If, as Pascal's Wager must assume, God is willing to punish good people simply for a lack of belief, this would preclude God being "good" by any sense that we understand the concept of "good" — and "good" is a necessary property of God, at least as understood by Christianity. As it can be demonstrated on Earth that no single specific religion has a monopoly on good and moral people, a God that causes Pascal's Wager to be valid cannot be focused on spreading good around the world. Various responses to Pascal's Wager involve pointing out that to be at the constant beck and call of such a clearly evil being would be less preferable to hell, and so it is favourable to disbelieve.

mankind's idea of good - isn't the same as God's idea.
'All your good deeds are like filthy rags'
'yet shall i make you white as snow'

over 30 years Live Aid has raised £150 million - this has been repeatedly
hailed as a great triumph of humanity? it works out as five million a year.

there are 1,820 billionaires with an average of £3000 million each.
so one billionaire has the capacity to finance 20 live aids in one year, not thirty.

So Greed is GOOD in humanity. Helping your fellow man is an after thought.

Although i'm a non believer i actually think Christianity is very positive.It gives people a scaffolding in life and helps them get through tough times.
My father (a firm Catholic) had cancer a few years ago and was helped greatly by the church and the comfort that he felt through prayer and his faith.It helped him greatly to get through it.
I find more religous people (well Christians) to be more upbeat and optimistic about life.I prefer them to these militant athiests who just seem angry all the time.

zorro.............you didn't knock my door last Thursday??

Zorro

So the 2 year old that dies having never heard of Jesus nor had the chance to do a good deed carries the debt of original sin as default and is doomed in the eyes of God?

The Christians attempt to suggest that Adam's betrayal (Eve's was largely unimportant in the greater picture as Adam had dominion) was all our sin because we all descended from his cursed loins. They say this in the same breath as hinting at having freedom of will.
Religion makes a dog's dinner out of attempting to fix the mistakes of man with regard the references of the Lord triune.
This is where it falls on its face, there are three entities that make up God, and him as his own son......who needed 40 nights in the desert to get his own head around it?
Why did he need that surely he knew the back story?

Whether it's psalms, Old Testament or any other title, the foundation of the religions draw on the same material as is philosophy as it was all written around the same time, it was all experiences of events, proverbs and observations of life.

A relevant example being that Adam and Eve were said to have noticed their nakedness after eating the forbidden fruit and covered up their bits in response, the Christians have you believe that everyone since has shame of their body as a result.
Well actually this is cynic dogma if you like, the cynics would get naked and live as dogs around the time the old works were but down on parchments, it was the stoics that saw shame in their actions, but founder mentally it's the school of cynicism that this all came from I believe.

Should all those who have accepted Jesus not now be walking around naked?
Further more, the sacrifice of Jesus abolished all our sin, the sin that it could be argued was the result of a petty God in the first place.
Also, I have to ask this because I'd love to know.....but what did the serpent used to do before it was cursed by God?
God says as a result it will forever crawl on its belly and eat dirt.......

I mirror Davy's view.
In fact I often envy those that have faith, as it seems to me to be beneficial to be able to call upon some kind of higher power for solace.
As it is, I can't make myself believe and so you won't find me at prayer. I do however try and live the life of what you might consider a 'good' person nonetheless and hope that I've not misjudged the situation

The two year old in question was a reference you made earlier in this thread.
What sin has the two year old committed?
Well the bible says guilt is ingrained in us all through the original sin, so the two year old is automatically cast out by default, and since the only way back is through Jesus, then that's impossible.
Guilt by association you might say, simply by being born, that is the rule in the bible.

For me the talk in the bible is always about a perfect God who created a perfect paradise.
The first problem is they can't be either since a perfect paradise wouldn't have had margin for error, that's what perfect means, so no temptation would have been possible as it wouldn't register.
Ofc it could be the case that the vindictiveness of God meant he allowed it to test.
Well if that were true then a perfect God came up with a pretty poor method of what constitutes the most important thing in the universe, the passing on of the true message.
Since he allowed man to carry that message warts and all without correcting mistakes or ace rating ambiguity.
The book is so open to interpretation that it's splintered many ways and the truth is impossible to garner without direct guidance since we can't possibly know truth from lies.
I believe there should have been the tree of good and evil for us all, or something akin to Excalibur in the stone, something unrefutable, but there is non, just speculation.

On the point of interpretation, those who carry the message try their best to find the answers to others questions, but it's flogging a dead horse IMO. They said that everyone has ingrained shame about their naked self due to original sin, and that everywhere in the world humans who all were born from Adam have this.
Well that simply is not true.
Sure many wear clothes out of practicality today, but the assertion that all do is incorrect.
Before those carrying the message of Jesus reached Australia and surrounding islands many explorers regularly encounter tribes who lived naked without shame, but they must have originated from Adam if the bible were right, yet knew nothing of Jesus.
That suggests to me that those that follow Christianity clutch at straws.