Lets Drop Religion + A Question About Hell

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10-31-2006, 08:21 PM
Hard as Nails

First of all, I am an staunch atheist. The idea of a supernatural being looking down on me is just unreasonable. Anyway, am i going to hell just because i am an atheist?

For the most part I follow the teachings of the bible, probably more than the majority of Christians (although i cannot say for sure). The bible tells me that if i follow its teachings, i will be a \"good\" person.

So, if i am a good person, then why would god damn me? If god exists, he must be an understanding being. He must know that my religious struggle has been well thought out, and that i have come to a reasonable conclusion that there is not a supernatural. Would god honestly be that jealous and damn me just because i dont acknowledge him? If he does, then he is a hypocrite. He would go against his own policy of forgiving sinners.

So what i say is that we drop religion. No more of it. No more gatherings (for worshiping purposes). Sure, we should get together, but not to recite tired verses and prayers. Religion holds us back. Religion promotes racism and exclusion. So by my logic, if we tear down the boundaries of religion then we would be a better planet. We could just treat the bible as a book of guidelines, not something to be taken seriously or literally. Btw those stories are worthless. Why does learning about the raising of Lazarus help us be better people? By focusing attention on these 2000+ year old stories, we are living in the past, without translating the messages of the bible to fit TODAY\'S needs. It is not the same world.

So, if we follow the teachings of the bible/koran, then we will be good people. God will not damn us, and religious exclusion will dissapear. We would be good without all the senseless BS that current religion puts out. I mean come ON!! Have you ever been to a Catholic Mass? Everybody is like zombies as they repeat 1000 year old prayers and doctrines in a monotonus tone. They treat life like just living is a sin.

Life is beautiful. Life is the only thing we know for sure. Heaven and hell are remote possibilities, which cannot be proven. So why waste your life being preoccupied with another life that might not even exist? I say we should make the best of what we have (life), and be good people. That way, if we find out God DOES exist, we still will get into heaven without sacrificing our time on earth.

So, what do you think........
10-31-2006, 08:36 PM
Bonsay

I think that the biblical god doesn't exist, or maby he does exist and he will send me to hell for being the way he made me. So if that is true god really isn't all powerfull, he is just we could say playing a big video game involving little video people because he is bored. That's how I see it. You can try and convert me into thinking differently.
10-31-2006, 08:49 PM
Keeper

okay, Hard as Nails, It doesn't matter how "good" you are.

as the saying goes, Good deeds dont get you to heaven, and the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

secondly, the concept of an eternal, burning hell is (as far as I know) unscriptural. I have yet to see a single piece of scripture wich says that there is a "hell"

of course, there might be, but I havn't found it.
10-31-2006, 09:45 PM
dreammask

Quote:

Originally Posted by Keeper

okay, Hard as Nails, It doesn't matter how "good" you are.

as the saying goes, Good deeds dont get you to heaven, and the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

secondly, the concept of an eternal, burning hell is (as far as I know) unscriptural. I have yet to see a single piece of scripture wich says that there is a "hell"

of course, there might be, but I havn't found it.
[/b]

:|
Dude... get a concordance and look up "hell." You could also try "damnation," "fire," and others.

I don't get you sometimes... you push your particular Christian beliefs as absolutely true, but you don't even know the basics of the book you're supposedly backing. Where do you get all of your beliefs if you don't know what the Bible says about such simple things as heaven and hell?
10-31-2006, 10:14 PM
Hard as Nails

ah yes, those who blindly follow a 2000 page book without having ever studied it. The one true sign of a common Christian.

Dude, hell is mentioned various times in that book. Although our depiction of hell only comes from the very fictional book of Revelations and what early christians made up, it is definatley mentioned.
11-01-2006, 12:28 AM
Amethyst Star

Moved to R/S.

I believe that there is a Hell, but I don't think that it is just a burning pit. Sure flames are mentioned, but overall it is a place of suffering, which may be no more than a separation from God.

