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Arguments against the Afterlife

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  • #32
    MisterEpicurus
    Closed Accounts Posts: 588 ✭✭✭MisterEpicurus


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    Time? In eternity there is no time. Time is a created thing, And so, you need to rework this..

    But if God is infinitely big then how can you get to the 'end' of him. You could have happiness increasing forever. And so, no statis

    Ultimately, I've no problem with folk choosing to be without God (a.k.a. Hell).

    Immoral against whose standard? Not mine. God-given choice is a great thing - even if it means choosing against God

    If we were to discover that the Universe is eternal in the sense that of periodical expansion and contraction then those intervals would certainly contain time as we sense it. It would be difficult to be able to digest a 'timeless eternity', it would make it seem even more banal with the persistent prostration. Even if time were created in the sense of a word for change, then we still experience during what that definition is, regardless of the title we ascribe to it.

    "You could have happiness increasing forever" -- Well, if that makes it comfortable for you to believe, then you can think that. Sounds slightly desperate if I'm going to be totally honest.

    As for the cheap comment that you have no problem if people reject god and depart into Hell, well that must clearly show the inferior morality of some theists in the clearest possible light.

    How is "God-given choice" a choice if it's given...does that not strike you as a major contradiction of terms. In other words, god decides to give us the freedom of choice. However, we are practically threatened to choose one of those 'free options'. If we accept, great, we praise for eternity, if we reject, then we depart into eternal flames. What type of morality is that?


  • #33
    MagicMarker
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 32,865 ✭✭✭✭MagicMarker


    The Quadratic Equation wrote: »
    Indeed, why bother finding out what Christians actually believe when you can pretend what they believe.
    Much more comfy.
    Well considering you all believe different **** it's not worth the effort.


  • #34
    kylith
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,741 ✭✭✭✭kylith


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    Ultimately, I've no problem with folk choosing to be without God (a.k.a. Hell).


    You have no problem with people being tortured and burned for all eternity while you sit on a cloud with JC sipping icy margeritas? With that little caring for your fellow humans I'd imagine that you'll be down in the pit with the rest of us.


  • #35
    dead one
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 1,320 ✭✭✭dead one


    kylith wrote: »
    You have no problem with people being tortured and burned for all eternity while you sit on a cloud with JC sipping icy margeritas? With that little caring for your fellow humans I'd imagine that you'll be down in the pit with the rest of us.
    You don't understand,People are/were being tortured and burned in the name of development/education, in the name of law and order, in the name of blessing; in the name: religion; in the name of the most merciful Christ.


  • #36
    Sonics2k
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,035 ✭✭✭Sonics2k


    That makes no sense at all, and also contradicts what TQE said.

    I love when you guys skip around questions.


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  • #37
    antiskeptic
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,550 ✭✭✭antiskeptic


    MisterEpicurus wrote: »
    If we were to discover that the Universe is eternal in the sense that of periodical expansion and contraction then those intervals would certainly contain time as we sense it.

    That isn't the sense of eternal being utilised though. You're speaking about time never ending backwards or forwards. I'm speaking of no time at all
    It would be difficult to be able to digest a 'timeless eternity', it would make it seem even more banal with the persistent prostration.

    Your projecting into something you have no experience of and so must remain silent in the face of what's possible. What is clear however, is that time based notions (such a boredom) cannot be assumed to apply.


    Even if time were created in the sense of a word for change, then we still experience during what that definition is, regardless of the title we ascribe to it.

    Again, you're speaking too confidently of what you cannot yet know.

    "You could have happiness increasing forever" -- Well, if that makes it comfortable for you to believe, then you can think that. Sounds slightly desperate if I'm going to be totally honest.

    Sounds like the "boredom" strand of your argument has unravelled - if you were actually going to be totally honest.

    As for the cheap comment that you have no problem if people reject god and depart into Hell, well that must clearly show the inferior morality of some theists in the clearest possible light.

    Try to raise your game or we won't be discussing for much longer. This is a discussion forum where the argument is the point. Deal with the argument - not attacking the person.



    How is "God-given choice" a choice if it's given...does that not strike you as a major contradiction of terms. In other words, god decides to give us the freedom of choice. However, we are practically threatened to choose one of those 'free options'. If we accept, great, we praise for eternity, if we reject, then we depart into eternal flames. What type of morality is that?

