I was bored. and I didn't feel like moving on yet.) but not the first. It also doesn't help that as an omnipotent and omniscient being, he knew everything that was going to happen when he created everything. Therefore, any sin committed was allowed to happen by him. (Free will and an omnipotent being seem to contradict btw because one with unlimited power could see the future, though, in reality, free will is a hard thing to explain.) Hitler killed the Jews, yes, but that is in part due to the fact of his birth and circumstance. God could've just allowed Hitler to be born in some position where he couldn't have been harmed. My choice to not follow him is a part of his plan. If someone goes to hell, it is hypocrisy on his part. If hell even exists. Not to mention, prophets, I could go on and say that I had tea with god last Saturday in a dream where we played poker and I complained about his believers. By all means, I should be a prophet(He laughed when I mentioned this btw, and I felt embarrassed at that point;-;) yet my word is not as powerful as those in the past. And in the first place. Hundreds of misunderstandings arise because a human mind can't comprehend something such as god. Oh, and btw, the devil gets a really bad rap in this case. He's a sort of divine being himself ya know. He has literally 0 motivation to do anything with humans. same with god, because that should be beneath them. In the end, if god gave half a bull about what I believed, He probably wouldn't have just sat down and chilled. Faith is what it is, fairly blind. though I see why it exists. As he said himself. "Religions aren't meant to be right, they meant to unite people and urge them to do good. Hmm, We both know I don't need to say this. but, don't be too harsh?" They were always meant to provide a moral compass to people. as questionable as their methods are. some were just better at spreading. People should be focused on doing good, rather than believing. Logically anyway. Faith is just the glue meant to hold people together.
tl;dr :
if an all powerful being wanted something it can get it
an omniscient omnipotent being is ultimately partly responsible for everything
and faith was a tool by god to create more good. Not create worship. Hell isn't really a thing.
Thanks for the reply! I'm glad we can have a good conversation about this! This ended up being a pretty long reply since I wanted to get good detail in. I'm doing this not just for you, but anyone who is curious about the topic. I've spent the last few years of my life digging into these ideas and concepts. Some of these like 'prophecies' and 'why we trust the Bible' are some of my favorite topics!
TL:DR
This post is part 1 of my full reply and covers 3 topics, "Sin and the Purpose of the Bible", "Evidence for the afterlife", and "How we know we can trust the Bible".
Sin and the Purpose of the Bible:
To start off, you are correct that disease does kill you. However, sin kills us too. Sin is a term shared with archery meaning 'to miss the mark' or in otherwards, to live in a way other than what God intends for us. As I mentioned in my earlier post with Romans 6:23, "the wages of sin are death...". Sin does harm us whether we choose to recognize it or not. To build off what I said in my last post, whether you acknowledge the link between smoking and cancer or not, it does exist, and it does cause harm.
Next, Christianity isn't just about what happens after we die. It talks a lot about how to live a good life and glorify God in the process. For example, one of the largest continuous chunks of teachings we have from Jesus is the sermon on the mount (Mathew 5-7). Of the 20 sections, only 2 directly deal with the afterlife, the others deal with things such as controlling anger, not retaliating against people, loving your enemies, dealing with anxiety, and so on.
Evidence For The afterlife:
The evidence for the afterlife is actually really fascinating. Over the past 40 years there's been 900 scholarly articles published in scientific and medical journals detailing a phenomenon called 'Near Death Experiences'. When someone is near the point of death (often clinically dead), they find themselves outside of their body and fully conscious. This has happened to people who are religious, and those who are atheist. It's happened to people all across the world too, not just in the west. What's interesting is those who believe in things like reincarnation don't see something aligning with that, they see a white-robed man with a book of accounts. Which lines up with what the Bible teaches. While that sounds wild, unbelievable, and fake, these cases end up getting published in journals because people see things that are only possible if they are truly in such a state. For example, a researcher named Kimberly Clark Sharp detailed the experience of a heart-attack patient named Maria. While Maria was unconscious, she floated through the ceiling and outside the hospital. She saw a shoe and after she regained consciousness was able to describe it perfectly. The hospital staff checked, and the shoe was there just as she described, down to the detail of a scuff mark over the little toe. There is no way Maria would be able to describe such a shoe unless she had actually seen it in the way she described. These are extremely fascinating and well documented; they point to us being more then material bodies and that we do have a soul. While people absolutely make false claims about this and pretend to have 'Near Death Experiences', that doesn't explain the cases like Maria's where something testable and verifiable was observed. It is clear that something happens after death.
