If I don’t believe in God, He still believes in me. I guess that’s pretty good. What’s the point of creating someone just to throw him away? I mean, you give him free will and then penalize him for eternity for using it?
I’ve got a son who’s been kind of a disappointment. He hasn’t turned out like I hoped. But I’m sure not throwing him away.
I myself wonder how painfull and darkly hellish any heaven would be created by a god who expected people to blindly accept him based on the rantings of the earthly preachers and then threw those who did not into the lake of fire.
I had to pick “other” because people don’t go to hell/burn in a lake of fire, only the devil does. Good atheists go to heaven, just like good believers. Those who are unrepentent will simply cease to exist, just like bad believers…which isn’t a bad deal considering atheists believe that’s what’ll happen to them anyway.
Bear in mind, however, that this same sect that doesn’t believe that people go to hell also generally believes that living a moral life is more important to one’s salvation than belief in God (in life, that is. if one stood before God after death, it’d be pretty ballsy to continue to deny him), which is why moral atheists will go to heaven too. I imagine if you believe that accepting God is a prereq for an eternal reward, your opinion will be very different.
“This is very similar to the suggestion put forward by the Quirmian philosopher Ventre, who said, ‘Possibly the gods exist, and possibly they do not. So why not believe in them in any case? If it’s all true you’ll go to a lovely place when you die, and if it isn’t then you’ve lost nothing, right?’ When he died he woke up in a circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks and one of them said, ‘We’re going to show you what we think of Mr Clever Dick in these parts.’”
Thanks! I just watched the movie a couple weeks ago. Terry Pratchett rocks!
I’m not absolutely certain what I believe about the afterlife, except that those who love G-d will attempt to obey him to the best of their ability, regardless if they believe He/She/It exists. I also believe that people are G-d’s primary means of expressing his love for humanity, so it behooves us to treat one another with love and respect.
Even if there is no afterlife, that’s no reason for me to make life worse for the people around me. Likewise, the existence of an afterlife does not relieve me of my duty to try to understand what it is to be a “good” person and (only) then try like hell to be that kind of person. Even if I know I can’t achieve that ideal, I can at least get closer to it than I am now.
Yes please. And start a twitter feed so I don’t have to go out of my way to keep an eye on the progress.
I answered something else- as everyone is eventually enveloped into the Presence of Yahweh-Jesus, and for some people, that will be the worst Hell possible.
“I don’t see what’s so t’riffic about creating people as people and then gettin’ upset 'cos they act like people,” said Adam severely*.*“Anyway, if you stopped tellin’ people it’s all sorted out after they’re dead, they might try sorting it all out while they’re alive.” - Terry Pratchett and/or Neil Gaiman, Good Omens
IOW, if some deity exists that made me, then it made me the way I am, dreadfully Cartesian critical logic engine included. It naturally follows from such creation that I would not believe in god(s) and would discard any notion of an afterlife.
And if the god(s) don’t grok that and punish me for it anyway, then I have nothing to regret, for they are no gods and don’t deserve my attention, never mind my worship.
Anne Neville has it right. Jews are commanded to do certain things and forbidden to do certain things. We are not once commanded to believe. Any of the great Jewish sages will say that it’s possible to be a good, observant Jew and an atheist.
To add something else, Maimonides (among others I’m sure) held that the charity was purer and more holy when given without expectation of reward. If an atheist has given food to the homeless etc, they have done so without expectation of Heavenly reward. Thus, the charity of atheists is dearer to G-d than the giving of believers.
I don’t remember the quote, but it was something along that line that if entrance to Heaven is only available to those who don’t think, give blind faith and obedience, never question or challenge, then conversations in Heaven must be incredibly boring.
Sounds like hell to me.
Who are “some people”.
At a guess, that’d be “The type of atheists who are actively anti-God no matter his specific form and incarnation”. Y’know, the ones who are either incredibly uncommon or don’t exist, but who are a major bugbear for a certain subset of “Christianity”.
Sounds like it to me, too. Never discount the possibility that some doctrine comes from people who want power over other people, and they think if they can convince others that “G-d said this” then they have to sit down, shut up and obey. G-d wants us to ask questions. Otherwise we wouldn’t have the ability.
I just noticed the above poll was multiple choice. I wasn’t happy with my one answer, and would have chosen a few more had I been aware. But of course, I wasn’t.:smack:
Just to restate my position, I believe that heaven is going to be better than anything you can imagine, but unless you are capable of loving something aside from yourself it’s not likely to appeal to you.
I believe some atheists will find out they were wrong, but good people can accept that and move on. I also believe some “Christians” won’t make it, even if they did all the things they thought they were supposed to, especially if some of those things include persecuting people who do not believe (G-d has a plan for them, too), promoting doctrines and behaviors of hate and intolerance, etc.
