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Is Hell Real ?

harrylittle

I saw a few vids on u tube of near death experiences about hell and it spooked the daylights out of me.

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Zerbini Blewitt

I’m unsure about sin.
I mean activities that people here on Earth enjoy – e.g. taking mind altering substances or taking sex to the next level etc.

nozzferrahhtoo

Zerbini Blewitt wrote: »

I’m unsure about sin.
I mean activities that people here on Earth enjoy – e.g. taking mind altering substances or taking sex to the next level etc.

I think morality is a discourse between everyone in a given relationship. Between couples or between everyone in a society.

"Good" and "Bad" are the place holder terms we use to differentiate between things conducive, and not, to the well being of that relationship and people in it.

And with them there is a conversation to be had. You can look at the reality and the data and make substantive claims about why we are calling the bad stuff bad, and the good stuff good.

"Sin" is just "bad" relabeled in a situation where the speaker does not HAVE those substantive arguments to make. Just their own agenda and bias. And the only move they can make to support their claim "something is bad" is to rubber stamp it with the opinion of a powerful agent who's existence they wish us merely to assume. And who's opinion we should pretend in a democracy is more important than ours.

Franz Von Peppercorn

qwadb78ejp260i wrote: »

How do you mean, anything thy want? Do you mean sin? Because if you do, you will not enter Heaven in the first place.

So is the present Pope hellbound? You seem to think he is misleading the church.

Franz Von Peppercorn

qwadb78ejp260i wrote: »

Jesus said "I, am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me".

This contradicts your previous statement that moral people who don’t know Christ will go to heaven.

oldrnwisr

King Mob wrote: »

*Lights the Oldrnwisr signal to see what he thinks about this claim.*

You rang?

antiskeptic wrote: »

To save time, how far have you followed the stock answer to find it wanting such that this becomes a favorite of yours. You say Joseph wasn't Jesus' father, when in fact he was, legally.

That means there is a legal lineage running back from Jesus. I take it the stock answer for the point of that also doesn't satisfy?

antiskeptic wrote: »

"Matthew traces the genealogy of Jesus from Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation, through David, the King of Judah to whom God made the Davidic covenant. This shows Jesus in the line of Abraham and David, but Matthew does not say that Jesus is the actual son of Joseph—only that he is in the Messianic line through Joseph. By implication, he is the legal son of Joseph by adoption."

Legal reasons thus.

Well, here's the thing.

Matthew's objective in listing a genealogy for Jesus isn't to establish a legal inheritance through Jospeh but a familial connection. One of the recurring themes of Matthew's gospel is the idea that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. The objective in listing a genealogy for Jesus is to have Jesus descend from the house of David as stated in Jeremiah 23:5

“Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “When I will raise up for David a righteous Branch; And He will reign as king and act wisely And do justice and righteousness in the land."

There are however, several problems with Matthew's genealogy.

Firstly, Matthew doesn't actually know Jesus' lineage or interact with any primary source capable of relating the lineage of Jesus. Instead Matthew borrows the one from 1 Chronicles 3:5-19. However, Matthew leaves 4 names out of the Chronicles list without any direct explanation (Ahaziah, Joash, Amaziah and Jehoiakim). Presumably, Matthew's reason for doing this is to make the list fit within his miraculous numerology:

Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah.
Matthew 1:17

However, there are in fact only 41 names on Matthew's list not 42. Either way, Matthew's list is not reliable.