How we know we can trust the Bible:
In terms of the how the Bible was written, it wasn't written all at once 40 years later by 'somebody'. The New Testament was written by 9 different authors and the earliest parts (such as creed recorded in 1 Corinthians 15) can be dated back to 6-months to 3-years after Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection. 1 Corinthians 15 actually is about the evidence for the resurrection too and names of people in that time period you could go ask to confirm the story, including over 500 people Jesus appeared to at one time. That's either the boldest lie in history or it's true.
In terms of historical writings, the standard for all texts (not just the Bible) is three criteria:
With point 1, the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses (Mathew and John) or scribes recording what eyewitnesses saw (Mark and Luke). Each of these authors wrote without collaborating with one another (Mathew wasn't checking with Luke to see what he wrote in Chapter 9). The fact that they line up without contradictions further proves that they recorded events that really happened.
With point 2, the Jewish people were known to be meticulous copiers (the greatest in the world). They wouldn't copy line-per-line or word- per-word. They would copy letter-per-letter. They knew how many letters each section should have. So, they would go to the middle and count forwards and backwards, if it was incorrect, they would throw them out and start all over again. This can be further proved by the Dead Sea Scrolls. Prior to 1947 the oldest copy of the Old Testament we had was from 900 AD. Then the dead sea scrolls were discovered and dated to 100 BC conservatively and 300-400 BC if you're more liberal on it. They showed that the Old Testament had been reliably translated for over 1,000 years without error. That is the care that was taken with copying the Bible.
With point 3, there is a mountain of archeological evidence that supports the Bible. For example, the Book of Acts mentioned 39 countries, 54 cities, and 9 islands. All of which have been found and confirmed with archeological evidence. Often times the Bible will mention a group that existed, that is lost to archeology for long period of time only to be found again. My favorite example of this it the Hittites who had no evidence of existing for 1,900 years until the 1900s when we discovered archeological evidence of them. That entire time the Bible was correct and 'modern historians' were wrong. It is clear the Bible knows more about history then we do. This also applies to the sciences. The Bible isn't a science textbook (I can't learn to build a rocket to Mars by reading it) but every time it mentions something scientific it is correct. For example, most ancient cultures believed that the earth was sitting on something, the Greeks claimed Atlas was holding it up, the Egyptians claimed it rested on 5 pillars, the Hindus claimed it was balanced on an elephant on top of a massive turtle. Only the Bible (in the oldest book in it) correctly claims that it is floating over nothing, "He stretches out the north over the void and hangs the earth on nothing" Job 26:7, ESV.
Even if every copy of the New Testament was destroyed, we could still tell exactly what it said from other groups documenting the events going on. Such as Jewish documents like the Mara Bar-Serpian or Jewish authors like Josephus. Jesus is also mentioned by Roman authors who were literally trying to destroy the church like Pliny the Younger (who detailed torturing two Christain women to death), Tacitus, Lucien, Suetonius, and Celsus. There are also early Christian authors like Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, and Justin Martyr. All of this evidence is overwhelming and shows the Bible is accurate.
Either we accept the New Testament is valid historically or we throw-out everything else written in history.
In terms of "edits and additions" there's an entire field of study called textual criticism and thought it we can tell with near certainty what the original Bible said. We can tell where scribes made mistakes or where others tried to insert things. For example, I own 3 different full translations of the Bible, all of them points out that Acts 8:37 was added in later and don't have included in the main text. The idea of "edits and additions" isn't an issue for that reason, we can tell when those took place and will point them out. We don't try to hide them as we want people to be aware of those things. This helps the credibility of the Bible since we are not trying to hide things. Every time we translate the Bible, we go back to the earliest sources we have (like the Dead Sea Scrolls). Bible translation isn't one long game of telephone where errors get compounded over time. The Books in the Bible we have today are verifiably the same as the ones first written.
