Posted on 12/16/2008 10:31:38 AM PST by Michael Eden
I believe that no individual is capable, on their own, of acheiving the perfection that is necessary to attain entrance into heaven. Whether that means "go to hell," in the sense that you mean, is a different story. The Bible speaks of hell as merely the absence from God, and that we suffer because of that.
No one tried to mislead me and their explanations are completely parallel with what you said.
Then you should be more careful with what you are saying. It's not the non-belief in God that prevents a person from being admitted into Heaven; it is their failure to either lead a life free of sin or to repent. I'm not sure if you are consciously or unconsciously putting up a view of Christianity that is Bible-School simplistic, but it doesn't do anyone any favors in these types of discussions.
Do you believe that all devout Hindus go to hell?
Assuming they haven't accepted Christ, yes. And I'm frankly a bit puzzled as to what's so awful about this. God has appeared and offered humanity everything for nothing. There are some people that choose not to accept this offer, but that, of course, does not mean that it is an unfair one.
I agree with that completely. But I would assert, and I think those two religions would agree with me, that the very act of being separated from God is, in and of itself, the punishment of Hell.
As far as Jehovah's Witnesses, I usually don't answer the door, so I have no idea. :-)
It is very much worth printing, and keeping on your computer. I hope it blesses you as much as it has me!””
I was blessed from day 1, just to be alive and now knowing what lies ahead. I must say it took me a few decades to open my eyes, but as a life scientist of 35 years, it soon became apparent to me that such an incredibly complex system as is human life could never exist without the perfect plan. A few arrogant humans think that only they can create and what must they start with, but a plan. There is no industrial process without a plan, and who created such a simple plan, but another human. But who made the plans for the human?? We are not merely self aware packages of chemicals. The entire universe is a precision machine the complexity of which humans have barely scratched the surface of understanding.
You said:
I hate to quote Sagan because I know he gets a reaction around here, but “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
I don’t recall the names, but a famous atheist of long ago had dinner with another famous personage of the day. The atheist noted a beautiful metal model of the solar system, complete with working gears, that actually rotated according to the science of the day. The atheist remarked, “This is incredible. Who made it?” And his host remarked, “Why, no one. It just happened.”
The idea that everything came from nothing; the idea that order came from chaos; the idea that mind evolved from mindlessness; the idea that rationality arose from irrationality; etc. etc. is itself so incredibly extraordinary that it too clearly demands extraordinary evidence.
You said:
Even when I was a Christian I was unable to believe such a thing, and yes, I think it would be awful if true.
You were never a Christian.
Btw, NO ONE talked more about hell than Jesus. If there WEREN’T a hell, He really didn’t need to bother to come here and suffer and die for the sins of mankind.
When you say:
After all, the emphasis today is on a ‘personal’ god, so we’re really dealing with millions of different deities here, since every person has their own belief of what god is
You don’t really believe some of the garbage you are saying, do you? When some people believed in a round earth, and others in a flat earth, did that mean the earth had no shape? God is who He is in His essence, and He is who He is regardless of what people think about him. Furthermore, orthodox Christians are in very substantial agreement as to who God is. As the song goes, “Yes, Jesus loves me, the Bible told me so.”
Put crassly, just because a whole bunch of people might come to the conclusion that you are a complete idiot doesn’t necessarily mean you are one, does it? Obviously, you are what you are regardless of what people might think about you - particularly if you are the Creator of the Universe, and therefore by definition the Ultimate Reality.
Quite a good essay.
When it comes to God and the unknown, yes, I believe we could both be right, or wrong.
You said:
Because it is more desirable, for perfectly obvious and worldly reasons, to live in a civilization.
Let me put it this way:
Who the hell do you think you are to foist your “civilization morality” on Somali pirates, Islamic terrorists, anarchists, any of the thousands of criminal gangs, drug smugglers, and pedophilia rings? Who are YOU to say what should be “moral” and what shouldn’t be? How - based on atheism - do you condemn any of these people? They are living according to the moral standards of their communities when they engage in behaviors that shock others. They are living according to their values. And of their behaviors - which clearly work against what we call “civilization” - based on WHAT moral tenant of atheism do you condemn them?
By WHAT scientific experiment did you conclude that there is something called “good” and “evil,” or that one particular behavior should be classified as “good” and another thing as “evil”? Did you see it under the slide of a microscope? How did you find it? Do you not realize that your own statement - “or in any of a thousand different brand names for the same old thing” - clearly implies that there ISN’T any “right” way or “good” way?
We are talking about survival of the fittest, here. The Chief tenant of evolution. Do you dispute that mankind has broken down into competitive groups struggling over natural resources? Why shouldn’t we kill all our enemies before they kill us? Why shouldn’t I steal whenever I think I can get away with it? Why should I - because maybe unlike you I’m not a herd animal but have individual awareness - give a DAMN about “civilization” or care about anything beyond myself? And if I don’t, then who the hell are YOU as an atheist to condemn me for it?
And Darwinism clearly implies social Darwinism. The rich SHOULD crush the poor; the powerful SHOULD stomp on the weak. Might DOES make right. Let us realize that every atheist government has been the most totalitarian and the most oppressive in the history of the world for damn good reason: they began to live out the moral implications of atheism. Communists murdered well over 100 million of their own people in peacetime simply because they weren’t good enough “communists.”