    You don't believe in God so don't feel threatened with hell in fact. Yet over the course of your life you will make a choice with respect to God.

    I'm not sure what's immoral about sending folk to Hell (where the flames are a figurative description for the intensity of the misery of the people there).

    If folk freely chose to reject existing in the presence of God and existence outside the presence of God is per definition miserable, then what's the problem - morally speaking?


  • #38
    seamus
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 68,173 ✭✭✭✭seamus


    robindch wrote: »
    Without spending very much time on it:
    1. The stories about the afterlife are clearly made up
    2. The Old Testament doesn't say anything about an afterlife
    3. The New Testament afterlife is suspiciously similar to ideas that existed within contemporaneous Ancient Greek lit
    4. People want it to be true

    IMHO, there's very little else to it other than the fear that one is mortal.


  • #39
    antiskeptic
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,550 ✭✭✭antiskeptic


    kylith wrote: »
    You have no problem with people being tortured and burned for all eternity while you sit on a cloud with JC sipping icy margeritas? With that little caring for your fellow humans I'd imagine that you'll be down in the pit with the rest of us.

    Being around God in eternity will have a flavour. Not being around God in eternity will have another flavour. The flavours will be clearly polar opposite. So far so straightforward.

    Each person gets to choose whether to be around God for eternity or not. Them's the options and there is no choice given for options other than that since all other options are but partial versions of the one offered.

    A persons choice won't be affected by whether they happen to be born in a Christian country or not, whether they lived before or after Christ, whether they heard of Christ or the bible or not. Christian, Muslim, Hindu, atheist - all have an equal opportunity. So far so fair


    Those who choose not to be with God get what they choose for - which is fair enough. They won't be with God for eternity. They will exist in an environment containing whatever flavour goes with God's absence.

    That flavour is described as on a par with burning in flames. It's not a nice flavour in other words.

    Not even God can help the flavour of his absence being nasty - not if a pleasant flavour can only be obtained by his presence. Not even God can be present and absent at the same time.


    -


    I've no problem with people choosing to be without God for all eternity in the ultimate sense. Sure, I'd prefer if they choose to be with him. Indeed, I spend time on internet discussion forums trying to tell them (in various ways) to choose for God and take part in outreach in my church for the same reasons. I wouldn't wish hell on my worst enemy if I had one. I wouldn't wish it on Hitler. I can only imagine how horrendous hell would be.

    But if that's a persons choice then that's there choice. End of .. when all is said and done.


  • #40
    Dades
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 25,606 Mod ✭✭✭✭Dades


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    Not even God can help the flavour of his absence being nasty - not if a pleasant flavour can only be obtained by his presence. Not even God can be present and absent at the same time.
    Hmmm. Us humble humans place wrongdoers in prisons that, whilst unpleasant, don't involve burning in fire and lakes of sulphur for the duration of your sentence.

    I'd imagine a hypothetical omnipotent God could also so the same with those he perceives to be wrongdoers - if he wanted. Unless he is not in control of the system he created?


  • #41
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,464 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    I'm not sure what's immoral about sending folk to Hell (where the flames are a figurative description for the intensity of the misery [...]
    antiskeptic wrote: »
    [...] you're speaking too confidently of what you cannot yet know.
    Cough


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  • #42
    antiskeptic
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,550 ✭✭✭antiskeptic


    Dades wrote: »
    Hmmm. Us humble humans place wrongdoers in prisons that, whilst unpleasant, don't involve burning in fire and lakes of sulphur for the duration of your sentence.

    With God is all pleasure. Without God is without pleasure (metaphor: lakes of fire)

    God's offer is with or without him.

    I'd imagine a hypothetical omnipotent God could also so the same with those he perceives to be wrongdoers - if he wanted. Unless he is not in control of the system he created?

    If indeed. But he doesn't want to sustain sinners in his presence (which is what a less Hellish prison would entail for him). He want's rid of sin altogether.

    This life is just a precursor to the main event. God is prepared to put up with sin in order to find out what it is you want - with or without him. Once that's done, the main event can commence. No more sin for God to have to put up with. Those in heaven rendered clean and unable to sin. Those in hell bound up and unable to express themselves sinfully.


  • #43
    antiskeptic
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,550 ✭✭✭antiskeptic


    robindch wrote: »
    Cough

    Are you saying I can't know the mind of God?