Want me to explain how I came to these conclusions to your satisfaction? Look, it took me more than 50 years to get this far and I can’t even remember all the influences that got me here and you want a roadmap? Just look at how I’m living my own life, copy the stuff that seems right to you, and don’t copy the stuff that doesn’t. When all is said and done, that’s how anyone, Christian, Muslim, Buddist, Jew, Agnostic, Athiest or none of the above came to their understanding of G-d, whether they understand him/her/it to be “really real” or just a fantasy.
I wish Bill and Ted had written some of the Bible. There are worse philosophies than “be excellent to each other” and “party on, dude!”.
So we’re clear, great Pallas: did you have in mind a series of brutal public murders of prominent unbelievers; a series of just-as-brutal-but-considerably-less showy assassinations from the same pool; an all-out war in your name, seeking first to reclaim the Italian peninsula and moving from there to Africa & Europe; a quest to rid the world of various monstrous evil-doers in your name, thus both improving the lot of the common folk and demonstrating your superiority to the various skygods; or a movement stressing the virtues of reason & comity, using no more violence than strictly necessary and, when possible, tricking your enemies into killing one another?
Because my skill-set really only covers the first three. Well, and the last one. For the others I’d have to recruit some people.
I understand the reasoning there, but doesn’t it presuppose that the motives of believers are unworthy? I hardly think that fair. One could easily be an unbeliever AND so horrified by suffering that one would feel compelled to alleviate it, regardless of the mitzah. Yes?
In the Baha’i faith, we believe that attaining the presence of God is a journey; attaining His presence is heaven, it is paradise. Being forever closed off from His presence is hell. In order to attain paradise, we must be like perfect mirrors, flawlessly reflecting the attributes of God. Obviously, none of us can be perfect in this world.
We begin the journey in this world, perfect what we can while we’re here. Once we die, we continue to work on it. Some folks are further along this path at the time of death than others.
Atheists may have more work to do in the next world than theists, but I’d guess this isn’t always the case. In fact, I’d bet it’s not. Fred Phelps is a theist, but he’s all about hate, while God is all about love. It’s not for me to judge, but I’d guess that Phelps is going to have a much longer journey in the next world than my atheist husband will, because my husband, regardless of his religious beliefs, acts and makes decisions from a position of empathy, caring and love.
Voted a combo of these options:
the same as (4), except theists & deists don’t get to exist after bodily death either.
reincarnates them as as many time as it takes for them to learn better.
Something else.
God doesn’t deal with you in a sense different from the way gravity deals with you. There is the way things are, and there exists either a good understanding of that, which enables you to take how things are into account, and there exists consequences and outcomes for all actions and plans and whatnot.
Afterlife is a misnomer since the survival of the self beyond the individual death is not something that occurs in the same linear chronology as the individual life lived.
To understand things and encode that understanding using nontheological terms is no worse for the individual than understanding and using theological terms to describe that understanding. To lack sufficient understanding, on the other hand, can cause life to be hellish to varying extents.
“Mitzvah” is probably closer to the standard English transliteration. (Not being a dick, I hope - this stuff is legitimately tricky).
I don’t think Maimonides would agree that the charity of a believer is less worthy simply because he believes, in some vague sense, that there may be a reward in the afterlife. Maimonides was a deeply practical thinker most of the time - I expect he’d say something like, “Well, sure, the believer may expect a benefit from his charity in some sense. But in some sense, we always expect a benefit from charity, right? If nothing else, it makes us feel better about ourselves as people. There’s no such thing as absolutely pure selflessness - I’m just suggesting it may be a praiseworthy thing to try for. No need to go nuts over this. And for that matter, even charity given with expectation of some reward is still a mitzvah, and well worth doing. If you’re going to build a public library, but really want it named after you - eh, go for it. Helping people is good.”
You’re not being a dick; I mispelled it.
I tend to think that God would be understanding of those who don’t believe in him- it seems kind of petty to think that the presence or absence of a certain type of belief is a prerequisite for the afterlife. I don’t think God draws distinctions between atheists, Muslims, animists, etc… in terms of their beliefs. I don’t think we’re required to believe a certain way, and not believing is grounds for punishment.
Rather, I think that we’re all expected to behave a certain way. The evangelicals’ insistence that “you can only be saved if you accept Christ, etc…” is a sort of shorthand for saying that if you truly do that, you’ll more or less act the right way by default, because truly accepting would imply that you get it.
Also, I’m not convinced at all that hell’s necessarily eternal. I tend to think that Lewis’ “Great Divorce” or Niven/Pournelle’s “Inferno” got closer than most ways of conceiving of it. Everybody can go to heaven, but some need some time to think about what they did and realize why and how it was bad and be truly contrite, etc… Some of us do it before we die, some do it after, and it takes some longer than others.