Penn Gillette once observed he appreciated if a believer made a sincere aporoach at proselytizing him, because of course something that important would compel you to.
But yes in reality people will follow the interpretation that provides them comfort, or that which reaffirms their own righteousness if they want to be asses about it.
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In a broader sense this has been observed by those in many religions for ages. You are a “believer” in something greater but live your life by more mundane standards, and with no real regard for mortality until you face it imminently.
No!!! Then you’d be in limbo. (In elementary school a nun telling my gf about babies in limbo was the thing that started her questioning catholic stuff)
Nope. I live my life as if everyone out there feels pain, loss, happiness and joy the same way I do, and if I am an asshole people will treat me like and asshole. A lot of us have something called empathy, so if I do good for others I tend to feel good for others-likewise for doing bad. The fact that others use their gods as a stick to force them to be good sometimes scares me, and I kind of feel the rest of us may be better off with that particular crutch.
The Pelagian Heresy held that Man could come to grace by good works alone - St Augustine countered this by announcing that all men are sinners and that it was necessary to accept Jesus Christ as your saviour and beg forgiveness from Him, no matter how exemplary a life you were living.
The OP is extrapolating from the Christians he knows. It is no secret that fundamentalists exhibit some of the worst qualities of human beings, in the name of their god, including stupidity, gullibility, pugnaciousness, paranoia, and more. They are not the only Christians, just the ones atheists think are the only Christians.
Christianity has about 2.4 BILLION adherents. Most are indistinguishable from anyone else. Some are evil little shits. Some are wise sages with profound inner lives, wellsprings of compassion, a light in the darkness. There aren’t any religions of which I am aware, whose members typically demostrate the best and most ideal qualities expounded by its tenets. Nor do most religions make much more sense than Christianity does.
I have to call you out on this: you’re doing the same false generalization about atheists as the people who think that all Christians are fundamentalists you rightfully complain about. Maybe some atheist think that, but definitely not all, probably not even the majority.
And that is more the fault of non-fundamentalist Christians than anyone else-the OP cannot extrapolate from the Christians he doesn’t know, can he? If you don’t grab and use Mr. Microphone, you are pretty much talking to yourself.
Sure, but I’m not so much talking about the behavior of Christians in general (which would be a 100-page topic itself) but rather, about the specific doctrine of Hell.
If one believes Hell doesn’t exist, then it makes sense to be cool and nonchalant about the issue of Hell. If one thinks Hell is only temporary (like purgatory,) or isn’t all that bad, then it makes sense to be cool and unworried too.
But if one is among the 10-20% (guesstimate) of Christians who do believe that 1) Hell is horrific and 2) Hell is everlasting, then one ought to be crazed, frantic and obsessed-driven about the issue. After all, 105 people die every minute somewhere in the world, and if true saving faith is what gets you to Heaven, this means perhaps 95 people are going to permanent furnace-torture every minute. Nobody could be comfortable on 9/11 knowing that their father, aunt, uncle, nephew or cousin was in the Twin Towers and faced a high risk of being broiled alive. (well, unless they hated them)
I was trying to find stats on this and came across the Pew poll on the subject of belief in hell. It turns out that 20% of Jews believe in it, which just tells me that many people don’t understand their own religion. I couldn’t find stats on how many believers in hell believe in eternal damnation and torture, though.
You’re a Christian he sort-of knows. Do you believe that hell is a literal place? That souls are sent there for eternity and suffer for eternity?
It is much worse than that. Do you believe that people you know and love will be going to hell for eternity and, if you go to Heaven, you will cease caring about them and everyone else in Hell?
Even if it meant that said sibling would refuse to communicate with you ever again, or at least until you stopped whatever “something” it is you are doing? Or perhaps you have in mind some sort of stealth soul-saving that the sibling would not notice? /s
If you are talking about me and my sister, she knows that I am perfectly willing to cut her out of my life if provoked; I think she also understands that such attempts would be completely ineffective, so she would lose the pleasure of my company for nothing.
Maybe someone thinks, based on the idea that for such a necessary outcome (in her view) she should feel justified in kidnapping me and brainwashing me, leaving me a broken shell but still saved. That does seem to be the reductio ad absurdum of this argument.
Let’s say you were hanging by your fingertips, dangling over a cliff. She comes by and offers help, and you say no, you got it. Should she just let you hang there until you slip off and die? Because that is infinitely smaller pain and suffering coming your way than an eternity in hell.
So, if she really and truly believed you were going to hell, to be punished for a literal eternity, each second worse than the last, eternal torture of your immortal soul, how could she do any different than constantly worry and fret over your coming infinity of pain and suffering?
No, no, and no. I don’t think heaven is a place, like earth is a place, and I don’t think hell is either. This is a naive idea. But many Christians are of course, deeply naive.
I believe there are other states of consciousness besides the one I currently inhabit. Some are worse, some are better. The Buddhists have a far more advanced eschatology than Christians, and I find it, while hopelessly complicated, a lot more interesting.
I don’t hang with the kind of Christians who have these primitive, tormented ideas about the afterlife.
That’s not at all a valid comparison. If I’m lying in bed and she comes along and swears that I am about to fall off a cliff, I am not going to let her lasso me with a rope and pull me to alleged safety, I am probably going to have her committed, or get a restraining order to keep her away from me. So the difference between reality and fantasy is important in this discussion.
Not to belabor the point, but no, they don’t, if “plausible” means connected in some way to reality.
You don’t have to convince me that there’s no heaven or hell. I’m saying, from her perspective, by not constantly working on you, she should be terrified that her loved one will be tortured for a literal eternity.
So, I’m glad she doesn’t hassle you all the time, but maybe that means she doesn’t believe that you’re going to be literally tortured for literally forever.
I just want to interject that Catholics do NOT believe in being “saved.” That is, Protestants believe one goes to Heaven and not Hell because of “faith alone,” Catholics believe that faith AND repentance are necessary. It’s arguably the biggest rift between Protestantism and Catholicism.
The Catholic Church also believes baptism is necessary, but the belief that babies who aren’t baptized go to Limbo was discarded long ago. I believe the current doctrine is that they’re left to God’s mercy.
Back to the OP: you’re absolutely right that plenty of Christians don’t act like they believe in Hell, but there’s also some discrimination bias there. You notice when they don’t act like they believe in Hell but don’t notice when they do. Humans can be pretty shitty, and I guess if you believe in Hell, it’s pretty easy to ignore the future except in church on Sunday or, for jurist Christians (my term for those who believe in the letter but not the spirit of Christianity), when they’re self-righteously insisting others are going to Hell.
(Please note that I’m not espousing Catholicism or defending the Church or its doctrines or abuses in any way.)
That’s interesting. While I’ve never heard a Jew who says they believe in hell, I’ve heard plenty who think we’re going to heaven, which is just as inaccurate. I blame contamination from the majority religion myself.
