It’s true that he’s only a few feet away, but he’s fast asleep. We’ve had very long work days at the libertarian household lately.
Concerning some of the other posters, I think this deserves a repeat. They must have skipped over this:
Christians (or others) who state otherwise are either trying to deceive you or have yet to comprehend God’s Love. As for myself, I wouldn’t even presume to know which unbeliever would still reject Him even upon the moment of physical death.
the only argument I’ve heard that really makes sense as to why nonbelievers would go to hell was the one about original sin and only Jesus being able to clense that sin, but I also thought that the doctrine of original sin was no universally accepted. In schools of thought where it is not thought that all humans are inherently evil how can they justify the belief or need for Christianity? Just as a useful but not unique guide to follow? I’m sure plenty of those who don’t believe in original sin would still claim that Jesus is the only way.
And I have the same question that somebody else posed and has been posed in the past many time: What about people before Jesus? I don’t mean way back in the day “before people corrupted the laws of God” or something, but say, someone who died the day before Jesus came around. Is this guy definately going to hell? He is contemporaries with the entire world that Jesus has to save, so therefore he would be just as inherently corrupted as those Jesus saved. Obviously the same holds true of those who presently haven’t “heard the word”: they are as corrupted as the rest of the world, but somehow the fact that they just haven’t heard the teachings makes it so that they can escape eternal punishment. If this is so, why did God put the teachings there in the first place? Is the message that Everybody has the capability of getting into heaven, regardless of accepting Jesus or not, but that by accepting Jesus you get an easier framework by which to live that heaven-deserving life? Obviously this sounds like a fairly secular and non-Christian explanation, though it makes more sense to me if I were inclined to posit the existence of God/heaven.
The all knowing god knows where I am going after I die. The all seeing god knows every choice I made and will make. With god’s foresight and infinite wisdom, my puny existence is of such importance to god that my entire life was determined before I was born. The great and powerful god has made sure of that by threatening me with everlasting hell if I were to slip up and not fully believe the unbelieveable. Only by this demonstration of love do I understand god’s mind.
And I was wondering, if the fires of hell are endlessly hot, that would be an infinite source of heat energy. Would not this infinite source of heat kind of mess up the rest of the universe? Perhaps heaven is the opposite - a thermal balance. Heaven must be infinitely cold - more than we can imagine. Absolutely!
Actually, I think I am not going anywhere when I die. I probably won’t even move. Eventually, when my hermetically sealed casket disolves, cockroaches and other superior beings may ingest me, and start the distribution of my many molecules in many directions. My conscience will have long past expired. But god already knows that.
Lord, protect me from your followers! I can not pretend to believe what others claim to know. My father can beat your father in dominos. So be it.
A god who allows its creations to send themselves to eternal punishment sounds like someone who would make no effort to stop a friend from committing suicide even though it would require only minimal effort to stop him. That doesn’t sound like love to me. It sounds like indifference, which is even worse than hatred.
christians are a really wacky bunch of people. I love it how they blab on and on about their tyranical, evil god… and capitalize his name or pronouns that refer to him to make themselves feel that he is really there and special. What this world needs is a good antipsychotic drug that can cure christianity in a few doses. The world would be such a better place.
LaToyota Corolla Falana wrote:
Presenting: thermodynamic proof that heaven is hotter than hell!
And thus is struck another blow for the forces of tolerance and reason… :rolleyes:
Okay, picture this. The friend is on the ledge and you are trying frantically to talk him/her down. Think of that as God. He’s gonna allow you to make your own choice to jump or not. But he’s trying to get you off that ledge.
Just because he knows the choices you’re going to make doesn’t mean that he made them. You know that Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo. Does that mean that you cause Napoleon to be defeated? Of course not! And since God is in the future too, he can look back and see you as well as look forward and see you. Did that last part make sense?
That’s what I said. Athiests don’t want to go to heaven – in fact, don’t even acknowledge it – and so the “default destination”, as you so elegantly put it, is hell.
C’est tout, je pense.
And if talking doesn’t work, I just let him jump? I wouldn’t be much of a friend if I did no more than that, would I?
Except the difference is that while I am up on that ledge, and my friend is talking me down, I have knowledge that the ledge exists - I’ve seen the effect of gravity on moving bodies and how they tend to go SPLAT after rapid deceleration - I see my friend standing next to me and can poke him in the eye if I so choose - I hear my friend talking to me, and not just a voice in my head. With God, all of that is different - the ledge isn’t there to be seen our touched or examined in any way - there is no evidence to show that jumping off this “ledge” would be a bad thing with a bad conclusion - and the guy who is trying to talk me off the “ledge” is doing it through a 2000 year old book and a bunch of guys on TV with really bad hair. In other words, your analogy is crap.
