What does the majority in this country have to do with the argument? The majority in India and China are not Christian, and that’s nearly half the population of the world right there.
No mention of the American mainstream anywhere in it.
Sauron was the devil.
Erek
If you don’t believe in gods and afterlives, why did you have a care to characterize God and furthermore to contradict Erek’s own personal characterization? Seems like you are spiteful about it.
And what’s this about the mainstream God being male? I don’t get that bit. I can look back to the original monotheistic [or monolatrist even] God and I can show you texts which postulate god is no gender, both genders, and every gender else.
So if you don’t believe in any of it, where are you getting your information/opinions?
Because the subject came up in a thread about the afterlife. :rolleyes:
That is hardly “mainstream”; I’d be surprised if less than 90% of Judeo-Christian believers consider their god male.
How can I not be exposed to religion in a country as infested with it as America ? I learned about it in self defense.
I choose C. Mindwipe & reincarnation. Which is the apparent reality from a physicalist standpoint.
I think after a couple of hundred years really anyone would want to go to nothingness, I mean hell can you imagine living F-O-R-E-V-E-R!!!
Yeah, I sure can. If it’s in heaven, a place of total happiness and fulfilment, sign me up!
Damn you Rickjay for single-handedly unraveling my whole argument! :mad:
Actually, Jehovah’s Witnesses believe unrepentant sinners will be annihilated, not condemned to burn in hell for all eternity (as the OP’s dichotomy specifies). And while the JW’s believe Heaven will indeed be full up with 144,000 celestial V.I.P.'s, everyone else who hasn’t rejected God and been vaporized in the lake of fire will get to live forever in an Earthly Paradise.
Also Luke 16:19-31.
If you are a Christian you are told that you are but dust and to dust you shall return, I read that in the Bible. So in a sense yes,you are dust.
Monavis
[Talking Heads]
Heaven
Heaven is a place
A place where nothing
Nothing ever happens
[/Talking Heads]
In heaven there is no beer, that’s why we drink it here.
I’m not sure that anyone can choose whether to believe something or not. People believe and disbelieve things for lots of reasons, but I don’t think that personal choice comes into it; you can choose whether or not to go to a particular church, or whether or not to make some statement of faith, but I would say that belief of itself is a much more subconscious thing.
Speaking personally, I believe I’m going to Hell. I know I shouldn’t believe that, but I can’t help myself.
I find some of the posts in this thread to be highly dubious. No one would choose nothingness over a form of existence where you would at least be able to move around and do mostly what you choose. Especially not just because you have personal animosity towards the Christian god. This is sort of like the “big talk” I felt was going on in the thread where someone claimed they’d take death over losing a hand.
As it is, there’s a lot of supposition here about heaven when heaven isn’t very laid out in the bible. For example Anaamika’s ideal of a happy afterlife could eaisly happen under the Christian concept of heaven.l
Speak for yourself. 
Hamlet certainly would - “'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished”. And, from my own fandom, Mírel chose that option. I appreciate that some people may find the idea of oblivion to be horrific, to be worse than any torment that the traditional Hell may have to offer, but this is by no means a universal belief.
To counter some of the things Der Trihs has said, if there is an all powerful and all knowing God, this God is well beyond labels like “egomaniac.” This god is also beyond any sort of gender definitions, or any of the labels or characterizations that even the most devout worshipers want to ascribe to the divine.
If you want to hate God you have to work within the context of the religion. And to work within the context of the Christian religion it’s impossible to logically hate god, because God is a being beyond comprehension so any attempts to levy judgement upon this God-being are completely fruitless.
Yes, you can judge Sauron as a character. But to be logical you have to judge him within the contexts of the book. Is he good or bad in that fictional world? It’s obvious he’s bad and does things that are universally seen as wrong, Tolkien doesn’t really employ shades of grey, even Sauron knows he’s evil and he’s not too unhappy about it.
You can attempt to do the same with the Christian god, but to do it logically you have to work within the constraints of the religion. And within those constraints to call God a monster is not logical and in fact just proves how fallible you are.
Míriel, sorry.
Hamlet isn’t real, or even remotely similar to any real people. IN fact almost none of Shakespeare’s characters have anything in common with real people, they’re overblown and epic figures, not human beings.
I didn’t say everyone finds oblivion horrific. I think many just accept oblivion will come eventually, and have accepted that. Some accept that oblivion is going to come and embrace it (perhaps because their lives are unpleasant.) But I’m saying if you die and there are two doors, one door offers a form of existence free from physical handicap/pain and the other door offers oblivion, almost no matter what conditions are put on the first door no one will choose the door to oblivion over it.
I put the “physical handicap/pain” option in there because I do think that certain forms of physical existence are tantamount to being in oblivion anyways.
I agree that it might be contradictory for a Christian to describe God as “evil”, but surely that doesn’t apply to everyone. You yourself agree that there are things that are “universally seen as wrong”, rather than merely being “wrong” by the (arbitary) definitions of a particular religion. What’s wrong with a disinterested party assessing the Christian God by these universal standards, and finding Him to be evil?
I would. Remember that not everyone thinks and feels and believes in the same way that you do.