Monday 14 May 2012

The odds of salvation

So let's assume the Bible is correct, and only 144,000 people will be saved. The rest, clearly, must be damned. How many people are alive today, and how many have ever lived? Add the numbers together, and conservatively I'd say we're looking at ooh I don't know—twenty billion. Probably more. So if the world ended tomorrow, 144,000 out of 20,000,000,000 would be saved. That gives any one individual a 0.00000072 chance of being saved. That’s (rounding up) about a millionth of a percent chance. I don’t like those odds. More, we can say that these odds are so monumentally stacked against any given individual that you, whoever you are, however virtuous you think your life or however earnest your repentance ... you will not be saved. Statistics say so.

2 comments:

junklight said...

Assuming that being dammed will result in eternal torture kind of interesting that a god that is going to make almost all humans suffer for ever and ever can be portrayed by anyone as a "loving god". If I actually thought the christian god did exist my response would be to try and get a rebellion together and not to sit around grovelling to it/him/her

darrenk said...

But doesn't the Revelation 7 go on to talk about an enormous crowd (v9) - no one could count - from every race, tribe, nation, and language.

Perhaps the odds have improved slightly?