Apparently because the Creator is incapable of making perfect people, and rather than blaming himself, he has chosen to place the blame upon that which he has created.
How many times does this have to be debated? Is it God’s fault we sin? God makes us disobedient? If my son lies to me, is it because I made him lie? If I speed to work, is it the city’s fault? Or is your issue with the fact that God gave us the choice to sin, and He shouldn’t have? We should all have just been born to serve, and love doing it. But if we can’t choose to not love, then is it really love? Was God unclear when He said 'You can eat of any fruit in this perfect garden but one, and if you do you will be punished. Oh what a horrible God, allowing them everything but one tree, in a perfect environment. Ya, I can see how it’s God’s fault. Or maybe it’s because God knew they would do it. Sure, I know my son will lie to me, so is it my fault he lies since I made him? Am I any less loving, or is he any less special to me? Give me a break. Maybe next time I’m caught speeding, I can say society made me this way, so it’s actually their fault, and get them to pay the ticket. Oh, but maybe it is God’s fault, as it was the woman God gave to Adam that made him do it.
I think it’s pretty clear what God intended when he told his imperfect creations, “Whatever you do, don’t eat the fruit of that special tree!”, knowing full well that, while they didn’t have knowledge of good and evil(until after they ate the fruit-how conveeenyent), they had a healthy human curiosity. At least my father had brains enough not to put a loaded gun in the middle of our toybox, tell us not to play with it, than wander off. If he had, and something bad had happened, do you think the courts would have blamed him, or us kids?
well said ** czarcasm**. Couldn’t have put it better myself. As a non-Christian who is constantly bombarded everyday with the Word of the Lord(or something to that effect, forgive my ignorance), I am glad to see that there are enough people in the teeming millions who show the religios nuts their place. Now if only they kept to themselves and left us alone this world would be so much nicer to live in.
Hey great post hawkeye. I hope us religious nuts will stop pulling you into these thread obviously started by us other religious nuts.:smack:
Huh?
Yes.
Yes.
If my son lies to me, is it because I made him lie? If I speed to work, is it the city’s fault?**
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Strawmen. You and the city are not Omnipotent, omniscient creators. God deliberately created imperfect people. He knew every single thing that each of them would ever do and he chose to snap his fingers and make it happen. He could have scripted this shit any way he wanted. He greenlighted this specific trainwreck out of an infinity of other choices. This is what he wanted. It’s all on God.
The very notion of “sin” was his idea, his invention. If he didn’t want people to sin he shouldn’t have created it. Furthermore, if we don’t have the capability of living without sin then we don’t really have free will. It’s not really logical to say that we have the ability to choose sin but we don’t have the ability to choose not to sin. Further furthermore, this idea that people are inherently shitty, worthless worms undeserving of mercy is somply masochistic wallowing and patently untrue. I know lots of people, including me, who are perfectly delightful, good and caring humans who deserve nothing but God’s embrace and maybe some virgins in Heaven.
Good God, no. I’d rather fry in that lake than be a crawling, subservient toy for an egomaniacal deity.
But we do love. Most of us anyway. And guess what, we love other people in spite of their flaws. We don’t require puritanical perfection or blood sacrifices.
Ignoring the reemergence of your strawmen, I’d like to remind you that Adam and Eve did not know good from evil until after they ate the fruit. Therefore, they could not have known it was wrong to disobey God, therfore they have no culpability in eating it. It was God’s fault. He gave them an order which he knew they could not logically follow. He knew the future. He knew how this movie would progress. Ordering them not to eat the fruit was like me yelling at Apollonia not to start the car in the first Godfather movie. I’ve seen it a million times. I know she’s going to start the car and it’s going to blow up so it’s stupid to yell at the screen. It’s like that with God and the apple except that God is also like Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola. He wrote this movie and directed it so it’s really dumb for him to get mad when Apollonia gets blown up. He put it in the script.
Why is perfection necessary for salvation anyway? What’s wrong with just being decent? Why is God such a miserable, unforgiving prick that the slightest, bullshit “sin” is excuse enough to torture people for ever. Any God who would do that is evil beyond all comprehension. I say if you’re a halfway decent person and you’re not a child molester or a serial killer or George W. Bush you should be able to go right to Heaven and join in the party. I’d let in even the really evil people like Hitler or John Ashcroft after serving some kind of metaphysical pennance for a while. I think maybe giving them a profound sense of empathy for all those they’ve hurt would be good, for instance. Let them feel the emotional pain of each of their victims. Let them appreciate it, let them be transformed by it. Then I’d let them into Heaven. What the hell. It’s not going to kill anybody. Eternal torture would serve no purpose at all.
