Posted on 09/26/2010 2:35:35 PM PDT by NYer
While there is abundant evidence for God in the universe, there is no evidence whatsoever for Satan or Hell or any other such devilish things until the human mind begins to abstract - and make-up - information from its environment.
What would constitute evidence of hell in your mind?
Thank you! Will read it tomorrow.
Even if some views of hell differ from my tradition, the main points are - God exists, you break His rules, you’re responsible, and He gives every soul the great gift of free will. The human life is a short precious chance to use that free will in the only way we can please Him and be truly happy ourselves. If we do not, suffering is inevitable, both here and after the death of the body.
I have no idea how God works it just to know that he does.
For everyone:
Guess which word is in the Bible more than heaven?
Realize that you are searching for
under the earth
netherworld
Gehenna
Sheol
etc.
as well as
hell
when you do this search.
Are you surprised?
But God is a just God as well as a loving God.
Brimstone means sulphur, which was used to purify in that period. There is mention of God’s fire likened unto a fire which refines metal, burning impurities, and of souls surviving, but only as one who has been through fire. The duration is not forever, it is “aeonian”, which has been translated as “eternal”, “an indefinite amount of time”, “an age”, and even “world”. Not having a Semitic understanding, it is difficult for us to fully understand clearly the meanings in the original contexts. Rest assured that fear is only the beginning of understanding God, but perfect love casts out all fear.
For God to give us fallible human beings the ability to “choose” a never-ending future being spiritually burned alive, would make Him like a parent of a newborn baby who puts a loaded pistol in the crib with the baby. He just isn’t going to do it, contrary to what mistranslated and misunderstood “scripture” has been twisted to mean. The hand of man taints everything it touches, including Bible translations and “teachings”. The Pharisees thought they understood scripture too.
I was merely summarizing what a portrayal of God as “I love you unconditionally, but if you don’t choose to love me I’ll burn you in hell forever” makes him out to be: a schizophrenic two headed monster. This false belief is the source of a lot of mental illness, and makes a horrific crime like murdering your children before they reach the “age of accountability” (another non-scriptural tradition of man), a perfectly logical and reasonable action.
If that is true, everyone should go to hell. And they will if they don’t use the “out” that God provided: His Son on the Cross.
No, but reincarnation solves that problem. And it doesn't even have to invoke "living again." Do you "live again" when you wake up in the morning? In a way yes, in a way no. Likewise, some people could use a heavy does of Divine torture, because that's the only communication they choose to heed. As long as the punishment fits the crime (meaning however many thousands or more years of hell necessary), where's the moral objection?
People make their own hell,creating another one would be redundant.
No I don’t believe God is going to create another hell because people are wracked with guilt or act like human beings towards one another.
Cypher isn’t going to run it either because he has greater and bigger plans.And no you can’t run it either because it doesn’t exist.
And how does whqt he say specificially differ from the scripture?
NYer fixed it for you
Let me start at the beginning: I am pretty sure there was a creator in the beginning, anything after that is speculation. The universe cannot mathematically exist and is far too complicated to be a random chance creation without some outside force acting upon it. It seems fairly obvious if you do basic homework that all this was made, by someone or something.
Anything after that statement is conjecture, that’s faith. Anything the major religions say after that is just their word against yours with no evidence leaning one way or another. I zero in on Christianity, because that is my upbringing, I can’t speak for anything else.
Basically what you and the author of this article are asking me to do is accept blackmail. Basically, clean his room to his near impossible to meet standards or he is going to let someone else blow my brains out, not out of anger, but because I chose not to clean his room and that is the consequences of not picking up his socks. What benefit is it for me to perform such meaningless chores, just for the sake a promise to be allowed to clean his room, cook his meals, worship him just the way he likes for all eternity? A promise backed up by no facts whatsoever, just the word of people dead thousands of years?
Who in their right mind would be happy being not even a wife, more like a maid, hired help? We get room and board and we’re supposed to be grateful for this because the alternative is a painful death at the hands of the vicious biker gang waiting outside? It’s not that much of a choice you and your ilk seem to be offering here. Eternal slavery or horrific death. Some people are happy just scrubbing floors and toilets, but most would not be satisfied with mindless servitude to a seemingly absent landlord that does nothing to maintain the property, but nonetheless demands full rent paid on time or face eviction. meanwhile the plumbing is backed up, the wiring is shoddy and the heat does not function properly with the promise that someday, after your dead you can live in a perfect house, where you can cook and clean for him in a mansion instead of a shack.
I do not believe in the notion of a god that knows me intimately, and wants me to be happy, because I see not a shred of evidence, in fact I see more and more quite the opposite; and I reject the idea that any god that were such a being would lay down a “worship me or die” ultimatum on anyone. It strikes me as insecure at the least, very non divine of a supreme being. Calling that free will is like demanding I choose a bullet or jumping off a building and calling that free will. It’s preposterous on it’s face because neither choice in my opinion is acceptable.
It strikes me like the behavior of a bully, I do not respond to threats from bullies, even wrapped in good intentions and white cloth.
I go to church looking for god, he aint there I feel nothing tug on my heart or move me in any meaningful way. I keep giving him a message to call me at my home. He has yet to return my calls. I am thinking about 2 or 3 thousand years of people doing the same thing with no results, that perhaps one could conclude that the number has been disconnected, or moved without leaving a forwarding address. But, we’re continually told, with a straight face that god is there and listening and is the only thing that keeps the devil at bey, and if we do not buy into this completely, we die a horrific death; without any proof whatsoever. After a few hundred generations, credibility wears thin.
I don’t need much in a god, but showing up on CNN every few hundred years or so telling us to turn down the stereo would be nice. Sending your little sister do it for him has no credibility with me. She could well be making the whole thing up for her own gain. Why should I take her word for it?
Well, two brief things:
Is your freedom compromised by gravity? “Don’t jump off this balcony or die.” It seems to me that if God were to say, “Whatever you do will make no difference,” there would be no meaning to freedom.
The other is: what if God has no other option? (That is a glib and imprecise way of restating the whole monotheism part of my previous post.) You can choose to drink OR be thirsty. In the normal course, you cannot choose to quench your thirst and not drink, or to drink and remain thirsty.
Is it an intolerable infringement on liberty to say that to refuse all potables IS to refuse the quenching of thirst?
I propose: Ultimately, without God there is no life. It’s not an arbitrary rule. He IS life. Rejection of Him is identical with rejection of life.
As for your prayers for revelation not being granted, why, He sent ME to you! - ;-)
Maybe later I will be able to respond to your other points.
Freedom is the ability and the will to always choose the good. the ability to walk in the image of perfection.
Rather you seem more interested in license, the ability to do what ever you choose how ever you choose with out fear of reprisal or consequence.
Let me ask you is a train the most free when it is running down the tracks or when it has jumped the tracks?
Satan as modern invision is a modern invention; horns, tail, pitchfork, etc.
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