I just want to post a question. It can be just rhetorical or you can answer. What is good? How do you define a good person?
11-01-2006, 08:07 AM
FluBB

well.... actually in the bible it says

There is only one God, and Christ Jesus is the only one who can bring us to God (1 Timothy 2:5).

i dont really read the bible that much, i am a mormon so i have another book of scripture that i could quote from but i dont think any of you would care or even humor a conversation. so this is basically saying that through faith in jesus christ alone can save you. regardless of how "good" of a life you lead. and yeah i dont really understand a "good" life. good in your own definitions? because that could get really squewed and crazy. god is merciful but if you live life how you want thinking that god will just let you into heaven your wrong. you have to have faith in christ. you have to repent of your sins because that is what separates us from god.

hell really has a couple of different definitions based on what religion. mormonisms hell is just separation from god (we have a whole set of places that people go after death, but the only suffering that i can see is separation from god). the nordic hell is portrayed as a cold climate where you basically freeze to death, and the usual christian hell is you basically burning alive forever or something like that.

you said that by following the bible/koran everyone would be happy and stuff.... well if you truely do follow them it says "if ye love me keep my commandments"... so wouldnt you not believing in jesus christ totally contradict the teaching of the bible... you are really confusing.
11-01-2006, 10:02 AM
Keeper

Alright ... tell me where in scripture "hell" is mentioned, Hard and mask. Tell me what it says about hell? Oh, and use strong numbers and tell me one very famous statment about hell.
11-01-2006, 08:01 PM
Hard as Nails

Great. This just makes me hate Christianity even more. So let me get this straight. You could kill a million people with a nuke, and all you have to do is have faith in Christ? I\'m sorry, but if that\'s true, God is a hypocrit and an asshole.

Christianity is about selfishness. It\'s not about the good you do for other people. It\'s about you looking good in the eyes of god. The same with the other end of the spectrum. It doesnt matter how much suffering you cause to other people. Your fate would still be the center of God\'s attention.

Sins are sins because they harm others. Its not about the you, the one who commits the sin, and the purity of your soul. Christians still havent figured that out. They take terms of heaven and hell in a selfish manner. This is why some Christians here would think that raping a woman in a lucid dream would be a sin. Since it doesnt harm others, it is not a sin. Great. Now i gotta go make a topic on this.
11-01-2006, 08:33 PM
Keeper

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hard

Sins are sins because they harm others. Its not about the you, the one who commits the sin, and the purity of your soul. Christians still havent figured that out. They take terms of heaven and hell in a selfish manner. This is why some Christians here would think that raping a woman in a lucid dream would be a sin. Since it doesnt harm others, it is not a sin. Great. Now i gotta go make a topic on this.
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that is what I have been tought my hole Christian life.

Jesus came for the sick, not the healthy, and not for the people who "have it all together". He spent His whole life with the outcasts and the "cursed". The people who had it all together, living pious lives hated Jesus for this. So, no, its not about the purity of the soul, but of the love God has for You, Nails.

Now, as I mentioned in your sins thread, a sin is as much if not more so in the desire to perform the action as the action itself. And some sins do hurt you, as well. Sexual sin is mentioned as one of them.

The Bible doen't condone beleivers killing people, so you cant say that a True Believer droped the nuke. Anyone who does that is not a Beleiver as far as I am conserned.

Stop generalizing on the actions of those who "say" that beleive, but dont. Learn what the Truth is.
11-01-2006, 09:05 PM
Hard as Nails

thats exactly what i\'m getting at! Many christians hide behind the shield of Christ and commit atrocities. It happens all the time.

God has love for me, huh? Well, next time i pray i will be sure to thank him for his gifts of cancer and body odor.

What a truely loving guy.
11-01-2006, 09:29 PM
Ne-yo

Quote:

Originally Posted by dreammask

:|
Dude... get a concordance and look up "hell." You could also try "damnation," "fire," and others.

I don't get you sometimes... you push your particular Christian beliefs as absolutely true, but you don't even know the basics of the book you're supposedly backing. Where do you get all of your beliefs if you don't know what the Bible says about such simple things as heaven and hell?
[/b]

Please get real, You're saying he should search and look up hell, damnation and fire on the internet to get reliable sources that hell is a real place? Why would you believe in it? You're not even Christianand why would you care? So why try to relate contridiction toward his interpertation of the bible and what he determines as hell. Becuase i'm going to tell you something, this firey tormenting place that's been referenced of so much and not from the Bible is fabricated. So you mean to tell me that you believe everything you search for on the internet and it holds 100% of truth, please tell me you are kidding dreammask, please tell me you are not that Navie. I've read the bible and what is mentioned of hell, and maybe you just cannot understand what you're reading but I know clearly what I've seen and I don't recall seeing a scripture indicating a place where people go to get tormented and set ablaze or anything of that nature. If you need help understanding just ask, and I would be happy explain what you seem to not understand. There is nothing wrong with asking for help :goodjob2:

Quote:

Originally Posted by dreammask

thats exactly what i\'m getting at! Many christians hide behind the shield of Christ and commit atrocities. It happens all the time.

