Are souls fireproof.

Great Debates
121

Honestly this rings hollow as an answer for me. It doesn’t suit at all. I have never felt that I had a job to try and understand anyone’s will. I have tried to understand because
I feel better when I do so. To me, it’s all about feelings and I don’t worry about being wrong. I used to; now I feel much better.

I don’t know how to really put it that isn’t blunt. I don’t feel obliged to do anything. I exercise my free will doing what makes me feel better and get me through my life and that mostly works for me. If I felt lost, I could certainly say that I would be searching for something because I have.

Once I had acceptance that my actions were made by my own free will then I know that no matter how badly it may interpret biblical passages I was making sincere decisions that did not conflict with my inner sense of morality.

Plus, the book that tells me what I have to do to follow his Truth is a book I am having serious doubts about the value of. A corrupted truth is not one I want to follow and the bottom line is if I have to choose between something that feels right internally and something that feels wrong told to me by an eternal unknown ( to me ) writer, how can I choose anything but the internal feelings especially as these are fairly standard amongst those who feel that they are following said book.

I know this bothers folks who feel like I’m trying to skate by with the best of both worlds but I don’t see it that way. I don’t accept the literal truth of one of those worlds. I’ve chosen to build my beliefs on the world I accept.

At least I try to be honest about it. I’ve been baptised three times in my life and I wouldn’t be turned away from any church that I would choose to attend and could fit right in but it would be a lie. A little white one but I don’t feel comfortable lying about my beliefs.

If the predicted judgment day happens then I’ll rely on the sincerity of my beliefs. If these aren’t good enough, I’ll take the consequences. Living by thoughts and feelings that I choose to consider important is far more comfortable than trying to live somewhere for eternity where I never feel comfortable with a ruler who I don’t respect.

I’m not sure how someone goes about changing their core beliefs to suit a set of beliefs that ill suit them. I’m sure it happens but my thoughts are what set me apart from every other flesh bag out there and I’m not ready to deny mine and adopt other folks thoughts as my reality.

The funny thing is if he exists as described I will be cursed for all eternity ( maybe ) for thinking that he is far greater than he’s been described and is someone I could be proud to follow. The irony of that should burn but I just find it incredibly amusing.

So, you refuse to believe that God is a dick? You’re going to burn in hell.
Ok, he’s a dick.
That’s it, you’re really going to H-E-double hockey sticks now.
Ok then.

122

Something that we can both definitely agree about.

123

That Matthew 18:19 thlngy, well the Big J forgot the fine print 'bout things that might appear to be miraculous.

Also, if you think you might be caught in a fire, or any other situation that has the potential for loss of life, bring a friend!

CMC fnord!

124

“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone?” Now we know the answer: God almighty.

125

How does that old joke go again?

There’s this dude in a flood, and his house is being submerged. He is deeply religious, and prays to God to be saved: “Lord, I have always believed in you and obeyed your commands. I have been your pious and faithful servant for my entire life. I have never before asked you for anything in return, but please, just this once: Will you save my life, and not let me drown?”

After a while, some people in a boat pass the house, and offer to rescue him. He declines, and tells them: “Look, I don’t want to drown, but the thing is, I have already prayed to God for Him to save me. I firmly believe that He will hear my prayers. If I go with you, God will think that I have abandoned my faith in Him. Where will that leave my immortal soul? Why, I’ll probably be sent straight to Hell for giving up on Him so easily. Therefore, thanks for the offer, but I will stay here and wait for divine intervention.”

So, they sail off and leave him. Two more boats pass, with the same offer, but the dude keeps declining. Eventually, the house is almost completely under water. The man has climbed onto the roof, and a helicopter flies overhead. The pilot shouts: “I’ll throw down a ladder, climb up, and I’ll rescue you.” “Nope”, says the man, “I will not abandon my faith in God. There is still time for Him to save me. Thanks, but no thanks.” The helicopter flies off, and the man keeps on praying. Eventually, the house is submerged completely, and he drowns.

His soul is spirited up to Heaven, where St. Peter is waiting for him at the Pearly Gates. The man says: “I have always believed in God. At my moment of despair, I prayed to be saved, confident that the Lord would help me. But he didn’t. What’s up with that?” St. Peter says: “Yeah, you know what, that doesn’t sound right. There must have been some screw-up. I’ll look into this, give me a moment.”

So, St. Peter checks his records in his giant book. Then he looks up at the man, shrugs, and says:

“I don’t know what you’re complaining about. We sent you three boats and a helicopter.”

126

Why do you think that allowing someone to continue life on earth, with all it’s miseries- as opposed to eternal joy in Heaven is better?

Since you have no faith, you assume life on Earth is the reward.

127

I sure has heck consider life on Earth a reward. I get a bit discouraged from time to time but I never think I’m living in hell or even in a hellish existence even after horrible things happen to me. I’ve never been able not to find a bright spot and get on with the act of living.