  • #44
    kylith
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,741 ✭✭✭✭kylith


    dead one wrote: »
    You don't understand,People are/were being tortured and burned in the name of development/education, in the name of law and order, in the name of blessing; in the name: religion; in the name of the most merciful Christ.
    Oh, well, if they're being burned and tortured for their own good that alright then. Some merciful being, that; torturing people. Not at all like an abusive spouse smacking his wife around because of some percieved grievance, shouting "Baby, why do you make me hit you?!"
    antiskeptic wrote: »
    Each person gets to choose whether to be around God for eternity or not. Them's the options and there is no choice given for options other than that since all other options are but partial versions of the one offered.
    Someone who's never heard of the Christian god can't make any choice but to be without them and therefore goes to hell to be tortured for something that they had no choice about. Lovely.

    And don't come the 'they can choose to be with God' bit; if they don't know about a god then they can't choose to be with them or not; they are by default 'without'.
    A persons choice won't be affected by whether they happen to be born in a Christian country or not, whether they lived before or after Christ, whether they heard of Christ or the bible or not. Christian, Muslim, Hindu, atheist - all have an equal opportunity. So far so fair
    Nope; see my point above. If they don't know about the Christian god they can't choose but to be without him. Therefore they suffer for eternity for something that they knew nothing about, and therefore had no choice.
    Those who choose not to be with God get what they choose for -
    A choice which they may never have known they had
    which is fair enough.
    I wholeheartedly disagree
    They won't be with God for eternity. They will exist in an environment containing whatever flavour goes with God's absence.

    That flavour is described as on a par with burning in flames. It's not a nice flavour in other words

    Not even God can help the flavour of his absence being nasty- not if a pleasant flavour can only be obtained by his presence. Not even God can be present and absent at the same time.
    He's not particularly omnipotent then, is he? If he was then he could have hell being a bit boring, rather than eternal torment.
    I've no problem with people choosing to be without God for all eternity in the ultimate sense. Sure, I'd prefer if they choose to be with him. Indeed, I spend time on internet discussion forums trying to tell them (in various ways) to choose for God and take part in outreach in my church for the same reasons. I wouldn't wish hell on my worst enemy if I had one. I wouldn't wish it on Hitler. I can only imagine how horrendous hell would be.
    That's ok, apparently Hitler was quite devout and, since he most likely repented on his deathbed, so to speak, he should be up in heaven with JC.
    But if that's a persons choice then that's there choice. End of .. when all is said and done.
    It's no choice at all, in my opinion. People who have never heard of Christianity cannot make the choice, therefore go to hell. And people who have heard of Christianity but have, through logical study, found it self-contradictory, out of date, racist, sexist, and hatemonging; people who have, in fact, used the analytical brain that Christians believe their god gave us have the choice to either deny everything that logic and rationality tells us is true, or burn in agony forever. The choice, for an athiest, would be akin to me coming up to you and saying 'Believe in fairies or I'll kick your teeth in'. It's not a choice, it's a threat. Your merciful, loving god can do no better than threaten people who don't, by ignorance or logic, believe in him.

    If he truely was a god, and truely was omnipotent and omniscient then the least he could have done was make sure that the one instruction book that he left us wasn't full of inconsistancies, ambigueties, and bits that no-one can agree are meant to be taken literally or not. The fact that he didn't means that he couldn't so either a) God was not omnipotent b) God was not omniscient c) the bible is not the word/work of God or d) God is a dick who set out to create an ambiguous text knowing full well that some people wouldn't believe in him, so that he'd have someone to burn in hell forever.


  • #45
    Penn
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 35,946 ✭✭✭✭Penn


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    This life is just a precursor to the main event. God is prepared to put up with sin in order to find out what it is you want - with or without him. Once that's done, the main event can commence. No more sin for God to have to put up with. Those in heaven rendered clean and unable to sin. Those in hell bound up and unable to express themselves sinfully.

    Well, why can't he just do that? He allows sin to continue to exist, watching people being tortured, robbed, killed, raped, abused etc etc... "No more sin for God to have to put up with"? How much more does he need? What kind of sick voyeur is he?