God has love for me, huh? Well, next time i pray i will be sure to thank him for his gifts of cancer and body odor.

What a truely loving guy.
[/b]

And whats wrong with you? Why are you blaming GOD?
11-01-2006, 10:53 PM
Hard as Nails

Im not blaming GOD. Im just pointing out that the loving, caring, forgiving Christian god is an improbability. If god exists, he could have just left these things out of our world. Instead, we suffer. Such a being is not worth my time or praise.

O yea. Dreammask is a Christian (from what i can tell)
11-01-2006, 11:35 PM
dreammask

Nails, I'm not a Christian.. by any stretch of the word. I just spent my childhood being completely devoted to it. I believe in the existence of divine beings, but my understanding doesn't fit very well with Christian concepts... and Christianity is too contradictory for me to follow anyhow. I try to find things that make sense to me, and because Christianity as a whole doesn't make much sense to me, I don't go for it.

Keeper, I'm not going to go look through YOUR holy book to find things for you. If you really care, you can take the time to look it up yourself. I have no real need to educate you on your own religion.

Ne-Yo, I didn't say anything at all indicating that Keeper should look up hell online. I said he should get a concordance and look up "hell," "damnation," etc. A concordance is a book that lists all places where a particular word shows up in a book... so a concordance of the Bible would basically have every word that occurs in the Bible along with a reference to where it can be found. He could very easily look up "hell" and get the scriptures that use the word. Sometimes you have to use the different words like "damnation," "fiery pit," or whatever else you can think of to find the most references, but it's not a difficult process. I think any Christian who wants to be able to use the Bible scripture to back up what he/she is saying should have a concordance and use it often.

I've also read the Bible, smarty-pants, and that certainly doesn't make you or me an expert.

I also didn't say anything about what hell is supposed to be. I simply stated that Keeper should look at a concordance to see what the Bible really does say about hell because he said the Bible doesn't talk about hell AT ALL. That seems a little off to me, so I thought he should go double check his claim.

Do I really care about what, exactly, the Bible has to say about hell? No, not particularly... I'm not a Christian, find the concept of hell rather ridiculous, and don't feel a need to know for the benefit of anyone else, so no, I don't really care. I also don't feel the desire to go through the entire Bible, focusing on Revelations, and coming up with every possible reference to hell, then using it to discuss what hell would really be like... I don't believe in it.. the discussion is pretty futile to me.
11-02-2006, 04:59 AM
FluBB

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hard

Great. This just makes me hate Christianity even more. So let me get this straight. You could kill a million people with a nuke, and all you have to do is have faith in Christ? I\'m sorry, but if that\'s true, God is a hypocrit and an asshole.

Christianity is about selfishness. It\'s not about the good you do for other people. It\'s about you looking good in the eyes of god. The same with the other end of the spectrum. It doesnt matter how much suffering you cause to other people. Your fate would still be the center of God\'s attention.

Sins are sins because they harm others. Its not about the you, the one who commits the sin, and the purity of your soul. Christians still havent figured that out. They take terms of heaven and hell in a selfish manner. This is why some Christians here would think that raping a woman in a lucid dream would be a sin. Since it doesnt harm others, it is not a sin. Great. Now i gotta go make a topic on this.
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alright first off, you should definitley research the subject your arguing before blurting things out. there are unforgivable sins such as murder. so no, if you did not have to kill someone and you did, then theres no way for you to repent. this is because you have taken someones chance at life to get back to heavenly father.

and as for christianity being selfish... in 1 Thessalonians 3:12 it reads "And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you:" do you sense anything that is selfish about that? it also says in 1 Peter 1:22 "Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently:" there are a lot more but i dont think i have to give any more examples to prove that its not about selfishness it is about charity... as it reads in Colossians 3:14 "And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness." need i say more?