This post is part 2 of my full reply and covers 6 things 'the issue of evil', 'True Biblical Prophecy', 'Misunderstandings Over the Bible', 'Why God Cares About us', 'Faith is not blind', 'The Bible is Meant to be True', 'Responding to Hell Isn't Real '
The Issue of Evil:
In terms of the logical contradiction you bring up, I would again challenge your premise on it. Yes, God wants us to love him. But true love can only exist if you have the true choice to do so. There's a reoccurring idea in fantasy of the 'love potion'. At first it seems like a wonderful idea, get whatever man or woman you want, and they will unconditionally fall in love with you. But the more you think about, it the more horrifying it becomes. They are being forced against their will and true desires to love someone. That 'love' isn't truly love at all. For that reason, God lets you choose to walk away from him.
That gets me around to your bit about free will and sin. There's an old philosophical problem concerning gains vs a heap sand. Basically, there's no distinguishing mark between when you start counting the number of grains of sand and when it becomes a heap of sand. If we consider 1,000,000 grains of sand to be a heap, then take one away so we have 999,999 grains, it wouldn't make a difference and we would still call it a heap. A similar thing exists with the problem of evil. Let's say that God stops 1% of all evil that would have happened tomorrow, we'd probably say that's too much evil still occurring. Let's say God stops another 1% the next day, and the next. At what point would we consider the amount of evil to be tolerable? Either we'd end up in a place where we can make no choices for ourselves since God doesn't let us, or some evil would have to be allowed. Furthermore, whose to say that the amount of evil currently in the world isn't already that tolerable amount? This connect back into the love potion idea I was talking about earlier. We have the free will to choose our paths, to do good or to do evil. There's no point in having the choice to do evil if we cannot actually do it. Furthermore, what if one act of evil prevents a future far eviler act? For example, if WW2 didn't happen when it did, nuclear weapons would have been utilized in such a conflict without a true understanding of the consequences. WW2 was bad enough; I'd hate to imagine how much more destructive it would have been if the Nazi's and USSR had nukes at the ready.
Evil also shows us how broken we are as a species. The depths of human depravity are a nightmare, but it also shows how much we need hope and a Saviour. That's even before we get into the moral argument and how evil can only be defined on objective terms (I'll touch on that later).
I also felt it worth mentioning that God did not create evil or suffering. Those are a result of our rebellion against God and disobedience towards his commands. While God is not the author of evil, sin, or suffering, he is able to use even the most difficult and painful situations for good. "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose". Romans 8:28, ESV.
Hell is not "hypocrisy" as you mentioned, it is your choice to deny God and choosing not to let Jesus take away your sins by accepting him as your lord and Saviour. If you don't want to be with God, him forcing you to be with him in the afterlife would be hell to you. You would be miserable, and your free will would have been ignored or denied. Imagine breaking up with someone you never want to see again, then they kidnap you and force you to be with them the rest of your days. It doesn't matter how wonderful those days maybe, it maybe your dream vacation every day. But you would not be happy as you are being forced into it with someone you do not love.
To end this section, I want to address what you mentioned in your TL:DR of 'an omniscient omnipotent being is ultimately partly responsible for everything'. This line of argument completely overlooks the aspect of free will. We have the ability to make choices that impact us and others. While God is ultimately sovereign, he chose to give us that gift of free will, which means we are responsible for our actions and the consequences. There is also a difference between allowing something to happen and causing it to happen. Responsibility only exists with causality.
True Biblical Prophecy:
Prophecy is something very specific (history given in advance) and not just anyone can claim to be a prophet. Deuteronomy 18 lays out the rules, someone claiming to be a prophet is not to be trusted unless they have prophecy that has come true. Until prophecy comes to pass, we don't take that person seriously. If they do prophecy something that doesn't come to pass, or ends up being false, that person is a false prophet "...you need not be afraid of him" (Deuteronomy 18:22, ESV). To be a prophet you need to have a 100% success rate, which is only possible if you have that foreknowledge given by God. The Bible has well over 1,000 prophecies, ~300 that were related to and fulfilled by Jesus. Every prophecy has either been fulfilled or is still waiting to be fulfilled (see the Revelation Of John). There is no prophecy in the Bible that ended up not happening. These aren't vague prophecies either, for example, it was prophesied that Jesus would be crucified, this prediction came before crucifixion was even invented and confirmable by the Dead Sea Scrolls (which predate Jesus), see Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53. In Daniel 11 hundreds of years of future wars are predicted and play out in exactly the way he prophesized.
Furthermore, new prophecy must be consistent with the Bible. God is all knowing, he's not going to have a prophet make a claim in his name, wait thousands of years, then tell you something different or opposite. This is one of the major ways we rule out false prophets. As Galatians 1 points out, there is only one Gospel. The Revelation of John goes further and says that we cannot add or take away from the Bible.