BTW, you didn’t really answer the question about how anyone could be happy in heaven if their loved ones were in hell. Would you like to take another crack at it? (If all you’ve got is “mysterious ways” you can spare me, though)
Strawmen. You and the city are not Omnipotent, omniscient creators. God deliberately created imperfect people. He knew every single thing that each of them would ever do and he chose to snap his fingers and make it happen. He could have scripted this shit any way he wanted. He greenlighted this specific trainwreck out of an infinity of other choices. This is what he wanted. It’s all on God.
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What exactly was imperfectly made?
I don’t really follow. Are you saying that disobedience was God’s idea? I don’t follow the logic. As for Adam, he didn’t have the sin nature. And we do have the ability to choose not to sin. Every time I count money, I choose not to steal it. Well, I don’t anymore, but there was a time when I could have. As for inherently shitty, you are adding a little verbage here. But let me as you, a perfectly delightful, good and caring person if you’ve ever lied, and if so what that makes you? As for deserving God’s embrace, by what measure of goodness do you use? Is it ok if you lie when it’s raining?
The greatest show of love is to lay down your life for another. God did this while we were still sinners.
That’s based on your perception of God, and I believe it’s flawed. How do you know Adam and Eve didn’t know it was wrong not to listen to God? Their actions immediately following that prove this wrong. If my son cleans the house, he comes running to me. It’s when he’s quiet and hiding that I, and he, know he’s done something wrong.
Again, do I make my son lie? I know he will do it, and there are times when I ask him, knowing what he’ll say, and I don’t have total wisdom. Are you saying because God knew they would sin, He should have made them to not be able to? The reason I love my wife is she choose to be with me above anyone else (among other reasons). I’ve said this before, and call it whatever you like, but not being able to choose to love or not love isn’t love. Love is a choice.
And if you go to the court house, and ask all the conviced criminals if they thought their punishment was too severe, what do you think they’d say?
Which part was unclear? If I was in hell, it’d be better for my son to be with me so he’d be happier? I personally, and I can give you no cite and I wouldn’t die for this belief, believe we somehow forget about them. But I don’t know. But along those lines, does God forget about them? I don’t believe He does. Does God love them? I believe so. So how would it be different? I don’t know. The story of the rich man and Lazarus comes to mind, where the rich man didn’t want his brothers to come to the same spot. If you’d notice the story isn’t a parable, so I believe it actually happened. That is really sad. But the Bible says God wipes away every tear (why are there tears? Are we saying good-bye to these people?) and there is no sorrow in heaven.
Why limit this question simply to Christians and non-Christians?
To employ comparativism,
isn’t it also the case that, to use the example of the second largest world religion and second most powerful monotheistic religion to boot, all non-Muslims go to hell as well? It certainly seems that way from my reading of the Koran. And, what of the beliefs of Orthodox Judaism?
So, it seems likely that the attribute of exclusivity is a trait common to many forms of monotheism and indeed is probably one of the memes that most strongly argues in favor of that religion’s, or any other faith’s, continued growth and strength.
To use a couple of examples to draw out my case,
Why pay taxes if you are going to get all the same benefits as non-taxpayers in the end anyway?
Why join a labor union if you are assured that you get to keep the hard-won advantages fought for by generations of labor leaders without having to contribute to the organizations that made that progress possible in the first place?
Why become a citizen of a country if non-citizens got all the same rights, without having to obey the responsibilities laid down for citizens in the first place?
Christianity may be seen as exclusive, all successful organizations create a barrier between members and non-members after all, but it is also incredibly inclusive with perhaps the highest conversion rates in the world, (for example, South Korea now has more practicing Christians than does England), almost anyone is let in, you don’t have to speak a certain language (say Arabic, or Hebrew), you don’t have to belong to a certain Hindu caste and obey the rigorous rules of that caste (say like the Hindus in India), and to compare it to the native religions of the Americas, relatively few virgins get sacrifized to Quetzelcoatl, the hummingbird god!
Indeed, according to Martin Luther, salvation is justified by faith alone and even the most ascetic arrogantly ethical Christian who lacks true faith goes directly to hell, whereas a Christian who sins greatly, has tremendous flaws, and yet submits himself fully to God’s mercy is completely forgiven, in that sense, Christianity can be incredibly liberating, freeing individuals from the rigors of old, where being a sinner automatically meant damnation.
Also, an argument is sometimes in favor of the benefits of Hinduism, because, or so the argument goes, with Hinduism individuals are reincarnated and so they get a second chance.
