RELIGION AND FORCED CONVERSION

Religion that proclaims that there is an all-good God pretends it and he respect your free agency.  This is not true.

The argument from believers is that there must be a God for if there is not then there is no such thing as evil and there is no such thing as anything immoral.  The argument even if it worked would still not be an argument for God. Why? Because it forces you and blackmails you to believe. If God has to make do with forced and harassed disciples then he is not a God. The Christian doctrine that God is about us having a relationship with him and him with us is wrecked to pieces. All this God can give is bullying commands.  We will not enjoy keeping them because of the spirit in which they are given.  Atheists have no choice but to reject this evil morality.  The atheist not only has no problem of good but the atheist alone is the one that holds the key to morality.

FORCED TO BELIEVE ANYWAY??

All have the choice to believe - so the Bible God says. But you would need to believe already in order to have the choice. You can only reject a belief if you understand what it is saying and why. Otherwise you only reject not the belief but what you think it is or might be. Thus it follows that people are to be seen as believers even if they deny it. They are to be forced to obey the faith. This would not really be the Church forcing conversion but the Church forcing obedience.  For a religion that claims to respect people's free will, that is not what we see happening.  We see the Church trying to force itself on vulnerable people where possible.
 
The Lord offers the grace of faith to all. If good and if there is one true faith then he must. It is often taught that we are free to accept or reject this offer. But how can we unless we believe in the first place for you cannot sincerely accept or refuse what you do not understand. All must first believe in it to reject it. God has forced all to believe. All our thoughts are forced on us anyway - they come out of nowhere whether we want them or not, we do not consent to them for we don't know what to expect - so it makes no difference. We can’t help what we believe or know so it doesn’t matter if it is forced on us. In the present moment, I am unable to change the things in the past that make me believe.
 
If God (or any kind of being with mighty supernatural power) exists belief in the truth will be possible for he will have supernaturally ensured that the true faith possess simple and indubitable evidence that will convince anyone. It would be immoral if he expected people to suffer and die for his religion otherwise. God says his truth can even get into the hearts of those who hate it (2 Corinthians 10:3-5). That is an awesome boast!
 
Religion propounds the doctrine that belief in God and faith depend on free will - we have to decide to have faith. It does not believe that for a minute. If you see evidence, then you automatically perceive something as probably true. Evidence is a probability indicator. You will see it whether you want to or not. What if you do not want to believe? All you can do is suppress the belief by forgetting the evidence - but deep down you still believe. We cannot help what we believe. The doctrine that compelling people into a religion is wrong cannot be based on the notion that we must choose to have faith and belief. The doctrine is really the only reason for forbidding compulsion and it is a false one. Religion cannot sincerely encourage the doctrine for its so stupid. That makes it a danger to religious freedom when it gets the resources to clip away at it.
 
Our beliefs limit our freedom now. For example, if you believe it is true that all people are bad deep down, you will be unable to accept the belief that most people do not steal. Your beliefs program what you are going to believe or can believe. Thus we may not be able to help what we believe. We cannot say that God will not force us to believe. Why wouldn't he when belief takes our freedom anyway?
 
It may be thought, “If we cannot help what we believe, then it is not right to compel a person to have beliefs that they may not be able to have”. Surely that is an argument for forcing! Belief can be influenced and caused by force. Compulsion will work when accompanied by information and refutation of existing beliefs. If emotion blinds the person, the person is only blinded because he or she already believes it. That is why they are blinding themselves. It would be better to believe in the true religion and not let yourself notice than to not believe. If we don’t want to understand, that will not stop God communicating with us because when we don’t know what we are blocking out we cannot keep it out. And we do want to understand even when we say we don’t because understanding gives security and we fear the unknown or what is not understood.
 
Religion teaches that God not force can get or persuade a person to believe. But it is contradicting itself. If God exists then he can use anything - even force to get us to believe. Force can lead to us freely choosing to believe. Force then can be used as a tool through which God can convert the unbeliever. Just like God does not accept the belief that evangelising is unlikely to be fruitful as an excuse for not trying so also he will reject a similar excuse for not coercing. Being omnipotent, God can make sure that the person will have to believe. If we only pursue what we think is good we will freely believe the truth when it is taught clearly and properly whether we want to hear it or not. If it fails it is the preacher’s fault not that of the message.
 
