A recent commentor has suggested that there is no hell since for nonbelievers (or those who just sin), there simply is no afterlife, that an afterlife is a reward for belief and obeying. So in light of this idea, I have the first of my questions:
If there's something you'd like to do which would bring you happiness without harming anyone else, and if you indulged that desire, then you'll not have an afterlife but if you don't indulge, you'll be rewarded with an eternal life where you still will never be able to experience that happiness, which would you choose, a finite life experiencing your greatest happiness, or an eternal one without it?
Now I'll grant that the above belief is not one that's widely held. I think all religions which have something to say about an afterlife include some sort of penalty for those in that afterlife for failure to believe and obey. Milder opinions on the matter suggest that your afterlife just won't be as good as those who did believe and obey. The otherworldly types might suggest being on the outside looking in on heaven, or being reincarnated as something crappy. In light of this model, let me then ask:
Is experiencing your greatest happiness worth a 2nd rate afterlife?
Again, I don't think most subscribe to that last model either. No, I think most subscribe to some sort of hellish penalty for nonbelief and disobedience, one that generally will be an eternal punishment (some subscribe to the idea that after you've paid your due, you'll get let in to the heavenly afterlife). So then:
Is a potentially eternal punishment worth experiencing your greatest happiness?
Finally, I'd like to present Nietzsche's famous question about a potential afterlife:
If a being came to you at the end of your days and told you that your afterlife would be perpetually reliving your life, would you gnash your teeth in anger and horror or would you smile with delight?
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f a being came to you at the end of your days and told you that your afterlife would be perpetually reliving your life, would you gnash your teeth in anger and horror or would you smile with delight?
At this point, I would run away screaming madly. I ruined most of this life by following religious regulations.
I hope my next 50 years will be much happier.
I don't know why it is that Christians think Hell is some kind of a non-Christian concept when in fact Jesus himself talks about eternal hellfire in numerous locations of the New Testament, well, other than to say that Christians are complete idiots and don't know what the Bible actually really says.
I'm not quite as negative about my Christian past as Lorena is about hers, but I wouldn't want to live the same life over and over again, like a lame version of Groundhog Day. What would be the point of a do-over?
The point is for you to question the life you've lived. Was it regrettable, or worthy of celebration? If contemplating the possibility of Nietzsche's afterlife makes you miserable, then perhaps you should make some changes today to how you're living your life.
Btw, I was thinking more Slaughterhouse Five than Groundhog Day.
My wife absolutely hated Groundhog Day. For those of you who are familiar with my wife, you can perhaps guess why.
What I loved about it was that while life really is Groundhog Day, it's up to you what to do with the day. You can lay in bed and stare at the ceiling. You can trudge out and step off the curb and into the same puddle, or you can do something just a little different....
It's what most atheists claim over and over - we make our own meaning. I guess some of us just don't really believe it. Neitzche got it.
Well, I'd have to say my life has been a mixed bag. Of course, I regret buying into the evangelical Christian shit for so long. And I feel like I wasted a lot of my life on bullshit. Still, I have a great family that I likely would not have if I'd lived any other life. If I could take the family without the religious stuff, I'd go for it, but I don't think that's an option. I certainly prefer the live I'm living now to the one I had before - I'd live that part of it again.
I remember seeing a cartoon made up of several panels, the first an infant, then toddler, all the way up to old man. In the last frame, the old man says, "Well, THAT sucked".
What I would do confronted with a loop of my life is just shrug. It was what it was, good and bad.
My wife who is a church going methodist, and my cousin in law and great friend who is a methodist minister have both been told that they shouldn't have married ungodly men. We won't get to heaven.
Both of these women have asked how can heaven be, well, heaven if your loved one is not there?
They get some very strange answers. Each one more bizarre than the last.
Hi, Lorena! Still mad at me?
*Waving, blowing kisses*
Chief: Answers to questions...