Secondly, as stated above one of the recurring themes in Matthew is portraying Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. To this end he misquotes, misapplies and fabricates prophecies from the Old Testament to make it look as if Jesus' coming had been foretold. He misreads Micah 5:2 by having Jesus born in Bethlehem, he misreads and misquotes Isaiah 7:14 thus creating the farcical notion of a virgin birth, he misunderstands Hebrew parallelisms in Zechariah 9:9 when he describes Jesus' entry into Jerusalem in 21:7 and finally he outright fabricates a prophecy in Chapter 2:13-23.
Matthew's downfall in this objective is that as much as he tries to distort the OT for his own ends, he can't run away from the fact that Jesus isn't the Messiah. The characteristics of the Messiah are detailed throughout the Old Testament and Jesus fails at almost all of them.
It is, for example, stated that the Messiah would be knowledgeable and observant of the Old Testament laws as outlined in Isaiah 11:2-5. While Jesus was certainly knowledgeable, observant he wasn't. He violates the dietary laws in Mark 7:18-19, the Sabbath law in Matthew 12:3-5, the commandment to honour your father and mother in Matthew 12:46-50 and the circumcision law in John 7:22-24.
The Messiah's political prowess is also documented in several places. In Isaiah 11:11-12, Hosea 3:4-5 and Jeremiah 23:7-8 and 30:3 it is stated that the Messiah will reunite the Jews in Israel and restore Jerusalem. In Isaiah 2:2-4, 11:10 and 42:1, it is stated that the Messiah would create a single world government in Israel. Furthermore, despite the Christian claims about Jesus' body as a temple, the Old Testament makes it clear that the Messiah would rebuild a physical temple in Jerusalem and resume sacrifices in it (Jeremiah 33:17-18, Ezekiel 37:27-28 and Malachi 3:3-4). Jesus never accomplishes any of this and his death runs counter to the idea of the Messiah as a combined spiritual and political leader ushering Jerusalem into a new era of peace.
Speaking of peace, the arrival of the Messiah is supposed to herald the beginning of the Messianic age, accompanied by a number of signs. These include an era of perpetual peace (Isaiah 2:4), predators and prey will coexist peacefully (Isaiah 11:6), the entire human race worshipping Yahweh (Zechariah 14:9) and following all his laws (Ezekiel 37:24). None of these, obviously, came to pass, then or at any time since.

Finally, the only other person in the NT capable of verifying Matthew's genealogy doesn't. Luke's genealogy disagrees with Matthew at every name except five (David, Shealtiel, Zerubbabel, Joseph and Jesus). It contains 57 names versus Matthew's 41. It traces the genealogy through Nathan rather than Solomon contrary to 2 Samuel 7 and 1 Chronicles 22.

The point here is that Matthew's genealogy is rather pointless. It is part of an objective to establish Jesus as the Messiah, which he isn't (per the criteria in the OT). It distorts its source material for the sake of some numerological significance and it is directly contradicted by the only other author to list a genealogy for Jesus. It has no independent verification.

In truth, we don't really know what Jesus' father might have been called. He's not mentioned in the earliest gospel, Mark, nor in any of the Pauline epistles. There's no reason to suspect that either of the genealogies listed for Jesus is remotely credible given the factual mistakes, contradictions, plagiarism and other problems present in the gospels.

oldrnwisr

qwadb78ejp260i wrote: »

I'm warning you that it's not fiction. Every word of the holy Bible is true. It is the Word of God. Please pay attention to what I say. Before it is too late, and you are overcome by the darkness. By then it will be too late.

I don't suppose you have any evidence for this? Or are we supposed to just take your word for it?

robindch

qwadb78ejp260i wrote: »

Have you never heard about Jesus Christ and how he alleviated pain and suffering?

If he were omnibenificent why would he create pain? And if he were omnipotent, why wouldn't he stop it.

There are clear and simple answers to both of these questions.

robindch

qwadb78ejp260i wrote: »

Goodbye.

RichieO wrote: »

Preferable to PMS, which seems to be your problem...

Folks - none of that cattery, please.

dr.fuzzenstein

qwadb78ejp260i wrote: »

How do you mean, anything thy want? Do you mean sin? Because if you do, you will not enter Heaven in the first place.

Hah, again, don't be so sure.

odin.jpg?w=532&h=589

edit:
Putting on my agnostic hat, if there is a God, in my view he/she/it created the laws of physics, created a singularity and flicked the switch for it to go boom.
From then on the universe was pretty much left alone, because I don't see much or any meddling by any deity.
It is entirely irrelevant anyway, because religion was created by humans. Absolutely no evidence or even indications of any divine intervention.
It is simply a method of controlling people.
There is no hell and even if there was, there is absolutely no point whatsoever to eternal damnation.
I reject the notion of that as the Church equivalent of the bogeyman.

harrylittle

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

From then on the universe was pretty much left alone, because I don't see much or any meddling by any deity.

On the contrary one could argue that most of history has being medaled with from the rise and fall of empires, the outcome of wars ect

pauldla

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Why not?

