How very wonderful and merciful of God. Lets hope the Newborns who didn’t get to know him or those mentally incapacitated to be able to understand a concept of God or Jesus
are comfy and burning less painfully. Maybe they are only in the shallow end of the Lake of fire.
Oh ho that statement glistens with such irony My cup runneth over.
The aztecs aparently went to a place in Oaxaca mexico called mitla, were led there by a dog.
I’ve been to Oaxaca, it’s beautiful
if i had to go there instead of heaven, I’d be ok with it.
they have good chocolate.
and really good popsicles
Amen brother!
chocolate popsicles?
If only fundy Xtians get to go to this place called “heaven,” then I wouldn’t want to go there, anyway!
I myself have been “saved” by the everlasting grooviness of Jerry Garcia, through the Church of Jerry Garcia of Latter-Day Hippies (the Deadheads).
When a Deadhead passes away, a colorful VW Microbus comes to pick her/him up for the trip to Terrapin. In Terrapin, there is plenty of kind herb, veggie burritos, and of course lots of kind hippie music such as the Grateful Dead. The destination sign on the bus reads “Furthur!”
That’s my idea of heaven!
If you go to Hell if you have been exposed to Christianity and rejected it, then going out and bringing Christianity to the masses is the main cause of millions of otherwise ignorant(and thus Heaven-bound) people being condemned to Hell, right?
**Algernon wrote:
According to current mainstream Christian doctrine, what happens to those people who hear the Christian message, don’t accept Jesus as their personal savior, yet lead a “good” life? **
I’m interested in this, too, as it describes me very well. Back in '80 (roughly) I tried to the “born again” experience. It was okay, but decided it wasn’t for me, so I rejected it and Christianity. Now I’m happily Wiccan.
**kingpengvin wrote:
Lets hope the Newborns who didn’t get to know him or those mentally incapacitated to be able to understand a concept of God or Jesus are comfy and burning less painfully. Maybe they are only in the shallow end of the Lake of fire. **
Prehaps there’s a Swimming Pool of Fire? Then there’s a Wading Pool of Fire followed by a Kiddie Pool of Fire then the Really Big Washtub of Fire ?
And at the very end, there’s a demon holding a cup of fire and brimstone in which the tormented souls must stick a finger or big toe into for their punishment. 
**Huerta88 wrote:
Monotheism solves a lot of logical problems with polytheism (structually; I’m not opining here on substance) but creates other logical/fairness problems.**
Could you cite some examples, please?
vanilla:
more like whole fruit popsicles, coconut, pistachio, guava, tamarind,
now the popsicles aren’t in mitla proper, rather, they sell them in the city of oaxaca,
so i don’t know if the aztecs get popsicles in aztec heaven.
the chocolate, really it’s mostly just chocolate milk, but you can see where they grind the beans and everything.
mmm, chocolate aztec heaven…
Why should they be “punished” at all? Punishment should be reserved for those who have committed a crime (sin, if you like) and not extended to people who never heard that a set of laws even existed.
"Huerta88 wrote:
Monotheism solves a lot of logical problems with polytheism (structually; I’m not opining here on substance) but creates other logical/fairness problems.
Could you cite some examples, please?"
Problems “solved”:
Looks neater. Okay, that’s vague, but nature is full of binary/either-or phenomena, and the idea of one god, or none, has a certain elegance to it. Two opposing gods (cf. Zoroaster) can fit into a binary/dualistic model too, I guess. The Trinity gets a little more complicated. By the time you’re up to six gods or fourteen, it gets kind of cluttered. Fourteen isn’t a number that appears in nature as often as zero or one.
Easier to follow? One god=one lawgiver (for religions that promulgate a moral code). Easier to do his bidding than to worry about the possibly-contrary dictates of rival/complementary gods.
Lessens risk. You don’t have to pick a special god to follow, as could happen in polytheistic religions. That way you don’t worry that just as you complete your votive chapel to Aphrodite, say, she’ll be banished to the netherworld or something by Zeus.
More compatible with creation myth? Not sure if this is true, but I have a sense it’s easier to swallow the question of “where did everything, including the god(s), come from?” when you only have to posit one singluar pre-existent (whatever that means), first cause, than when you have to (a) explain the creation of a passel of gods; or (b) posit that they were also pre-existent and sort of jointly collaborated on creating the world by committee.
Less subject to embarrassing criticism? Again it comes back to elegance, and the advice professional con men give: Keep your stories simple. If you’re trying to convince a skeptic of a religion he’s dubious about, selling him on one god is tough, but if he can get over the basic theism hurdle, maybe he’ll buy one god in charge of everything. When you start talking about the rain god and the monkey god and the corn god, say, it starts sounding like people were just making it up as they went along.
Problems “created” by monotheism:
<Which> one god? This is sort of the henotheism vs. monotheism problem. As this thread shows, people are still grappling with how to resolve monotheism with the fact that large numbers of apparently-sincere people, and self-professed monotheists in particular, can’t agree on which one god runs the show. So what happens to those who pick the “wrong” one(s)?
Fairness. If someone tries to be monotheist, tries to live a moral life, and acts more virtuously than backsliding members of the “true” faith, but happens to have picked the wrong god, does he get shut out because of that? Again, as discussed above.
Radicalism. Those not concerned with issue 2 can be led by an uncompromising monotheist creed into believing that anyone not with them (and with the moral code that their particular creed promulgates as the one true code) ought to be subject to: forced conversion, contempt, shunning, jihad.