So sure, you can claim to have a conversation with God over coffee. But unless you are able to back that up by making a specific and verifiable claim about the future (like Daniel 11) no one will believe you about that. And since you are saying God told you something that completely contradicts the Bible, you would be labeled as a false prophet always.
Funny enough, your objection to prophecy shows precisely why the Bible has these rules are in place. If you are going to object to the idea of prophecy and prophets, then you need to actually deal with the Biblical definition of these things. Otherwise, you end up with what is called a 'strawman' where you create a weak position to knock it down rather than dealing with the actual position. You've done that a lot in your response, this just so happens to be the most egregious of them.
Misunderstandings Over the Bible:
Misunderstandings do exist, healthy debates exist over what specific parts of the Bible mean. Yes, God is beyond our comprehension in some ways. What I do for a living is beyond the comprehension of my dog. That doesn't mean I somehow don't exist and what I do for a living is a logical contradiction. There is a less of a difference between my dog and me, and God and me. That's why we have the Bible, it is God explaining to us a number of things. How to live good lives, how to be better people, how to worship, and why we should have faith. Just because misunderstandings exist doesn't mean we shouldn't try to understand. Since every claim it makes that can be verified is, we can trust what it says about everything else. If you choose not to believe in 'Near Death Experiences', that's fine. Since the Bible is accurate in everything else we can test, we can have faith that is it true when it talks about Heaven and about Hell.
Why God Cares About us:
God cares about us since we are his creation, and we are created in his image. We are not God; we are not on his level in any capacity. Technically we are beneath him, yet Jesus still was a servant to us and washed our feet. Jesus led by example, and we are following what he did. The ideas of being 'above' or 'beneath' something doesn't directly correlate to whether you care about it or not. You can pick what you care about. God chooses to pick us, to love us (love is ultimately a choice). Just because you don't understand why God does something doesn't invalidate it. My dog doesn't understand me, does not mean I don't exist.
The devil rebelled against God and failed. As a result, he hurts people as a way of trying to hurt God. One common trope in storytelling is when the bad guy goes after the hero's family as a way of hurting him or her. I like to think of it like that. If the devil can keep us from God he will, if he can make our lives miserable through sin or distractions he will. If he can try to hurt God through hurting us, he will.
God does care about what you believe, just like me, he created you too. And you certainly have some interest in the subject, I don't know why else you'd have a long form essay conversations with a complete stranger over the internet. Everyone's testimony starts somewhere, everyone's journey to faith has a point where they weren't in faith. There are millions and millions of people who had doubts and questions like you, but they came to faith in Christ in-spite of that.
Faith is Not Blind:
Faith is not blind (saying so is actually a personal pet peeve of mine). Faith is trusting in what you have reason to believe is true. Or putting it another way, faith is trust based on knowledge founded in evidence. That is the Biblical definition of faith, for example, consider John 20:30-31 "Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name". In that passage, John clearly states that belief is built on evidence, "...written so that you may believe...". There is a mountain of evidence to support Christianity. From the archeological evidence, the verifiable examples of history given in advance (see the dead sea scrolls and what they said about Jesus), the philosophical arguments, the lives still being changed by Christ today, and so on. You can claim the evidence is inadequate for you, but you can't claim it doesn't exist, nor can you claim that faith is blind.
The Bible is Meant to be True:
Christianity is meant to be correct. Jesus claimed to be 'the way, the truth, and the life' (John 14:6). There's no purpose in claiming to be true if you do not also indent to be right. I agree, we should focus on doing good, but the concepts of "Good "and "Evil" must be rooted in something. That's the moral argument I mentioned earlier in my response. Good and Evil have to be defined in some objective way otherwise they become meaningless. People have tried to define Good and Evil on their own terms and it has led to some of the greatest atrocities in history. When we look at the last century, we see a lot of atheist regimes enacting what they thought was 'good' and what was punishing 'evil'. We see Hitler in Nazi Germany murder millions, we saw Stalin in the USSR murder millions, we saw Mao in China murder millions too. It's estimated that the atheist regimes murdered between 90 million and 100 million people because they thought it was 'good' and 'right'. The concepts of good and evil can only be justified when they are linked to an objective level, and are unchanging. The only way to do that is through religion. Otherwise, they become loose and flimsy concepts where anything can be argued as 'good' or 'evil'. Morality itself would become nothing more than an opinion.
