A while back, a guy named Pascal made an arguement for belief in Jesus. Summed up it was, if you as an athiest are right and I'm wrong, I've nothing to worry about
since we both go to the same place no matter what we believe. If I'm right and you're wrong, if you don't believe in Jesus you'll go straight to hell! So you best believe in Jesus.
Needless to say, as much praise and as many "amen"s as this arguement might get in a church, it's a pretty flawed arguement in the real world. One of the major reasons being, Pascal seems to be assuming an issolated system. Almost every religion (Athiesm being an exception) uses some form of penalty to pretty much scare people into belief. Committing out of fear then, is not only not genuine anyway, but rediculous to say the least.
I think Jesus is not a God of fear anyway.
In any case, I've devloped my own wagers for, Active God theology. I don't know how many people share it, but it is my belief that God is an "active" part of creation, here's a link to my site, explaining some of the ideas:
http://www.bibletruthseeker.com/cas...od_theology.htmActive God theology is close in some respects to Open Theism, I won't deny it, so yes, some of my reasoning could help them just as easily.
Also I believe inclusivism.
I wanted to make a few wagers of my own and see what people thought:
If I'm right, then God plays an active role in creation, but my life's choices are still in my own hands. If someone then says, it's all planned ahead by God, and does not take reasponsibility for his own actions and make his own plans, he'll be utterly destroyed as a human being. Unless a man walks, talks and thinks like he really believes in human reasponsibility, he's actaully going to ruin things for himself and those around him.
If I'm wrong, and God really does plan everything out ahead of time, then first off, its not really my fault I don't believe that anyway!
More seriously though, I risk nothing, since they aren't my risks to make anyway, I can't change the course of my life, only God Himself can, and nothing I do can change that. Basically, if its all planned out ahead of time, believe whatever you want and do whatever you want, since in the end, you can only do what you were pre-programed to do anyway!
If I'm right and God saves a man based on the condition of his heart, and you preach instead that salvation is based on praying a certain prayer for God's saving Grace, people will often act as though they have no accountability. Essentially that is what you have told them. They'll pray the prayer of salvation, and then many of them will later on realize, "Hey, now I'm heaven bound no matter what I do!". What a let down it will be for those people when they find out that when their hearts changed like that, and they stopped being humble like when they accepted salvation, they actually condemned themselves.
If you're right, and I preach that Jesus saves based on a man's heart, since the prayer of salvation is actually essentially a common sense committment for one who believes in Jesus, people whom I win over will probably pray it anyway. In the after life they and I will then have no real regrets from our beliefs, aside from getting some details wrong.
Not only that, but I will have hope for the unsaved in this life. I suppose I'll be disapointed in the next, but I'll at least have that hope in this one. (I expect electivist will be rather disapointed themselves if they are right, seeing the overwhelming number of people in hell, compared the teaspoon amount in comparason, in heaven.)