Do you think walking on water, raising the dead, turning water into wine, a guy stuck in a tomb for three days was resurrected, etc. actually happened? Harry Potter has as much if not more relation to reality than the gospels do. They're not even consistent with each other, never mind the historical record of the period. They are fiction constructed long after the 'fact' was supposed to have taken place.

A collection of fictions, perhaps, but not fiction in the same sense as Harry Potter is fiction. There may be some grain of truth in there somewhere. For example, Hitchens observed that the Bethlehem narrative is so contrived that it might actually point towards a real person. Of course at this stage we'll probably never know.

dr.fuzzenstein

But it is fiction nevertheless.
One could just as well base a religion on Star Trek, since (to my mind anyway) it may be set in space, but (TOS and TNG at least) are almost always stories that deal with conflict, morality, ethics, valor and honor.
It would make for a vastly superior religion in any case without suggestions that eating shellfish should be punishable by death or that it is a mortal sin to wear 2 different kinds of fabric and other such assorted nonsense and hogwash.
It definitely makes more sense than stories told by drunk shepherds 2 to 3000 years ago.

It would definitely have an awesome God:

kirk.jpg?quality=100&w=650&h=400

Come to the Dork Side!

Avatar MIA

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

But it is fiction nevertheless.
One could just as well base a religion on Star Trek, since (to my mind anyway) it may be set in space, but (TOS and TNG at least) are almost always stories that deal with conflict, morality, ethics, valor and honor.
It would make for a vastly superior religion in any case without suggestions that eating shellfish should be punishable by death or that it is a mortal sin to wear 2 different kinds of fabric and other such assorted nonsense and hogwash.
It definitely makes more sense than stories told by drunk shepherds 2 to 3000 years ago.

It would definitely have an awesome God:

Come to the Dork Side!

L Ron Hubbard beat you too it.

Just goes to show how gullible/stupid/desperate (delete as appropriate) people can be.

dr.fuzzenstein

Avatar MIA wrote: »

L Ron Hubbard beat you too it.

Just goes to show how gullible/stupid/desperate (delete as appropriate) people can be.

Why can't people at least use good fiction when starting their religion?
I guess the more muddled and confused, the easier it is to interpret it in a way that suits your interest.

RichieO

I don't think the shepherds were drunk, but quite possibly found some magic mushrooms and were stoned, come to think about it, the bible does mention people being stoned often, maybe all religions start with magic mush?

oldrnwisr

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

The gospels are fiction.

pauldla wrote: »

I wouldn’t call them fiction. Gobbledygook that veers from the insipid to the truly bizarre, with the odd pseudo-profundity thrown in, perhaps, but not fiction.

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Why not?

Do you think walking on water, raising the dead, turning water into wine, a guy stuck in a tomb for three days was resurrected, etc. actually happened? Harry Potter has as much if not more relation to reality than the gospels do. They're not even consistent with each other, never mind the historical record of the period. They are fiction constructed long after the 'fact' was supposed to have taken place.

pauldla wrote: »

A collection of fictions, perhaps, but not fiction in the same sense as Harry Potter is fiction. There may be some grain of truth in there somewhere. For example, Hitchens observed that the Bethlehem narrative is so contrived that it might actually point towards a real person. Of course at this stage we'll probably never know.

If I might intervene here for a second.

The gospels are indeed fiction insofar as they are deliberately fictitious works, novels or meta-parables. This idea isn't new and has been documented by several academics, most notably The Power of Parable by JD Crossan.
However, declaring the gospels as fiction could be misleading on its own since it could give the impression that all of the gospels were written as a single body of fiction for the same purpose like Joseph Atwill's notion about Jesus. In reality, each of the gospel writers writes a differently themed novel based around the central premise.
Mark is the core novel with each subsequent gospel being a kind of reboot of Mark's original work. It's clear from the other NT works and Mark itself that nothing like it had existed previously. The Pauline epistles offer no significant biographical information and Mark makes no reference to any earlier story from which he derives the Jesus tale. Mark's story is a mash-up of a number of characters and stories to create a Hellenistic Jewish action hero. There are influences from Moses and Elijah, Psalms, Homer and even Josephus' Jewish War. The individual vignettes that form the Markan narrative can each be unpicked and deconstructed to show how they are mythical.
For example, in Mark 15:6-15 we see the story of Barabbas:

"Now it was the custom at the festival to release a prisoner whom the people requested. A man called Barabbas was in prison with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the uprising. The crowd came up and asked Pilate to do for them what he usually did. “Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?” asked Pilate, knowing it was out of self-interest that the chief priests had handed Jesus over to him. But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have Pilate release Barabbas instead. “What shall I do, then, with the one you call the king of the Jews?” Pilate asked them. “Crucify him!” they shouted. “Why? What crime has he committed?” asked Pilate. But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify him!” Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified."

