Believers in eternal torment, how does that sit with your own morals? (paradise, Biblical)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The premise of the OP is, as it always is in these discussions, "I and surely you would've done things differently if we were God. Ergo, the God posited by Christians is sub-human, a monster."
The short answer is: God is not human. Humans have no concept of what it means to be an eternal, transcendent, perfectly holy Being.
To ask how the concept of eternal torment squares with my notions of morality is, in essence, a category mistake. It's asking how something that transcends human morality and cannot be grasped by humans squares with human morality. It's like asking a 2-year-old child how her parents' discipline squares with her notions of morality, except that the gap between a perfectly holy transcendent Being and his creatures is far wider than that between a toddler and her parents.
I trust that whatever eternal torment may mean, and whatever the fate of the unsaved will be, we will see and understand that it is worthy of the transcendent, eternal, perfectly holy God in whom we trust.
The corruption of sin might have. God didn't create you or me and plant sin in us. We inherited it from Adam.
Actually, I don't believe that. Creation testifies to the existence of God. Anyone who has an open mind can see that. But Romans 1:18 states "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,"
Ephesians 2:1-3 states "And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind."
The problem is your sin blinds you. The same way my sin blinded me. It's a problem that plagues mankind.
The sin of not believing what you do? Sin is such a copout for you. If I don't see what you see its my sin, if I don't believe what you do its because of my sin, when I look at the strata and fossils in my region and see that they don't align with your Bible it's because I'm blinded by my sin.
If I don't believe there is credible evidence for the existence of any gods why would you think passages in a Bible would have any meanings? You wouldn't accept any passages from the Holy books from other religions as being true would you?
Are you, the person who claims all other religions are lies and false, accusing me of looking at the world with a closed mind?
But you have morally decided that God can punish anyone he wants in any way for any reason. At that it is morally right to punish everyone who doesn't accept your son of God as their saviour because every person is a sinner. Nothing in your Bible can convince me that a young non Christian child dying in Israel, Iran, China or Sudan deserves to be tormented forever for their sins.
Like it or not Genesis is one book that is extremely difficult to accept as true. Your explanation is not really an explanation for how we can inherit sin from an activity done thousands of years ago or much longer ago. Did God change our DNA or our thought processes? You'd think after he killed off everyone but Noah and his family, Adam and Eve disobeying would be erased from our DNA or minds.
I'd like to correct what seems to be a misconception you have. Atheists do not lack a belief in a God because it is something they don't like. We don't dismiss the Bible because it contains things we don't like. Believers may ignore the parts of the Bible they don't like, like the verses telling them how to own others, but that is not the case for atheists.
What's not to like about still existing after I died and seeing my grandparents my dogs and cats again? No it is not like or dislike, it is, is it real or not, true or not, plausible or not. I do not find Genesis plausible or real and certainly doesn't sound true. I've asked or argued with you on this thread and others mostly to flesh out in my mind what you think and believe. I've never been delusional to think I could deconvert you from your religious beliefs, nor do I care to do so. However, I do believe you carry some false beliefs about atheists. Those I do wish to assist in you correcting those where they are incorrect. Like it or not.
This is a very positive post representing your atheism that gives me a very different impression of you than some of our previous interactions, Bad. The major misinterpretations of the Bible stories stem from a failure to realize they represent a record of our spiritual evolution - how we acquired and developed our reason and ability to discriminate good and bad behaviors in response to our built-in indiscriminate selfish survival drives. We all enter this life as completely selfish, self-centered, and survival-driven beings responding to pain and pleasure sensations with avoidance or approach responses.
The Genesis story of Adam and Eve is simply our first lesson in discriminating between good and bad behaviors, period. The idea that it would somehow infect all future generations with an inheritable "original sin" is absolutely preposterous. All of us need to learn that first lesson on our own from our parents and probably feel the same about our parent's motives as that portrayed as God's motive in the story. As adults, we should know better, so why religious leaders have retained that primitive and childish interpretation of our first lesson is beyond me.
Take that up with BaptistFundie then, I was addressing a comment he had made. If Christians are not concerned about my afterlife take it up with him, or the missionaries.
The history of how people who call themselves Christians treat each other is not that pure and wonderful. And much of the Old Testament is not a manual of how to treat others in a proper manner.
Do you believe that I deserve to be tormented for eternity for not accepting Jesus as my saviour? Do Jews, Hindu and Muslim adherents deserve the same fate? That's what this thread is about. Do you think it is moral that regardless of how we treat our fellow humans we the non Christians all deserve the same fate?
I am Catholic. Most Catholics (and some non-Catholics) believe in Purgatory. Personally, I DO believe in Purgatory, which is one of the strongest reasons WHY I am Catholic.