However, we obviously have absolutely no knowledge of this previous life and so any advantage that might be gained by reincarnation is completely mooted, we don’t get a second chance after we acknowledge our mistakes and are able to move on. We have no memory of our mistakes, and so we are completely unable to build or grow from this. Thus, the cycle is repeated ad infinitum, and the same faults that condemned you to repetition of the cycle the first time around are just as likely, their existence as being condemned being beyond your possibile knowledge, to condemn you the second time around, absent some freak miracle of chance.
This continuous repetition of life without the continuation of the memory (an integral and necessary part of any individual’s personality) is roughly equivalent to an infinite repitition of death therefore and so finally we must ask ourselves the question,
To be given the ability to make a clear knowing choice between eternal salvation and one single damnation?
Or to be forced by the actions of the predecessing spirit that inhabits you as an individual (in other words by forces completely out of your control or possibility of knowledge) to be forced down a road leading only to eternal death for you, but a possibly infinite repitition of death for some amorphous “spirit” that will not have the luxery of inheriting your knowledge, and why should you care anyway, whatever it will be, it will not be you, it will not have your memories (which define your identity)?.
So, obviously, the necessary deductions are clear,
the threat of more than deserved suffering is the necessary price to pay for the possibility of freedom from the truly evil and undying curse, that pagan idolatry of the infinitely recurring death. When seen in that context, I would rather spend an eternity in the hell all humans by their very nature deserve, than spend one more angst-filled moment in your wretched, stinking, kraven, pagan dystopia!
(please not that these observations are based on argumentative purposes only and do not reflect my true beliefs: I have none, I am a devout contrarion and ironist. I have no prejudices against peoples of other faiths, I am a misanthrope and have an undying contempt and hatred for ALL of humanity!)
Neither Islam nor Judaism teach that all members of other faiths go to hell. (BTW, Judaism has no hell.) Many Christians reject this also.
Svt4Him, you are still dancing around the question. If you were in Heaven, but your spouse and/or child were in Hell, how would you feel? Would you mind if your god did a little psychic surgery on you so that you either didn’t care about the issue or maybe even forgot about them entirely? Would you just say to yourself,“Oh well, I guess they didn’t make the cut-now where did I put my harp?” Be specific-What exactly do you think the innocuous term “wiping away the tears” really means?
I would say most probably do if they consider the matter worth thinking about. I’m afraid in the US there are more than a few which give the rest of us a bad name, which is doubly ironic considering most of those few utterly despise me and mine. Ce’st la Vie.
Well, yeah! All non-christians will go to hell. But only if you’re a christian. If you’re not, and I assume you’re not…who gives a flying fuck what a bunch of mean-spirited dreamers think? Live your life. They will continue to live theirs. All is well.
If only this were so, but it seems as if some of them think that they are supposed to drag the rest of us along with them, whether we want to go or not.
“I admire atheists. Being an atheist takes a lot of faith!”
I believe that is a Seinfeld quote, but I’m too lazy to look it up.
Since this is simply a matter of opinion, torie, here’s my opinion as a Christian:
No.
Non-Christians cannot go to hell, as I do not believe there is a hell at all. A truly evil person may be denied eternal life, but not damned to an enternal life in hell. That’s my take on it, anyway. Your father is doubtlessly awaiting your arrival in heaven (unless your father is Pol Pot or something like that.) What exactly heaven is I don’t know, but it’s not hell.
Gosh, that was easy. Matters of opinion are the easiest GDs. To answer less flippantly, though, you should understand that it is simply not the dogma of all Christianity that your father must be in hell because he wasn’t a Christian. Many if not most Christian denominations hold that the unsaved can make it anyway; I know that’s the position of the Roman Catholic church, which is pretty much half of Christianity right there.
The idea that all nonbelievers go to hell is one of the most fundamnetal tenets of Islam, clearly and explicitly explained in the Koran.
If any Muslim tells you that many other Muslims believe that the Koran is clearly wrong and clearly lying in this regard is probably not a Muslim. Muslims believe that the Koran is the writing of the actual word of God, and therefore for one to believe that God was lying and deliberately misleading Mohammad and his followers, makes one wonder in what way do they fit the definition of Muslim?
In case you’ve got your Koran handy, (mines on my shelf currently, although I perused it before writing this), the places where the Koran explicitly states what happens to the nobelievers
“As for the disbelievers, they know at the moment of death that they are destined for Hell. The angels beat them up on the faces and rear ends” (8:50 & 47:27),
“order them to evict their souls” (6:93),
then “snatch their souls” (79:1).