There are several problems in taking this story at face value. Firstly, it goes against the portrait of Pilate recounted by other historians as a ruthless and merciless governor. Secondly, there is no record of any such Roman custom outside the Bible. Thirdly, and most importantly, the whole ritual bears an uncanny resemblance to this:

"Then he is to take the two goats and present them before the Lord at the entrance to the tent of meeting. He is to cast lots for the two goats—one lot for the Lord and the other for the scapegoat. Aaron shall bring the goat whose lot falls to the Lord and sacrifice it for a sin offering. But the goat chosen by lot as the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the Lord to be used for making atonement by sending it into the wilderness as a scapegoat."

This passage from Leviticus 16 sheds light on the meaning of the Barabbas story. Firstly, Barabbas translates as "the son of the father", the same term which was also applied to Jesus. The implication here is that Jesus is to become the ultimate atonement sacrifice, a way to merge Passover and Yom Kippur by having Jesus be an atonement sacrifice at passover.

With all of the stories in Mark, we can either deconstruct them individually or as part of a larger meta-reference such that there is no substrate of history in the gospel. Each subsequent author (or authors in the case of John) reboots the Markan narrative for their own ends. Matthew's gospel carries a distinctly pro-Jewish sentiment and a recurring theme of Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. Luke's gospel borrows from Josephus and sets itself up as a tool for early Christians to answer their critics, presenting itself as a carefully researched history (but failing badly). Finally, John is a pastiche work, the effort of a number of authors. Just like the Penateuch, John seems to be derived from a number of sources which are no longer extant. In the places where John and the synoptics overlap, John seems to act as an anti-Mark, where Mark downplays Jesus' divinity, John embellishes it.

I used to think that the gospels were novels like Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, taking a real person and building up a fictional story around them. Now, I'm not so sure. It's possible that there was a real character, possibly named Jesus whose story was embellished but the gospel Jesus didn't exist as portrayed. It is possible that the entire Jesus story was invented as a de-novo myth too. Myths like John Frum, Tom Navy and Ned Ludd all developed in roughly the same time gap as between Jesus' ostensible death and the release of Mark's gospel. Right now, it's hard to come down on one side of the fence between a mythical Jesus and the minimalist historical Jesus.

In conclusion, it's fine to say the gospels are fiction but you really need to add a qualifier to say (in the words of Ben Goldacre) it's a bit more complicated than that.

RichieO wrote: »

I don't think the shepherds were drunk, but quite possibly found some magic mushrooms and were stoned, come to think about it, the bible does mention people being stoned often, maybe all religions start with magic mush?

Well, maybe not magic mushrooms. But it does get easier to imagine how Moses heard the voice of God when he happened across a burning bush when you consider that this is a country where hemp and poppies grow wild.

pauldla

^^^^^^

That's what I was trying to say, but sometimes me no words good. Oldrnwisr can words super good.

harrylittle

RichieO wrote: »

I don't think the shepherds were drunk, but quite possibly found some magic mushrooms and were stoned, come to think about it, the bible does mention people being stoned often, maybe all religions start with magic mush?

You have got that the wrong way round ... drugs open up portals to demons ... why do you think so many drug users become addicted lives fall apart ... become mental recks , homeless ... because they become infested with demons

Pherekydes

harrylittle wrote: »

You have got that the wrong way round ... drugs open up portals to demons ... why do you think so many drug users become addicted lives fall apart ... become mental recks , homeless ... because they become infested with demons

Thread has jumped the shark. :eek:

Which drugs are we talking about? Caffeine? Alcohol? Morphine?

Avatar MIA

harrylittle wrote: »

You have got that the wrong way round ... drugs open up portals to demons ... why do you think so many drug users become addicted lives fall apart ... become mental recks , homeless ... because they become infested with demons

Chemical addiction.