you said that "Your fate would still be the center of God\'s attention." gods attention is not on one person, he sees all of his children as equal and pays attention to them all equally.

whether or not you believe in keeping your religious views in lucid dreaming is personal to him or her. i think that raping a woman in a lucid dream is just like doing it in real life, you have complete control and you want it to happen so you are actually doing it. but thats personal so i dont really care either way i suppose.
11-02-2006, 07:41 AM
Keeper

Okay, mask, you made a statment that there is a firy hell, so the burdon of truth is on you, not me. In order to proove there isn't a hell I would have to post the whole Bible, but all you have to do is get a concordance and look it up.

but, if you want me to give you some backround on why I dont think there is a hell, I'll post this link: I dont think he has goten everythink right though

oh, and it also explains some other questions that have been asked, but remember, dont take his word for it. look it up yourselves, and test the scriptures as we are told to do, for God doesn't want blind faith.
11-02-2006, 06:21 PM
Hard as Nails

flubb, i was a catholic for 13 years. I fully understand church doctrine.

Referring to the bible is pointless. Times have changed, and many of those scriptures are irrevelant. Plus, Christians themselves have changed. Into a selfish nature. How does chruch (not the bible) teach you not to sin? By teaching you about hell and damnation from a young age. Unfortunately, this image of an inferno puts children in constant fear of such a place. I know. I went through it too. The result is obedience by fear and not principle. Christianity doesnt teach you WHY you shouldnt sin, only what happens if you do....

look, i dont think this is some conspiracy to keep Christians obedient to the Chruch. Its just the sad nature of focusing on irrevelant times and scriptures. And when i say \"selfish\", I dont mean you want heaven for yourself or anything like that. Its just NOT sinning for purposes of the afterlife. Heaven is a good motive!! If i truely believed that i could go to complete paradise for eternity, i would definately follow to bible. Hell is also a deterrant. Burning in a pit for eternity kinda turned me off to sinning. But now, i dont have all that BS on my shoulders. I never question my morality or the consquences of my morality. It feels kinda free, knowing there isnt some big eye in the sky watching your every move. You should try it out.
11-02-2006, 06:42 PM
YourImaginaryFriend

some quotes I enjoy:

Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever. -Sam Harris (From "The End of Faith" pg.19)

"Religions are all alike — founded upon fables and mythologies." -Thomas Jefferson

"This would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it." - John Adams

"When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion." -Abraham Lincoln

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." Steven Weinberg

"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." Albert Einstein

"In the entire history of man, no one has ever been brainwashed and realized, or believed, that he had been brainwashed. Those who have been brainwashed will usually passionately defend their manipulators, claiming they have simply been "shown the light" ...or have been transformed in miraculous ways." -Dick Sutphen

"Now, now, my good man, this is no time for making enemies." -Voltaire, on his deathbed, to a priest asking that he renounce Satan

"Hell is an outrage on humanity. When you tell me that your deity made you in his image, I reply that he must have been very ugly." Victor Hugo

I'm sure my views on the subject are obvious. :evil:
11-02-2006, 06:57 PM
Keeper

you could say that
11-03-2006, 03:07 AM
FluBB

Quote:

Originally Posted by YourImaginaryFriend

"Hell is an outrage on humanity. When you tell me that your deity made you in his image, I reply that he must have been very ugly." Victor Hugo

I'm sure my views on the subject are obvious. :evil:
[/b]

haha i love that quote... wow. i see a bunch of peoples views... but i dont see yours. and hard as nails i didnt mean any disrespect when i said you should research the subject... i thought you were like a 13 year old kid who didnt know what he was talking about, so sorry about that.

its hard for me to really argue on this type of christianity because i was brought up in a branch of christianity that talks about the love and forgiveness of christ rather then the hell fire and all that gibberish. we were arguing the wrong religion haha. and i also think quoting the bible is pointless, you never know if it was translated correctly, i only quoted it because i thought it was something we both kinda new. so you are saying that the chruch is correct and righteous and the people are not? that is similar with many christian churches today. and what church were you talking about when you said... "How does chruch (not the bible) teach you not to sin?" well my church teaches to follow the commandments of god, and thats basically it. but then again the commandments of god are from the prophet and any other preisthood holder.. aye tough life.