Responding to 'Hell Isn't Real'
Lastly, in your response you have claimed 1) That the afterlife is a black box and we really don't know what happens and 2) Hell doesn't exist. You can't believe in both of those things. You cannot both claim to know and that it cannot be known. If you want to play an agonistic card and claim that we 'don't know' that's one thing and I would argue the evidence points to us knowing. However, claiming that 'Hell Doesn't Exist' is a legitimate blind faith claim since you don't have any evidence to support it.
Closing:
As I closed with last time, I'm not forcing you to do anything, you have free will and can make a choice for yourself. All I'm asking you to do is consider the evidence that does exist.
If you are still reading this essay of a response, I very much appreciate it. I'm willing to answer any questions you have on this.
I'll continue praying for you!
God Bless!
Hmm, Well, I'm just someone who has a tendency to like to talk I suppose. I find discussions interesting. Although I might not be the best at explaining myself. I don't know much about the bible itself, so I won't attempt to argue against you for that,(that's not my place.). Anyway, Firstly. Free will means the ability to make your own choices. A sort of control over your own actions. Now, assume free will existed, and that in a particular morning, I decide I'll have cookies and tea for breakfast. Now, let's assume God rolls back time, and just let's the morning repeat. I would make the same decision. That would mean that my actions would be predictable. In fact, prophecy also says the future can be predicted. But that's where my argument comes in. An omnisicient being could see everything that will ever happen in the future. That's a part of knowing everything anyway. So when God started creating things He would know how the future would turn out. That means anything that happens was within his intention.(This part is hard to explain so I can try a different way if you need). For example, when he created the devil. he knew that one day that devil would go on to... become evil I guess?, and created him in a way where that outcome would be inevitable. When he created us, he knew some of us would love him, and some of us would hate him. and some of him would like to stop and chat over coffee with him while playing some game.
Hmm, I would say I'm.. curious of god, yet pity him in a way, I'm not sure how I would eudure being immortal myself. Or having that much power. What was it like when he first awakened?, did he feel things?, Was he scared?, confused?, How is it like having always existed?, things like that. That's just a bit of me though. I don't have an intention to mock faith, though I apologize if I do. Ahhh Right, I remember why I went on this tangent. You see, personally, I'd always been curious if I could create a soul. In an AI to be specific. One advanced enough to be considered human. However, let's say the AI, being so human to have free will, had the choice to go rogue and destorying us all. If I could see the future, like God could. and knew the AI would one day do exactly that. Is it the sin of the thing I created or a tragedy brought by my own hands? Of course, some believe we humans are somehow special having a free will and all, but well.(I don't want to use an example where I make a baby or genetically engineer one knowing they would became a dictator or something ;-; )
Oh, also, At least hitler was a catholic. Baptized too.(like 90% of Austria at the time).
Morality is rarely black and white. and examples of tragedies being enacted in the name of God are all too common.(The cursades for example, racism during colonialism being another.) Of course. retrospect is 20/20 and it's unfair to judge history using our sense of morals. But I find it unfair for you to say things such as dictators were atheists, most people in power used religion to justify their atrocities. it was very common in monarchies as well. and not just for Christianity itself.
Is there a reset button? I don't want to refresh the page every time I fall into a pit.
Forgot to say: There's a bug in the first pit in which the floor has no collision, making me fall out of bounds and softlock the game.
Thanks for the comment! I'll look into this and see what's happening
Is the double jump intentional? it feels like a bug. also the gaps you have to jump over are just slightly too wide and end up feeling more frustrating than challenging.
I love the general aesthetic and mood, the sounds are great, the animations are solid, but the gameplay itself just isn't very fun. I found myself bored before finishing it.
Thanks for the feedback! Yes, double jump is a bug and shouldn't be possible. I'll bump up the player speed slightly to make the jumps easier. Gameplay was something I really struggled with, I'll see if I can fix anything before the jam ends.
Thanks for the great feedback!
You're welcome!
Updated the player movement speed, redesigned some of the levels to have multiple exits and added a new enemy type. Hopefully these changes help to make the game more interesting!
Thanks again for the great feedback!
It looks great, certainly better than mine haha. Great submission, you should be proud.