Maybe this is a part of it? I don’t particularly feel like I need to be rescued from Earth. I’ve got an entire planet I can play with and on. It’s not a bad deal.

This sounds like it might be something. I’ve never felt the need to look outside myself for happiness so I’m not eager to put myself in a position where I will not be as empowered or happy. Who knows?

128

Well, I can try, since I’m probably the closest, in that I grew up that way. The issue with hell is that it’s seemingly contradictory, and so different literalists have to resolve it in different ways. There are both references to destruction and death, as well as to eternal punishment.

The way this is typically combined is as follows: Hell burns you up, but, since the fire never ends, you never stop burning. You are destroyed, but you still burn. You are dead, but you still feel the flames.

A different interpretation is that the eternal part is referring to the fact that the sentence never ends. The souls actually do burn up. This still counts as literal, since it doesn’t try to portray anything as a metaphor. It’s generally considered okay to look for different interpretations of words.

Either one has hell be flammable.

Still, there are those who claim to be literalists who claim that hell is somewhat metaphorical. This is basically because there is no specific description of “This is what hell is.” They are okay with seeing the descriptions as just the best way to describe something spiritual that has no actual analog in the physical world. They reference the Apocalypitic scriptures and dreams and prophecies and parables, which everyone takes as metaphorical (as they basically announce that they are).

It’s only specific claims of material fact in the physical world that are required to be literal. Heaven having streets of gold can be considered a way to show its splendor, but Jonah being in the big fish must’ve literally happened.

129

The new testament writers had an example for the creation of hell already in Gehenna which was a burning place for the dead. It seems that little imagination was needed when they were coming up with a threat about the horrors of dying unsaved. Do you want to end up in the spiritual example of the worst place we can think of then disbelieve.

I don’t believe that the similarities are coincidental. I’m assuming that the literalists agree with this but they believe it was set up by divine design to be similar rather than Gehenna being the inspiration for the description.

Does this sound fair? To me it sounds like you’re saying something similar with your last paragraph.

130

Good for you.

I think a lot of this religion stuff has to do with avoiding negative emotions. I mean, that’s one of the reasons why we come up with religion. The idea is to be happy. I think it’s a mistake to think that one should also ignore the good emotions, that would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Not saying that it’s not a mistake that some people make, though. Or that religions make sometimes. Christianity faceplants in that regard, often enough, as far as I can tell.

Ideally, it should be possible to construct a model that will allow you to minimize the negative emotions, while keeping the positive ones.

When you die, you go to Heaven. Therefore, don’t fear death. Your loved one who has died is in Heaven. Therefore, don’t feel too sad, or grieve so much. Does this life suck? Well, when you die, as I said, you go to Heaven. Therefore, don’t worry so much about the current suckiness. God works in mysterious ways. Therefore, don’t sweat over things you can’t control.

What you can control, is yourself. Be virtuous, no matter what the world throws at you. Only worry about your own soul.

But, also: When life on Earth feels good, well, it feels good. If it’s not broken, why fix it? Or, well, that’s my addition. Christianity, at least, often seems to assume that life is a valley of tears, by default. Which it isn’t really, IMO.

And, yeah, I know: What I’m describing is, in some ways, basically Stoicism. Or, rather, some kind of Stoic-Epicurean mashup. Moral philosophy and religion perform the same functions much of the time.

There is an aspect of this that I have a problem with, though: Using religion (or moral philosophy) as a happy pill. Instinctively, it seems to me that anything worth doing has to involve some suffering and sacrifice, for some reason. Maybe that intuition explains parts of Christianity, too. And why we allow our religions to make us miserable sometimes, instead of happy.

131

A classic, and a good one.

Another non-miraculous way God could help people would be by preventive information. “The river is going to flood, come May 14th, so, on the 10th, go visit your sister in Woodford Heights.” God doesn’t even care enough for his faithful to tell them of dangers of which he has full knowledge.

(This goes back to my friends who “talk with Jesus.” They absolutely insist that Jesus actually and literally speaks to them, just as clearly as any other person. But Jesus never tells them anything that would help them in real life. What a creep.)

132

It think we all may have gotten ourselves into a bit of a mess by insisting that God should be all good, all the time. Perfection is a lot to ask for. Also, read the Book of Job. How about we just face it: God, much like Superman, is a dick. Or, maybe there is a divine plan, and all the suffering has a purpose. God being a dick makes more sense to me, though.

133

I wasn’t saying that, but I do agree with you. The literalist would go on to say that Gehenna was an imperfect understanding of Hell, and would basically try to show that they are really the same thing. I believe the KJV translates both as Hades (as that is the word often used in the Greek New Testament), which is traditionally interpreted as meaning Hell.

