Religious people are like that. They have their beliefs that they accept on faith. They trust that they are the truth. It won't be until they get to open their can after their death that they will get their proof of whether there is a god inside, something else, or nothing at all.
You are correct in this. People who place faith in Christ as a supernatural being and who belief they will be resurrected will either have that faith someday rewarded; or, they'll never no they were wrong because they're forever dead.
However, not
all proofs are
scientific proofs. Or, perhaps more correctly I should say, 'Scientifc proofs are the be-all-end-all' in terms of understanding what is real. Many very logical, intelligent people, including some prominent scientists (some of the physicists) and medical doctors have come to accept preponderances of anecdotal proofs that their religious faith is valid. Is each and every such case an example of self-delusion?
I recommend, for those skeptical of the claims of Christianity, that they read, with intellectual rigor, Josh McDowell's "The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict." Mr. McDowell
was a true-blue atheist and top-notch investigative reporter who took 2-3 years to finally critically collect evidence, analyze his preconceptions, etc.
I believe that religious faith is part of our nature as human belings, but that many have hardened their hearts against it because the world's religions proscribe certain behaviors, and it's also in our nature not to like to be constrained in anyway. We don't want anyone passing judgment on our behaviors or lifestyles, and religions do that, in that they generally contain
thou shalts and
thou shalt nots.
I also highly recommend, for anyone willing to be intellectually honest and open-minded, that they read Lee Strobel's "The Case for Christ / The Case for Faith" (2 books in one).
There's an old story that says that when scientists finally reach the pinnacle of knowledge/revelation (speaking metaphorically), they will find the people of religious of faith sitting there waiting for them.
I don't want to derail the topic by inserting my opinion that most self-proclaimed atheists and agnostics have not been attitudinally/intellectually willing to investigate faith and revelation as alternative tools. But I wanted to challenge skeptics to read the two books I've named above. It'd be an interesting experiment to see how many of them, if any, had a different take on religious faith afterwards.
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Noticed he said around 3:27-3:29: "You gotta make sure that thing is pretty smashed" (if you're gonna destroy a hard drive yourself with a sledgehammer). Be thorough. Pour your rage into your hammering. That thing cannot be flat enough!