If God exists, then he has ultimate responsibility for all that happens. We exercise our will to sin not in spite of him but because of him. You cannot go against an all-powerful God. Thus this notion of predestination implies that religious force cannot be regarded as intrinsically wrong.
 
Compulsion in religion is illegal but God says his law is more important than human law for he is brighter and all-perfect and he comes first. God in that sense holds faith to be superior to living a good life.
 
Religion has to accept that religious force must be lawful. Maybe it does subconsciously?
 
Religion cannot say that forcing is wrong for it will create an uprising against God and the Church among the forced. She would say that they should examine her claims and believe sincerely instead of driving her to enforcing conversions on people. She would say it is not her fault. And it isn’t if the religion doing the compelling is the true religion and the only reasonable one. And if people already believe but won't obey, the Church can blame them for forcing her to make them obey.
 
The Roman Church denies that faith in the Bible is trust in God or belief but says it is trust or belief that is acted out by a religious life. It says the law of the land should take its authority from God the source of all things and all authority. So it follows then that when the law forces you to stay in a failed marriage by banning divorce then it is forcing faith on you. The religious claim that it would not force faith on you is totally ridiculous and a lie.
 
Manipulating people to believe is a way of forcing them too. Religion is expert at manipulation. People fall for it. They need religious faith to motivate them to do good. They are reluctant to do good unless they think it will be remembered forever by God, rewarded and if God can make the effort worthwhile by making more good out of it. This is nothing more than "I want to be good but..." Religion and its manifestation, prayer, are inebriated in craftiness.
 