And I personally would agree that the idea developed from the Jewish idea, combined with the Greek idea of Hades (the place, of course). There’s also some suggestion that Jesus referenced real fires that would take place outside the city after dark, hence why it’s a perfect metaphor for being kept outside of Heaven.

I do also wish to add that there is one more literalist group I forgot to mention. The ones who believe everyone will be saved. They do in fact believe that souls are not flammable, and that the fire will burn off all the bad stuff, and the newly clean soul will eventually go to heaven. They use a lot of Scriptures to say this, but ignore others. And I’m sure they would say the same about the other literalists.

You’d think that literalism would basically would come up with one answer, with maybe some stuff where the answer is just “The Bible doesn’t say.” But no. I am aware of many denominations of literalists. The only non-literalist church I’ve ever been to was a Catholic one. And I’ve been to a lot for various reasons–singing in choirs, going with friends, finding a new church home while in college, etc.

(BTW, that’s also why I reject it as a way to interpret the Constitution. I’ve seen what happens with literalism.)

134

That’d still make him a dick, though. He’s omnipotent and omnisentient. He couldn’t think of a plan that didn’t require suffering?

135

Where’s the fun in that? Besides, it builds character :stuck_out_tongue:

136

As I said earlier, however: any one of us, in that situation, could have done a better job. Just to begin with, we’d have put the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil behind a child-proof lock, the same way we do, in real life, with medicines and laundry bleach.

None of us is perfect; we’d make mistakes. But we wouldn’t make the hellish fuck-up blunders that God makes all through the Bible.

Alas, this is more in line with scripture. God isn’t even trying to minimize his blunders, which any one of us, in his position, would do. We take extra caution and use protective equipment when working with power tools: how much more careful would we be if working with “omnipotent” tools?

137

Job pretty much saved me one time. I basically fell into a deep depression, had no job, was about to be homeless ( had a roommate who simply refused to let me do that ) and was pretty much ready to give up.

I went to a food kitchen to eat and had about a half hour before food started so I wanted to read something. I grabbed a book from the shelf. It turned out to be a bible. I randomly opened it figuring that I’d see if what I read might inspire me somehow.

I opened to Job which made me laugh because I pretty much could relate to his story. I started reading and got to this quote he told his wife when she asked him to curse God.

and I realized boo hoo me. I wasn’t bitching when things were going right I
m suddenly going to bitch about things being bad once in a while? To make a long story short ( too late ) I went on a job interview that day very relaxed, got the job and ended up with a career that I would not have had.

This made me tell myself what I’ve been told once in this thread already. Well aren’t you special, can’t stand some adversity.

I do believe that God is all good. I just don’t believe that the world is nor that it’s his responsibility to change it to suit our pleasures. That’s what free will is for. People do dangerous things willingly in order to please themselves. Things being dangerous or bad isn’t necessarily something that needs divine fixing.

138

To be perfectly clear I use religion precisely to be able to communicate my moral philosophy. It’s a much more contemplated and understood framework which facilitates the discussion.

I do believe that anything worth doing mush involve some suffering and sacrifice but with that comes the idea that God would not be the cause of this rather the white knight helping you make your way. This is why I reject the literalist view of hell.

I can’t help this though. Experiences have made me very averse to the “psychotic dad hurting you for your own good” schtick. I had a real person doing bad things to me “for my own good” growing up and I developed my views of God to be able to survive through such times not to trade a human asshole for an improved all powerful eternal version of one. The wounds are too deep and the survival instinct gets triggered big time even contemplating it.

So, while I can understand that others do not have such experiences and my reaction is on the extreme side, that attitude has ossified due to age and reopening that can of worms and putting myself in the hands of such a monster is not something I am willing to accept nor even compromise on. It’s not something I’m willing to concede.

That’s the enlightenment I mentioned in a post above. There is no way I can come to such a belief so that even if someone logically and clearly explains why my thoughts on this issue are wrong, I’ll never truly get it. We read the same words but they mean very very different things. How do you realistically bridge that gap? You don’t so why am I bothering to ask which just upsets both me and the people I ask?

139

I’m certain this is wrong. The work of Philip Zimbardo proves this to me. Put people in absolute control of other people and they simply don’t do a good job. That’s the price of humanity, to be doomed not to practice it.

140

Great post, thanks.

One data point to add. Not all “everyone will be saved folks” believe in hell at all. My brother in law, the Armstrong guy believed that hell does not exist and is never mentioned in the bible ( not sure I believe this. The word hell isn’t but I feel the concept is ). He believed that God’s patience is infinite so whenever souls are ready to come home, he’ll be there to welcome them until there are none left. No idea what would happen then, reshuffle and deal again maybe.

They believed that their church would be the first people resurrected and would serve as the advanced troops preparing heaven to receive these souls. In all it’s a pretty benign afterlife scenario but I did tease him that his ultimate goal was to be a mid level civil servant for all eternity.