Oh, dear Lord (if thou exists), why doth the Christian mind not make sense in cases such as this?
If I had known with 100% certainty BEFORE Napoleon lost Waterloo that he WOULD lose Waterloo, then he would have no option BUT to LOSE Waterloo. In other words, his course would be fixed - he would have the illusion of choice, but he could not change the path I KNEW he would take. The same goes for an all-knowing god - if he made everything and knows everything that will ever happen and nothing can deviate from that course, then he is responsible - completely, 100%, without question. It’s really not that hard a concept.
Of course, since the Christian god can’t drive away chariots of iron that are battling his chosen people, I seriously doubt he’d be all-knowing or all powerful or any other assorted omni* words.
Except we don’t want to go to hell either - in fact, don’t even acknowledge it as anything other than one more piece of evidence towards the cruel persona of your myth. Perhaps he should make a nice summer camp with tea parties, but where it rains all the time, for those of us who reject both Heaven and Hell - or to make it simpler, he could just send us to England. 
Mark, Chapter 6, tells of Jesus going back to Nazareth, claiming to be able to do miracles. The people are skeptical, partly because they knew him, knew who his mother and brothers were.* Because of their skepticism, “he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them,” as the KJV puts it.
Does this mean God has no power over those who don’t believe him? Or that unbelief cancels out his power?
*In describing Jesus’s family (Mark 6:3), Joseph is not even mentioned. I wonder why.
Jab, Jab, Jab… don’t you know that’s one of those parts of the Bible we’re not supposed to take literally. And for only $19.95 plus shipping and handling I will send you a love gift of my own personally-designed Literal-o-Matic machine, which will help even you, without the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to determine which of the myt…er, tales in the Bible are literal and which are interpretive.
If (and that is a huuuge if) the Christian god exists I think this:
I bet he will be advanced enough to realize that the lack of my faith was the result of his own actions. And also that his son Jesus in the end did not want a kingdom on earth. The Bible has many tales of Jesus almost blessing people of other faiths simply because they were righteous. What Jesus truly hated were hypocrites of any faith.
IMHO the good Samaritans of today are good Atheists. Allegorically speaking I mean. Of course at the time of Christ a Samaritan was seen in a WORSE light, by the Jews, than a non-believer Greek philosopher was.
[Rant:] I have concluded that even if by some chance we do have an afterlife, it has no bearing at all in us having faith or not. Logic tells me that if it is something our brains have made possible after many millions of years of evolution, having faith will be the least of the reasons to have an afterlife.
Kinda like in this joke:
An atheist dies and goes to what a traditionalist could call heaven. At the gates a guy that looks suspiciously like Buddha meets him. He welcomes the atheist in and later the non-believer notices a room full of thousands of people with paper bags covering their heads.
The atheist says: Who are those people?
The Buddha guy says: Hush! Those are born again Christians, and they believe they are the only ones here!
That is only an idea so feel free to ignore it. But never forget that no matter what faith or no faith you have when we die we won’t be able to help our loved ones or make a difference any more so: get involved, do good, get insurance, finish your book.
Take care. [/Rant]
I want to reply to all of these things said in this thread. This is an important discussion, and it deserves serious discussion, not accusations and namecalling.
First of all, not all Christians believe the default destination of people is hell. As I understand, that’s mainly a Catholic belief. (My church,which doesn’t really have a name, it’s simply called ‘Christian Church’, my church doesn’t follow any doctrine outside of what the Bible says.) My church, in fact, believes basically that the default destination for people is heaven, and that it depends on your acceptance of Christ’s message. This being that Jesus’s death and resurection made it possible for people to go to heaven when they die.(This is way oversimplifying things.)
Here’s the way I see this situation. I see God as a parent. Atheists are to God what kids who run away from home, don’t listen, etc. are to their parents. It breaks their heart when their children don’t obey them, but their parents still love them. Responsible parents will allow only so many chances for their children to straighten up. Then they will punish them.
The Christian viewpoint is that whether you admit that God exists or not, He’s there. Whether you believe Jesus is God’s son and that his giving up his life so that everybody else doesn’t have to (everybody has to die physically, I mean spiritually, as in going to hell)or not, that’s what happened.