Embarrassment risk. People have been polytheistic through enough of history, and look to religion for such a wide range of things, that professed monotheists may find themselves letting polytheism right back in through the back door. Catholic <doctrine> is clear that Mary and the saints are not gods nor the object of worship, but instead are venerated and can have a role in intercessions; but that’s not how doctrine has been applied on the ground in Santeria, etc.
I believe in a caring and loving God. If He can create the universe, surely He can find a way to deal fairly with the ancient peoples and with those who lived before the Gospel was proclaimed in their region. You won’t find the answer in any theology, you just need to have faith in a loving God.
It’s statements like this by its adherents that made me finally reject christianity.
Well gee Qadgop do you reject science because of “mad” scientists or bad science ? 
By the way, you’ve heard that examing breasts on a regular basis is now deemed to be a waste of time. Scientifically proven even. Eight glasses of water… Point? I’m not giving up on science.
So does that mean that those Native Americans will fry in hell for only a limited amount of time instead of eternity?
How limited is that time? Cause frankly, just about any finite length of time is limited when compared to eternity.
What would you consider to a be a fair punishment for being born into a society that never had contact with such loving Christians as yourself? A million years in the lake of fire? 500,000 years? Or perhaps just a nice, even million years?
Or instead of being thrown into the Lake of Fire, are they just going to get noogied by Satan for several thousand millenia?
Please tell me. I’m curious as to what you think this “lesser punishment” is all about, and how it can possibly be justified.
**Huetra88 wrote:
Problems “solved”:
Hrm… this smacks of numerology to me. The elegance of 1 or 2 as opposed to 12 or 14 or 23… that’s assigning cultural values to natural objects (assuming for the moment the Gods are a natural part of the universe).
2. Easier to follow? One god=one lawgiver (for religions that promulgate a moral code). Easier to do his bidding than to worry about the possibly-contrary dictates of rival/complementary gods.
A one-size-fits-all God, eh? I can see the logic in it, but consider this. If you had a urinary tract infection, would you want to go to a GP or someone who specializes in urniary tract infections?
3. Lessens risk. You don’t have to pick a special god to follow, as could happen in polytheistic religions. That way you don’t worry that just as you complete your votive chapel to Aphrodite, say, she’ll be banished to the netherworld or something by Zeus.
You’re confusing mythology and religion now. The mythology we have handed down to us is a historical game of “Telephone” by people who weren’t even Initiates into the original mystery religion as practiced by the Greeks and Romans. Their actual personalities are best discovered thru prayer and meditation.
4. More compatible with creation myth? Not sure if this is true, but I have a sense it’s easier to swallow the question of “where did everything, including the god(s), come from?” when you only have to posit one singluar pre-existent (whatever that means), first cause, than when you have to (a) explain the creation of a passel of gods; or (b) posit that they were also pre-existent and sort of jointly collaborated on creating the world by committee.
Most creations myths in the Indo-European tradition posit that the Gods are a natural part of an organic, evolving universe rather than being completely separate from it. They’re part of how the whole process of creation unfolds as opposed to being outside it and creating the universe ex nilho
5. Less subject to embarrassing criticism? Again it comes back to elegance, and the advice professional con men give: Keep your stories simple. If you’re trying to convince a skeptic of a religion he’s dubious about, selling him on one god is tough, but if he can get over the basic theism hurdle, maybe he’ll buy one god in charge of everything. When you start talking about the rain god and the monkey god and the corn god, say, it starts sounding like people were just making it up as they went along.
While simpler can be better, is that always the case? Would you like our society to go back to using horse-and-buggy transportation? It would solve lots of problems that modern cars presently create and is vastly simpler to use and understand… If I were trying to convince a skeptic, I think it’d be harder to convince him of accepting the idea of one All Power, All Knowing & All Loving Being than accepting several very powerful, very knowledgable, very loving beings because of the inherent logical contradictions that this Omni-Being has.
Personally, I choose to believe that the pre-Christian Native Americans, just like all inhabitants of the Region of Thud, progressed to Hades upon their deaths. In this realm, all punishment and reward is self-inflicted, based on the persons belief system and beliefs about themselves. Those who choose to can reincarnate (perhaps as rotary phones or bonsai trees).
Then again, my Gods don’t have any particular liking to the followers of the Jesus Cult.
You make my point, grienspace. I will stick to science. After being raised around fundamentalists and Calvinists who talked about the “lake of fire” and “eternal punishment for unbelievers” and “only a few will be saved” I have no desire to revisit those tenets. I’ll stick to the scientific method, which has a mechanism for changing theory to fit facts, and doesn’t have the burning of people who stray from the orthodoxy as one of its foundations.
Not wanting to further hijack the OP, I will stop here.
fatdave -
William Byrd recorded in his book, The History of the Dividing Line, what his Native American guide believed regarding religion in 1728. You may find that you share the same basic religious beliefs as Bearskin did - the belief of a god, the moral distinction between good and evil, and the expectation of rewards and punishments in another world.
Anglican clergyman Philip E. Hughes: “To contend that only the human soul is innately immortal is to maintain a position which is nowhere approved in the teaching of Scripture, for in the biblical purview human nature is always seen as integrally compounded of both the spiritual and the bodily. . . . God’s warning at the beginning, regarding the forbidden tree, ‘In the day that you eat of it you shall die,’ was addressed to man as a corporeal-spiritual creature—should he eat of it, it was as such that he would die. There is no suggestion that a part of him was undying and therefore that his dying would be in part only.”—<I>The True Image—The Origin and Destiny of Man in Christ.</I>
I’m a trouble maker at heart, just thought I’d throw this in the debate, see what happens…