Being in Purgatory is like saying that you're not quite 'bad' enough to deserve hell, but you're not quite 'good' enough to get into heaven. Yet. If you end up in Purgatory, you are guaranteed of heaven, but the question is WHEN. People can be in Purgatory for a very looooooong time, and the time spent there is not fun!
Having said that, you now know where I stand. So to answer your questions:
Quote:
Do you believe that I deserve to be tormented for eternity for not accepting Jesus as my saviour?
I have no idea what you "deserve" since I know nothing about the rest of your life, PLUS, even by venturing a guess about what I think you deserve would be judging you. I'm not about to play God.
Quote:
Do Jews, Hindu and Muslim adherents deserve the same fate?
Even though I am Catholic, I do not believe that only Catholics and/or Christians go to heaven. That also means that I don't believe that all non-Catholics or non-Christians automatically go to hell because they're not Catholic or Christian.
Quote:
Do you think it is moral that regardless of how we treat our fellow humans we the non Christians all deserve the same fate?
What is bolded is what's important. You seem to believe that as long as you treat your fellow human "well", even though you don't believe in God (or Jesus), you "deserve" heaven...and you certainly don't "deserve" hell.
But what does it mean to treat our fellow humans "well"? Some think that as long as they don't rob a bank or rape anyone, they're a 'good' person. They may undress the long-legged beauty with their eyes as she sits in a cafe...while their wife is at home. Or, what about the woman who gets back $10 more than she should have from the clerk, and smiles while thinking, "Oh, well. It's HIS loss that he wasn't paying attention!"? How about taking a condescending attitude toward some people? Or cursing out a homeless woman? Or yelling obscenities at someone because they're taking their "sweet old time" crossing the street in front of your car, while you're in a hurry?
The point is, that there is NO WAY that ANY of us--Christian or non-Christian-- treat our fellow human the way we shouldall the time. It is literally impossible to do so. While you may not think that what I mentioned in the above paragraph is a "big deal", think about how many other ways we may not be treating our fellow human well, and how many times we have done things like this during our life, and how often we've shrugged them off as "not a big deal". Over a lifetime, It adds up.
So, while you may not have robbed a bank, committed adultery, or raped a child, you may have lied through your teeth, had an air of arrogance about you, been stingy with your wealth and less than 'charitable' toward your neighbor. (No, I'm not saying that you in particular are doing these things badlander, but you catch my drift)
Like it or not Genesis is one book that is extremely difficult to accept as true. Your explanation is not really an explanation for how we can inherit sin from an activity done thousands of years ago or much longer ago. Did God change our DNA or our thought processes? You'd think after he killed off everyone but Noah and his family, Adam and Eve disobeying would be erased from our DNA or minds.
I'd like to correct what seems to be a misconception you have. Atheists do not lack a belief in a God because it is something they don't like. We don't dismiss the Bible because it contains things we don't like. Believers may ignore the parts of the Bible they don't like, like the verses telling how to own others, but that is not the case for atheists.
What's not to like about still existing after I died and seeing my grandparents my dogs and cats again? No it is not like or dislike, it is , is it real or not, true or not, plausible or not. I do not find Genesis plausible or real and certainly doesn't sound true. I've asked or argued with you on this thread and others mostly to flesh out in my mind what you think and believe. I've never been delusional to think I could deconvert you from your religious beliefs, nor do I care to do so. However I do believe you carry some false beliefs about atheists. Those I do wish to assist in you correcting those where they are incorrect. Like it or not.
The problem here is that posters like Baptist Fundie can't really grasp that a non-believer is just that -- a non-believer. He/they seem incapable of understanding that there are other belief-systems, or no-belief-systems that seem just as logical to others as his beliefs seem to him. He will keep going back to a book that billions people in the world don't believe it. I doubt very much that BF and his ilk would read the two main Buddhist books of scriptures and just say, "Oh okay, now I believe that". They aren't intellectually bright enough to understand that their beliefs are no better than the beliefs other people have. They're very limited people. I'm not saying they're dumb. I'm saying that they're going through life wearing blinders.
You keep trying to put words in my mouth. It's a sinful nature. Sinners are what human beings are by default.
Quote:
Sin is such a copout for you. If I don't see what you see its my sin, if I don't believe what you do its because of my sin, when I look at the strata and fossils in my region and see that they don't align with your Bible it's because I'm blinded by my sin.
Like if one doesn't believe in gravity they can just jump off a roof and float?
Quote:
If I don't believe there is credible evidence for the existence of any gods why would you think passages in a Bible would have any meanings? You wouldn't accept any passages from the Holy books from other religions as being true would you?
Are you, the person who claims all other religions are lies and false, accusing me of looking at the world with a closed mind?
It's what God has said. You can suppress truth if you wish, but it's still truth. It doesn't care about your feelings. Truth is truth.