1. If it doesn't harm you or anyone else, it's fine. No issue, there.
2. See # One.
3. See #'s One and Two.
4. That would be Hinduism. They're wrong. End of story.
Quiff: The scripture you're referring to is allegorical. The context of scripture overwhelmingly supports the fact that "The soul that sinneth, shall die." If you're dead, you're dead. Again... end of story.
Sarge: The only one keeping you from salvation is you.
Quiffy:
Read these:
Job 7:9,10
Ecclesiates 9:5-10
Psalm 146:4
Acts 2:32-34
Psalm 115: 17,18
John 5:28,29 The whole point of the second coming... to claim the righteous dead, and destroy the wicked. (Revelation 21:8) If everyone were in Heaven or hell, already, what would be the point of a second advent or final judgment???
Revelation 20:7-9
There is only one statement (vs. 10) that seems to infer eternal torment. There are many of the opinion that it is a description of the eternal results of the destroying fire of vs. 9.
Only a pagan god would roast his subjects for eternity, and that is where the concept comes from - pagan Rome... along with idol worship, Transubstantiation, Sun-day worship, (1st day of the week, as opposed to God's seventh day sabbath) veneration of dead saints, rosary beads, Purgatory, and a host of other blasphemous bullshit traditions picked up from their pagan friends by Constantine.
So, you see, all of you are programmed in the pagan way of things, and, naturally, you despise this pseudo-Christianity, when it is nowhere near what true Christianity is all about.
Another better word for it than allegorical is mythical Gideon. Genesis and the Gospels are mythical, every bit as much as the Greek and Roman stories were mythical, and pretty much every religious story is mythical too.
As far as I'm concerned, Gideon, the Bible is largely inconsistent. Jesus seems to describe hell as eternal hellfire, but that doesn't necessarily mean that any of the other authors of the other biblical books came to any sort of concensus on the afterlife. In fact, there is more description of what hell is like in the bible than what heaven is like, although it doesn't really matter since both places are mythical. Hell is often thought to be the underworld, probably observed from seeing volcanoes, and satan being unleashed was probably a devistating volcanic event. As for heaven, can anybody say hallucinogenics? Seriously, anybody who sees angels trumpeting in the skies above is hallucinating on magic mushrooms found in the cowdung of a manger. Moses was also hallucinating on magic mushrooms found in the fresh cowdew on the ground too, which perfectly well explains the hallucinations found in Exodus.
In other words, no matter what the evidence, you're not buying it, right, Quiff?
That's fine.
People used to think the Earth was flat, and that going over 30 mph would make it impossible to breathe, too.
I'm still working on the notion that matter came from absolutely nothing, without help... and that Grandpa was a gibbon, myself.
How's that for Fantasy Disco, Baby?
Gideon, whence did God come? Perhaps the Big Bang was God blowing himself up or something, however I find that distasteful on scientific merits.
It is true there are things that scientists are only beginning to understand. My idea is to hold out for more experiments with supercolliders until there is a consistent theory about what matter is fundamentally made of. It seems justifiable to myself that nature has always been and will always be, however the best theories at current are largely incomplete as are the worst theories too.
Gideon
What a stroke of luck. I think you might have mislaid your Bible because I spotted it in my hotel room a few months ago.
Heather... was Quiff with you?
Seriously, though... Quiff, God has always been. Now, I know that just irks finite minds no end, but, the idea that matter just always existed, (that's what most atheists throw at me) isn't any better, and that's the one you subscribe to, if you're an atheist like you say.
Just because you don't have an answer for things, doesn't mean there isn't one... and perhaps not the one that you'd like.
Gideon, I have to give you some credit. You are actually *partly* right.
Just because you don't know the answer, doesn't mean there isn't one.
The difference between you and me is that I'm OK with there not presently being certain answers and in the knowledge that someday science might provide them, as it has provided the only answers to anything we feel very confident about.
You, OTOH, are not content with this. So you accept the fabricated, unsubstantiated answers from guys who, frankly, couldn't hold your intellectual jock-strap. Nor could they hold mine.