When Darwinism is defined as the survival of the fittest, where the “fittest” are defined as those individuals that leave the most offspring, RAPE is “moral.”
Please don’t be so smug as to take the morality that virtually everyone acknowledges derived from religious life, and then use the existence of that religion-based-morality to claim that we don’t need religion. That is simply asinine to the extreme.
Mighty fine rant.
I never read the books (I DID see the movies). But I recall an article I came across that described a self-centered man who apparently appeared as a character in the book but did not make it into the films.
He regarded Aslan - and everything else - with fear and distrust when the children responded to them with love and trust.
You have one paragraph:
“One person was from a far away place and had been taught not to follow Aslan but to follow Tash, who it turns out was evil and cruel. This man showed integrity and nobility in his lifelong support of Tash. Aslan told him that his virtue, like all virtue, was in Aslan’s name, whether he knew it or not.”
That also goes to the idea I routinely hear from atheists: that atheism can account for morally good behavior. My answer is, no it can’t, if it is taken to its logical conclusion. But the image of God is in the wicked, even as it is in the good. It is due to that image of God in us that God holds us morally accountable and judges the good and the wicked alike. If the capacity for good did not exist in us, God would have no more right to judge us than we would have to put tigers on trial for killing goats.
You said:
Mighty fine rant.
I bring a soap box and a bull horn with me everywhere I go, just in case the opportunity to launch into a rant presents itself :)
You said:
I must say it took me a few decades to open my eyes, but as a life scientist of 35 years, it soon became apparent to me that such an incredibly complex system as is human life could never exist without the perfect plan.
I remember meeting a woman from China. She had been a microbiologist, and a good party atheist. Then one day, she said, she was looking through her microscope at biological cells. They were moving around. But one or two died while she was looking. And she realized that there was no chemical difference between the living cells and the dead cells. She realized that life had to be a matter beyond simple chemistry.
That simple realization discombobulated her. She began to believe in God. She fled China, and started a whole new life. All because of a dead cell seen under a microscope!
Assuming they haven't accepted Christ, yes. And I'm frankly a bit puzzled as to what's so awful about this.
It's comforting to know that you are most likely a reasonable person, who wouldn't normally support the genocide of so many souls, and that only religion could make you believe something so ghastly.
Another reason I'm glad I'm no longer a partaker in superstition and religion.
Mentioned a few salient points that have often crossed my mind.
You completely misunderstand here; I'm not asking you to believe in anything. However, I also ask that you not try and treat the inability to prove a negative as proof for a positive.
Two Sioux were sitting on a hill looking at the coming rainstorm and one Sioux asked the other what caused the lightning. The other replied, "I don't know".
The fact that he didn't have an answer didn't mean that there wasn't one. Now, we know what causes lightning, and to jump ahead and say that it must be supernatural would be premature and fallacious.
I can't prove that Zeus doesn't exist. I can't prove that Mithras wasn't mankind's savior. I can't disprove the existence of the Great Juju or your kid's imaginary friend.
But please don't presume that the inability to deductively prove how the human mind evolved (interesting choice of words on your part) or where humanity attained rationality doesn't necessitate mysticism or the supernatural.
You mean the people doing what God told them to do?
Game. Set. Match.
Well, then, since a devout Hindu has given the Christian God nothing, he gets everything.
The structure of the human body is good enough to work, obviously, but ask anyone who's needed to get an appendectomy or hang upside-down to get a sinus to drain whether it's "perfect".
And if you died before then, or even after then but in some part of the world that just hadn't gotten the word yet, well, I guess it sucks to be you....
You're right. I wish it had not taken 28 years for me to figure that out.
I don't understand these Obama-type Christians who say that there's "many paths to the same place".
If that's the case, where is the incentive to believe in Christ? If simply being a good person can get you into heaven, why go through the motions and difficulties of being a Christian?
Btw, NO ONE talked more about hell than Jesus. If there WEREN’T a hell, He really didn’t need to bother to come here and suffer and die for the sins of mankind.
Once again, you're exactly right.
In the Old Testament, once you died, god was done with you. Whether you happened to be an unfortunate kid on the wrong side of the Israelites killed because you belonged to the wrong tribe, or if you happened to be killed in one of god's many natural genocides, he was done with you once you expired. There was no eternal suffering for the dead, and the only thing close to it that was inferred was Sheol, which was more like Hades; an underworld for the righteous and unrighteous alike.
It took the prince of peace in the New Testament to bring about the wonderful concept of eternal suffering and torture for the dead who did not accept the messiah.
You don’t really believe some of the garbage you are saying, do you?
If you want garbage, I suggest you scroll up to post #81, where one of your fellow Christians says that he doesn't understand why eternal damnation for people who don't happen to follow your particular religion is such a bad thing and is "frankly a bit puzzled as to what's so awful about this."
I take heart in the fact that only religion can make people who are normally of good repute believe such things.
Obviously, you are what you are regardless of what people might think about you - particularly if you are the Creator of the Universe, and therefore by definition the Ultimate Reality.
Exactly right. The creator of the universe exists or does not exist. Input from the minds of man makes no difference.
What's incredible is that you believe that your personal god, out of the millions of personal gods out there, out of the thousands of religions that mankind follows, is the exact right one. AND, you're willing to bet your eternal soul on it.
That seems like an awfully hubristic roll of the dice.
Unless you realize that dice is just a game.
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