Quote:
But you have morally decided that God can punish anyone he wants in any way for any reason. At that it is morally right to punish everyone who doesn't accept your son of God as their saviour because every person is a sinner. Nothing in your Bible can convince me that a young non Christian child dying in Israel, Iran, China or Sudan deserves to be tormented forever for their sins.
He's God. He created this universe from nothing. He can do what he wants with it.
This is a very positive post representing your atheism that gives me a very different impression of you than some of our previous interactions, Bad. The major misinterpretations of the Bible stories stem from a failure to realize they represent a record of our spiritual evolution - how we acquired and developed our reason and ability to discriminate good and bad behaviors in response to our built-in indiscriminate selfish survival drives. We all enter this life as completely selfish, self-centered, and survival-driven beings responding to pain and pleasure sensations with avoidance or approach responses.
The Genesis story of Adam and Eve is simply our first lesson in discriminating between good and bad behaviors, period. The idea that it would somehow infect all future generations with an inheritable "original sin" is absolutely preposterous. All of us need to learn that first lesson on our own from our parents and probably feel the same about our parent's motives as that portrayed as God's motive in the story. As adults, we should know better, so why religious leaders have retained that primitive and childish interpretation of our first lesson is beyond me.
Sorry. I realize you don't have the "mind of Christ", but God told me otherwise. He said that Adam and Eve actually lived, and when Adam sinned he introduced sin to the human race.
Sorry. I realize you don't have the "mind of Christ", but God told me otherwise. He said that Adam and Eve actually lived, and when Adam sinned he introduced sin to the human race.
Ahem, it is YOU who dos not even know what the "mind of Christ" is like since you use the "mind of the Bible" as your guide. You should look within for the Comforter to aid you in seeing the Truth God has "written in our hearts" instead of using the confusing corrupted words "written in ink" in the Bible.
Ahem, it is YOU who dos not even know what the "mind of Christ" is like since you use the "mind of the Bible" as your guide. You should look within for the Comforter to aid you in seeing the Truth God has "written in our hearts" instead of using the confusing corrupted words "written in ink" in the Bible.
That's not what the "mind of Christ" told me. Weird. I'm going to believe Christ over you. Sorry.
I am Catholic. Most Catholics (and some non-Catholics) believe in Purgatory. Personally, I DO believe in Purgatory, which is one of the strongest reasons WHY I am Catholic.
Being in Purgatory is like saying that you're not quite 'bad' enough to deserve hell, but you're not quite 'good' enough to get into heaven. Yet. If you end up in Purgatory, you are guaranteed of heaven, but the question is WHEN. People can be in Purgatory for a very looooooong time, and the time spent there is not fun!
Having said that, you now know where I stand. So to answer your questions:
I have no idea what you "deserve" since I know nothing about the rest of your life, PLUS, even by venturing a guess about what I think you deserve would be judging you. I'm not about to play God.
Even though I am Catholic, I do not believe that only Catholics and/or Christians go to heaven. That also means that I don't believe that all non-Catholics or non-Christians automatically go to hell because they're not Catholic or Christian.
What is bolded is what's important. You seem to believe that as long as you treat your fellow human "well", even though you don't believe in God (or Jesus), you "deserve" heaven...and you certainly don't "deserve" hell.
But what does it mean to treat our fellow humans "well"? Some think that as long as they don't rob a bank or rape anyone, they're a 'good' person. They may undress the long-legged beauty with their eyes as she sits in a cafe...while their wife is at home. Or, what about the woman who gets back $10 more than she should have from the clerk, and smiles while thinking, "Oh, well. It's HIS loss that he wasn't paying attention!"? How about taking a condescending attitude toward some people? Or cursing out a homeless woman? Or yelling obscenities at someone because they're taking their "sweet old time" crossing the street in front of your car, while you're in a hurry?
The point is, that there is NO WAY that ANY of us--Christian or non-Christian-- treat our fellow human the way we shouldall the time. It is literally impossible to do so. While you may not think that what I mentioned in the above paragraph is a "big deal", think about how many other ways we may not be treating our fellow human well, and how many times we have done things like this during our life, and how often we've shrugged them off as "not a big deal". Over a lifetime, It adds up.
So, while you may not have robbed a bank, committed adultery, or raped a child, you may have lied through your teeth, had an air of arrogance about you, been stingy with your wealth and less than 'charitable' toward your neighbor. (No, I'm not saying that you in particular are doing these things badlander, but you catch my drift)
I understand what you believe. Lots of Catholics in Canada, my neighbour, pee wee hockey and baseball coach was the Catholic priest when I was young. Obviously you and BaptistFundie are not identical in your beliefs and that I guess is the reason for so many denominations in most religions.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