If I give up chocolate I become really grumpy, can you tell me which demon I can blame, the blighter!

ouxbbkqtswdfaw

oldrnwisr wrote:

There are several problems in taking this story at face value. Firstly, it goes against the portrait of Pilate recounted by other historians as a ruthless and merciless governor. Secondly, there is no record of any such Roman custom outside the Bible. Thirdly, and most importantly, the whole ritual bears an uncanny resemblance to this:

Pilate was a ruthless and merciless governor. He sentenced Christ to death, despite knowing that He was innocent.

ouxbbkqtswdfaw

Believe me, hell exists, and you don't want to go there.

ouxbbkqtswdfaw

dr.fuzzenstein wrote:

But it is fiction nevertheless. One could just as well base a religion on Star Trek, since (to my mind anyway) it may be set in space, but (TOS and TNG at least) are almost always stories that deal with conflict, morality, ethics, valor and honor. It would make for a vastly superior religion in any case without suggestions that eating shellfish should be punishable by death or that it is a mortal sin to wear 2 different kinds of fabric and other such assorted nonsense and hogwash. It definitely makes more sense than stories told by drunk shepherds 2 to 3000 years ago.

All the bible is God's Word. You don't believe in miracles, therefore you don't believe in God.

[Deleted User]

qwadb78ejp260i wrote: »

All the bible is God's Word. You don't believe in miracles, therefore you don't believe in God.

Can you provide an example of a miracle that you can show for a fact was caused by god/magic?

Avatar MIA

qwadb78ejp260i wrote: »

Believe me, hell exists, and you don't want to go there.

Why would we believe you?

nozzferrahhtoo

Avatar MIA wrote: »

Why would we believe you?

Because he has said it twice now, while ignoring replies.

And everyone knows saying nonsense twice, while ignoring replies, makes it truer.

oldrnwisr

qwadb78ejp260i wrote: »

Pilate was a ruthless and merciless governor. He sentenced Christ to death, despite knowing that He was innocent.

Well, no. In Mark's gospel Pilate is repeatedly depicted as doing his best to let Jesus go:

"So again Pilate asked him, “Aren’t you going to answer? See how many things they are accusing you of.”

“Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?”

“Crucify him!” they shouted.
“Why? What crime has he committed?” asked Pilate.

Finally, in verse 15, the true motive of Pilate in the gospels is revealed:

" Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified."

The gospels depict Pilate as a weak ruler, fearful of the Jews who only hands Jesus over to be crucified as an act of appeasement. This is contrary to the portrait of Pilate established by historians such as Josephus. Contrast Pilate's appeasement of the crowd in Mark with his ruthless treatment of them in Antiquities Book 18:

"But Pilate undertook to bring a current of water to Jerusalem, and did it with the sacred money, and derived the origin of the stream from the distance of two hundred furlongs. However, the Jews were not pleased with what had been done about this water; and many ten thousands of the people got together, and made a clamor against him, and insisted that he should leave off that design. Some of them also used reproaches, and abused the man, as crowds of such people usually do. So he habited a great number of his soldiers in their habit, who carried daggers under their garments, and sent them to a place where they might surround them. So he bid the Jews himself go away; but they boldly casting reproaches upon him, he gave the soldiers that signal which had been beforehand agreed on; who laid upon them much greater blows than Pilate had commanded them, and equally punished those that were tumultuous, and those that were not; nor did they spare them in the least: and since the people were unarmed, and were caught by men prepared for what they were about, there were a great number of them slain by this means, and others of them ran away wounded. And thus an end was put to this sedition."

The depiction of Pilate in the story as well as the invention of a Roman custom (actually a Jewish custom) is just one of the many reasons why the gospels are not reliable accounts.

Anyway, any time you feel like providing that evidence for the truth of the Bible that I asked you for, I'll be here.

RichieO

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Because he has said it twice now, while ignoring replies.

And everyone knows saying nonsense twice, while ignoring replies, makes it truer.

According to the trump it's thrice repeated makes it true....:cool:

Effects

qwadb78ejp260i wrote: »

Believe me, hell exists, and you don't want to go there.

You ramble like a crazy person in most of your posts, who's going to believe someone like you?

Professor Moriarty

qwadb78ejp260i wrote: »

Believe me, hell exists, and you don't want to go there.

Have you been?