John-O, you, too, are partly right. I don't like mysteries, and there is only one mystery that I can tolerate: God's being.
Did you ever think that maybe, just maybe, some answers might lay outside of science?
Absolutely! I *have* thought that. But it never occurred to me that if the question lays beyond all of the powers of human reasoning, that I should then turn to Gideon - who just happens to have the *right* answers! Does it ever occur to you that you are being quite arrogant to assume you have those particular answers?
Actually, buying into a god just adds to your list of mysteries. You could lay everything at its feet as their cause, but you still have the mysteries of understanding them and now on top of that you have new mysteries of "why" that you wouldn't otherwise have, on top of the whole god thing itself.
No, believing in a god creates more questions than not believing.
And what's this talking point of "finite minds"? It seems to be used almost exclusively in religious circles but hardly at all elsewhere. I think because just makes for a nice platform to pile on bunk like finite minds couldn't possibly comprehend the infinite, which is absurd. Of course we can, and do, but then of course that's because this being gave us the ability to do so. Blah, blah, bullshit. It's a circle jerk of nonsense.
"Does it ever occur to you that you are being quite arrogant to assume you have those particular answers?"
LOL! What's wrong with having answers? Isn't there enough fucking uncertainty in the world? Do we have to be stumbling around like blind fools, all our lives, to be acceptable to those that have grown accustomed to it?
I have the "right" answers, because, I wasn't satisfied with what the 'experts' TOLD me was fact. My own life experience has taught me that the majority are usually wrong on practically everything, including religion, and, especially, science. I won't apologize for having found the truth ahead of others. I see myself as greatly privileged, though!
"Actually, buying into a god just adds to your list of mysteries."
Perhaps, Chief. But, there were far more mysteries cleared up over my discovering the gospel. First and foremost; the mystery of why our leaders and teachers lie to us so regularly, and with seeming impunity. Turns out that they, the adept, anyway, serve their own god... Satan. You can believe it or not, but, you give me a better answer not written in rhetorical bullshit, and I'll consider it.
Also, it's pointless trying to understand the Almighty in every facet of His being... actually, THEIR being. Do you know everything? Can you read people's minds, foretell the future? If you can't, you have a finite mind.
The day you create your first living being, nevermind the universe to house him in, then, my friend, you'll have passed into the realm of omniscience.
The greatest mystery to me, outside of God's being, is that of the converted heart, or mind. I've seen those that society had written off after performing every trick known to their science, to try and reprogram them, without success, complete an entire turn-around in their thinking and lives... for no other apparent reason than they read the Word for themselves, and believed it.
You tell me what happened, the 'experts' can't!
LOL! What's wrong with having answers?
Nothing at all, as long as that accurately reflect reality rather than created to give one comfort simply because there is "enough fucking uncertainty in the world".
I can live with a whole lot of uncertainty. I find bullshit answers much more disagreeable, but to each his own, Gideon.
Well, John, you've consistently ignored anything that I've had to offer up to now, so why change, right?
In John's estimation, there are four ways of interpreting anything...
1. John's way.
2. John's way.
3. John's way.
4. All of the above.
No.
as long as [the answers] accurately reflect reality rather than created to give one comfort simply because there is "enough fucking uncertainty in the world".
This applies to me just as it applies to you. It's not about how you or I "interpret" answers. It is *all about* whether they jibe with empirical evidence.
Here's what will have to do in order for me to click on your links:
In your own words, briefly state the nature of your evidence. If it is then worth checking I will.
Look, I can think of several times when I have given you videos or some other material to look at. Maybe you clicked each time. Your responses to them didn't really indicate that you did.
On at least 3 occasions you specified that you had watched up to a certain point (usually quite early on) and then "just had to quit". Think of me like that on yours. I was just bright enough not to click in first place.
Suit yourself, John. It's your skin, not mine.
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