The Quran teaches that the disbelievers go through 2 deaths (2:28 & 40:11).
They will be put to death - a state of nothingness during which they see Hell day and night in a continuous nightmare that lasts until the Day of Judgment (40:46).
Hell is not yet in existence (40:46, 89:23).
If you disagree with this exposition, please give me some cites directly from the Koran that support your argument. I’d be happy to look them up for you if they actually existed.
Cheers
You’re missing a distinction between non-believers and non-Muslims. Islam teaches that Christians and Jews believe in the same God as Muslims. Islam does not teach that Chritians and Jews go to Hell. they are respected as people of the book. Believing in God is the important part, not being a Muslim.
I was raised in the Church of Christ and was taught not only that all non-christians were going to hell, but everyone who wasn’t CofC was going to hell. That means the Southern Baptists, who I was told were a bunch of flaming liberals corrupted by the devil, were heading for the lake of fire just like Hitler and the homosexuals. Jews and Catholics? Toast.
And not only that, but the Central Church of Christ in the little town where I grew up had gone soft, so all of their members were invited to the big Satanic afterlife BBQ as well.
In my role as the Sunday School Questioner, I once attempted to explore this belief in detail. “So God created billions and billions of people over the 6,000 years since He created the world. After Jesus came, everybody in the First Century church got in to heaven, but after that the Papists took over and taught error to all of those unsuspecting Christians and they all went to hell. Everyone who thought they were a Christian and tried to live right for 1900 years or so went to hell until the Church of Christ was founded. Since he created all of those billions of people knowing they would go to hell despite their best efforts, and knowing that only a few thousand who happened to hear the teachings of a small denomination in the American South would go to heaven, doesn’t that make God sadistic and evil?”
They loved me in Sunday school.
Ah, thank you for informing yourself to me,
you have helped me to correct my mistaken error,
I had assumed you were misinformed,
now I realize that you are simply delusional!
Yes, Jews and Christians have some chance of bare survival if they encounter a Muslim, unlike all others who must be murdered outright, (if you can call the life of a slave survival).
However, they are assured of eternal damnation have no doubt.
If any additional quotes can help you to recover your sanity.
On unbelievers in general
Koran 9:29
Fight those who do not profess the true faith (Islam) till they pay the jiziya (poll tax) with the hand of humility.
Koran 8:12
Remember Thy Lord inspired the angels (with the message): “I am with you: give firmness to the believers, I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers, Smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger tips of them.”
Koran 9:5
“Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolators wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.”
On Jews and Christians in Particular
Koran 5:51
Believers, take neither Jews nor Christians for your friends. They are friends with one another. Whoever of you seeks their friendship shall become one of their number. Allah does not guide the wrong-doers.
Koran 5:57
Believers, do not seek the friendship of the infidels and those who were given the Book before you, who have made your religion a jest and a pasttime…
Koran 5:64
The Jews say: ‘God’s hand is chained.’ May their own hands be chained! May they be cursed for what they say!..
Koran 9:29
Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last day, nor hold the forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and his messenger, nor acknowledge the Religion of Truth from among the People of the Book, until they pay the Jiziyah with willing submission. And feel themselves subdued.
Koran 9:30
The Jews call ‘Uzayr-a son of God’, and the Christinas call ‘Christ the Son Of God’. That is a saying from their mouth; (In this) they but intimate what the unbelievers of old used to say. Allah’s curse be on them: how they are decluded away from the Truth.
So, you may wonder, all that is saying is that it is the first mission of all Muslims to conquer all infidels (including those of the book),
to exterminate the Pagans, and to make of all other peoples of the book slaves and servants, but that doesn’t tell you anything about heaven or hell or the afterlife?
Koran 98:1-8
The unbelievers among the People of the Book and the pagans shall burn for ever in the fire of Hell. They are the vilest of all creatures.
There’s your tolerance for you!
Koran 40:67-40:73
Do you not see how those who dispute the revelation of God turn away from the right path ? Those who have denied the Book and the message We sent through Our apostles shall realize the truth hereafter: when, with chains and shackles round their necks, they shall be dragged through scalding water and then burnt in the fire of Hell.
Koran 58:5
Those who resist Allah and his messenger will be humbled to dust.
In Conclusion, I’d rather be a Kafir to a Mohammadan any day of the week. For in Christianity one should show kindness to all, and especially to nonbelievers for they are so pathetic as to not be able to feel the infinite mercy of God when they die.
But in Islam, conquest, Jihad, and persecution are the rules of the game from Day One.
So, please don’t attack Christians for some supposed lack of tolerance.
Myles