BIBLE QUOTATIONS FROM:
The Amplified Bible

BOOKS CONSULTED
 
A Critical Review of Humanist Manifestos 1 & 2, Homer Duncan MC, International Publications, Lubbock Texas.
A Shattered Visage The Real Face of Atheism, Ravi Zacharias, Wolgemuth & Hyatt, Tennessee, 1990
A Thief in the Night, John Cornwell, Penguin, London, 1990
A Woman Rides the Beast, Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Eugene, Oregon, 1994
All Roads Lead to Rome, Michael de Semlyen, Dorchester House Publications, Bucks, 1993 (page 120 recounts Cardinal Konig of Vienna’s testimony that the Vatican helped Nazi war criminals to escape)
Apologetics and Catholic Doctrine, Part 1, Most Rev M Sheehan DD, M H Gill & Son, Dublin 1954
Apologetics for the Pulpit, Aloysius Roche Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd, London, 1950
Blind Alley Beliefs, David Cook, Pickering & Inglis, Glasgow, 1979
Catholicism and Fundamentalism, Karl Keating, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1988
Christianity, David Albert Jones, OP, Family Publications, Oxford, 1999
Convert or Die, Edmond Paris, Chick Publications, Chino, California, undated
Correction and Discipline of Children, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1946
Crisis of Moral Authority, Don Cupitt, SCM Press, London, 1985
Documents of the Christian Church, edited by Henry Bettenson, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1979
Does America Need the Moral Majority? William Willoughby, Haven Books, New Jersey, 1981
Does Conscience Decide? Bishop William J Philbin, Catholic Truth Society of Ireland, Dublin
Ecumenical Jihad, Peter Kreeft, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1996
European Union and Roman Catholic Influence In Britain, David N Samuel, The Harrison Trust, Kent, 1995
Fascism in the English Church, A London Journalist, Henry E Walter, London, 1938
Fifty Years in the “Church” of Rome, Charles Chiniquy, Chick Publications, Chino, California, 1985
God and the Gun, The Church and Irish Terrorism, Martin Dillon, Orion, London, 1998
‘God, That’s not fair!’ Dick Dowsett, OMF Books, Overseas Missionary Fellowship, Belmont, The Vine, Sevenoaks, Kent TN13 3TZ] Kent, 1982
Handbook of Christian Apologetics, Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, Monarch, East Sussex, 1995
Human Rights, Michael Bertram Crowe Veritas, Dublin, 1978
In God’s Name, David Yallop, Corgi, London, 1987
Is the Roman Catholic Church a Secret Society? John V Simcox, Warren Sandell and Raymond Winch Watts & Co London, 1946
Is There Salvation Outside The Catholic Church? Fr J Bainvel SJ, TAN, Illinois, 1979
Jesuit Plots, From Elizabethan to Modern Times, Albert Close, Protestant Truth Society, London undated
Jesus the Only Saviour, Tony and Patricia Higton, Monarch Tunbridge Wells, Kent, 1993
New Catholic Encyclopedia, The Catholic University of America and the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., Washington, District of Columbia, 1967
Radio Replies, Vol 1, Frs Rumble and Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul, Minnesota, 1938
Radio Replies, Vol 2, Frs Rumble and Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul, Minnesota 1940
Radio Replies, Vol 3, Frs Rumble and Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul, Minnesota 1942
Religion of Peace? Why Christianity is and Islam Isn't, Robert Spencer, Regnery Publishing Inc, Washington, 2007 - a curious book in that it simply doesn't mention how Christian Scriptures incited believers, eg Calvinists, to attack and destroy other believers who were thought to be heretics and doesn't mention the infallible decrees of the Roman Catholic Church commanding the violent destruction of heretics but wants to give the impression that unlike the Koran, the Christian Scriptures and the Christian religion do not make calls for religious violence
Religious Freedom, A Fundamental Right, Michael Swhwartz, Liguori Publications, Missouri, 1987
Roman Catholicism, Loraine Boettner, Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, Phillipsburg, New Jersey, 1987
Rome – Our Enemy, Clifford Smyth, Puritan Printing, Belfast, 1975
Secular Humanism – The Most Dangerous Religion in America, Homer Duncan, MC International Publications, Lubbock, Texas. Undated.
Sex Education in Our Public Schools, Jack Hyles, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1969
Sex, Dissidence and Damnation, Jeffrey Richards, Routledge, London 1994
Spy in the Vatican 1941-45, Branko Bokun, Tom Stacey Books, London, 1973
Summa Theologica of St Thomas Aquinas, Part II, Second Number, Thomas Baker, London, 1918.
The Christian and War, Robert Moyer, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1946
The Church of Rome, Wilson Ewin, Bible Baptist Church, Nashua NH USA
The Encyclopaedia of Heresies and Heretics, Leonard George, Robson Books, London, 1995
The Inquisition of the Middle Ages, Henry Charles Lea, Citadel, New York, 1963
The Last Temptation of Christ, Its Deception and What you Should Do About it, Erwin T Lutzer, Moody Press, Chicago, 1988
The Pestilence of AIDS, Hugh Pyle, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1987
The Rise of the Spanish Inquisition, Jean Plaidy, Star, London, 1978
The Sacred Executioner Human Sacrifice and the Legacy of Guilt Hyam Maccoby Thames and Hudson, London, 1982
The Secret History of the Jesuits, Edmond Paris, Chick Publications, Chino, California, 1975
The Truth About the Homosexuals, Dr Hugh F Pyle, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1978
The Truth that Leads to Eternal Life, Watchtower, New York, 1968
The Unequal Yoke, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1946
The Upside-Down Kingdom, Donald B Kraybill Marshalls, Hants, 1978
The Vatican Connection, The Explosive Expose of a Billion-Dollar Counterfeit Stock Deal Between the Mafia the Church, Richard Hammers Penguin, Middlesex, 1982
Their Kingdom Come, Robert Hutchison, Corgi, London, 1997
Unholy Sacrifices of the New Age, Paul de Parrie and Mary Pride, Crossway Books, Westchester, Illinois 1988
Vatican USA, Nino LoBello, Trident Press, New York, 1972
Vicars of Christ, Peter de Rosa, Corgi Books, London, 1993
Walking with Unbelievers, Michael Paul Gallagher SJ, Veritas Dublin 1985
War and Politics The Christian’s Duty, Peter Watkins, Christadelphian Bible Mission, Birmingham
What About Those Who Have Never Heard? Radio Bible Class, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1986
Whatever Happened to Heaven? Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Publishers, Oregon, 1988

THE WWW

www.infidels.org/library/historical/joseph_mccabe/big_blue_books/book_10.html
Fascist Romanism Defies Civilisation by Joseph McCabe

www.hom.net/~angels/democracy.html
Democracy is not a good form of Government by Citizens for the Ten Commandments

www.mindspring.com/~bab5/BIB/lessons.htm
Is Christianity a Cult?