Let’s talk about intolerance here for a minute. Christians are accused of intolerance all the time. There are people who call themselves Christians out there who are genuine bigots and hide behind Christianity as an excuse for their bigotry. True Christians believe that everyone has the chance to go to heaven. After all of the debates, and name calling, and crap like that, let’s look at the true meaning of Christianity. The true meaning of Christianity is the belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God, that he was killed on the Cross, and was raised back to life not by himself, but by God, which is who Jesus really was in human form. God arranged for these things to happen so that people would have a chance of having an eternal life. Atheists, and non-Christians(who by the way are not the same thing) have all the opportunity in the world to change the way they think until the end of the world. After that, there’s no more chances.
Back to the parent analogy, it’s not your parents fault if you steal a car while your drunk and kill somebody if they’ve made every effort to teach you why you shouldn’t. It’s yours. If you had listened to them in the first place, you wouldn’t be in this mess. They still love you, and want you to make the right decisions. God wants everyone to listen to his rules and live by them. If you don’t follow them, it’s not anybody’s fault but your own when it comes time for a punishment. You may not like it, you may not think it’s fair, but that’s the way it’s gonna be anyway.
Yes, but parents don’t toss their kids into a flaming pit where there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth for all eternity. See it as a parent/child relationship if you like, but you only end up with one hell of a crazy parent.
Odd, I think most religions think that same way. It makes none of them anymore valid than the other.
Except that generally, people like to have some kind of new information and evidence when changing their mind on something. For instance, I was raised Catholic - and as the new information that nothing I was taught about God really made much sense or had evidence for it hit me - I changed my mind. If your god is real, he knows EXACTLY what it will take to convince me to love him - but if he refuses, he must actually want to see me in hell.
No, not back to the parent analogy. It’s looney.
Super_head, you beat me to it. If going to hell is punishment for me not believing in something that I don’t have sufficient proof for, then send me to hell. Fine, I’ve been ‘bad’, punish me. But, lets not get out of hand here. A just parent will make the punishment fit the crime. A year of burning flame is a lot of punishment for a lot of different offenses – 10 years is probably enough to make anyone see the correctness of their actions. But, eternity? What kind of horribly unjust god is your god anyways?
And, to once again border on hyperbole – every good parent knows the punishment must be related to the crime, but also come at a relatively similar time. If my dog craps on the floor for a year, and then a year later I beat him to a pulp, it doesn’t matter how much I beat him, he’s not going to figure out that it was the crapping thing – he’s going to look for something he did recently. If I keep beating him a year after he does something bad, he’s going to grow up neurotic, and I’m going to have taught him nothing. And, everyone I know will consider me a non-loving parent. So, now you say your god is a loving parent, yet he’s going to wait my entire lifetime before pounding me into a bloody pulp? Because of something I’ve done all my life that he just forgot to mention was bad? Sounds like a very bad parent.
Me’Corva
Me’Corva, if nothing else, I’ll buy first round when we’re burning in hell.
Your church’s position seems to be that unless they accept Jesus as their savior, people will go to hell. In other words, if someone does nothing–they just live their life–they go to hell. If they do something–accept Jesus–they go to heaven. Hence, going to hell is the “default position”. (And, since about two-thirds of the current world population is non-Christian, going to hell is the “default position” in that sense as well.)
You know, I can’t make myself believe anything. I can make myself do things, but I can’t just believe or not believe in something by an act of will. If someone holds a gun to my head and says “Buckner, believe that the Moon is made of green cheese or you die” I could say I believed the Moon is made of green cheese, but if they hooked me up to an infallible lie detector, I’d be a dead man.
I know Christians (my mother, for one) that imagine themselves sitting up in heaven at some later date, in gleeful self-gratification as they see the expressions on the arriving non-believers as they appear and realize they are in heaven. My mom has told me she looks forward to getting to heaven, especially to gloriously needle my late father, who did not believe in heaven. “See, I told you so!” is her practiced line.
Whereas, an athiests like myself, would be thinking - or rather NOT THINKING, that gee, there is nothing here. No souls, no heaven, no hell, no god, no afterlife, no nothing. We are not alive. I don’t worry about feeling lost for all eternity, because there is no feeling after death, as there is no “me”. My “me” has expired, just like everyone else has done/will do - believers and non-believers alike.
I find religion interesting. Not because of its lore, dogma, history, etc., but because the complete lack of true skeptical thought demonstrated by millions (billions?) of people. It is a powerful and subtle brainwashing meme that is fueled by ignorance, fear, and insecurity. It only takes one step to get outside the circle of stupidity, clear one’s mind and see the world for what it really is. It becomes painfully apparent what god is. God is simply a successful idea that self-perpetuates. The world makes much more sense, and is far more interesting when you deal with reality instead of trying to make superstition and the supernatural work in a natural world.
Yada yada yada