    Right now, why is he allowing people to sin and thereby ruining their chances and condemning them to Hell forever. Why even have Hell at all? Why not make Heaven eternal life without sin, and everyone else is just dead. No Hell, no eternal punishment, just completely wiped from existence. Why CHOOSE to punish people? If he's so loving and forgiving, why not put them out of their misery? Why inflict a punishment on them? And no, those people do not choose to inflict the punishment on themselves by sinning, God chooses to inflict the punishment on the sinners. Why didn't he get rid of all sin? With Noah's ark, where everybody in the world apart from Noah and his family died, shouldn't that have wiped out sin?

    Why would GOD do any of this?


  • #46
    Penn
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 35,946 ✭✭✭✭Penn


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    Are you saying I can't know the mind of God?

    If he isn't, I am.


  • #47
    kylith
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,741 ✭✭✭✭kylith


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    Are you saying I can't know the mind of God?
    I thought it was one of the major tenets of the Christian faith that no-one could know the mind of God; ineffability and all that. IIRC, historically the church tends to deal fairly harshly with people, other than the pope, claiming to know the mind of God.


  • #48
    antiskeptic
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,550 ✭✭✭antiskeptic


    kylith wrote: »
    Someone who's never heard of the Christian god can't make any choice but to be without them and therefore goes to hell to be tortured for something that they had no choice about. Lovely.

    God has set things up so that they can make a choice for him.

    This is the "God who allows all to come to him" counter, if you want to argue against a different god then move on down the aisle. I'm sure you'll find someone peddling this god you're looking to object to. I'm not however..

    :)


    He's not particularly omnipotent then, is he? If he was then he could have hell being a bit boring, rather than eternal torment.

    He could have Hell less hellish. It would, however, mean that something of his presence would have to be present in Hell. But why would God want to remain in the presence of the stink of sinners for all eternity?

    Ugh!

    That's ok, apparently Hitler was quite devout and, since he most likely repented on his deathbed, so to speak, he should be up in heaven with JC.

    I'm quite sure there will be a few surprises in both heaven and hell.

    And people who have heard of Christianity but have, through logical study, found it self-contradictory, out of date, racist, sexist, and hatemonging; people who have, in fact, used the analytical brain that Christians believe their god gave us have the choice to either deny everything that logic and rationality tells us is true, or burn in agony forever. The choice, for an athiest, would be akin to me coming up to you and saying 'Believe in fairies or I'll kick your teeth in'. It's not a choice, it's a threat. Your merciful, loving god can do no better than threaten people who don't, by ignorance or logic, believe in him.

    That's how you think the choice is set up. Clearly, all that need be is that the choice is set up otherwise and all this will be bypassed as so much Dawkinsianism

    If he truely was a god, and truely was omnipotent and omniscient then the least he could have done was make sure that the one instruction book that he left us wasn't full of inconsistancies, ambigueties, and bits that no-one can agree are meant to be taken literally or not.

    Seeing as there is no need to reference the bible in order to make your choice, this is moot.

    The fact that he didn't means that he couldn't so either a) God was not omnipotent b) God was not omniscient c) the bible is not the word/work of God or d) God is a dick who set out to create an ambiguous text knowing full well that some people wouldn't believe in him, so that he'd have someone to burn in hell forever.

    Or there is something amiss in your abilities to comprehend God's word.
    The bible calls this spiritual blindness.

    So, how would you know you are spiritually blind?


  • #49
    antiskeptic
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,550 ✭✭✭antiskeptic


    kylith wrote: »
    I thought it was one of the major tenets of the Christian faith that no-one could know the mind of God; ineffability and all that. IIRC, historically the church tends to deal fairly harshly with people, other than the pope, claiming to know the mind of God.

    That's all news to me. Ironically, in this passage he is speaking of the lost and now they just can't get spiritual things. They are blinded as it were. But the found have insight into Gods ways. They see things through his eyes. As it were.


    14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. 15 The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, 16 for,

    “Who has known the mind of the Lord
    so as to instruct him?”URL="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20corinthians%202&version=NIV#fen-NIV-28411d"]d[/URL

    But we have the mind of Christ.


  • #50
    antiskeptic
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,550 ✭✭✭antiskeptic


    Penn wrote: »
    If he isn't, I am.

    Let me guess, you scored 7 on Dawkins scale?


  • #51
    kylith
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,741 ✭✭✭✭kylith


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    God has set things up so that they can make a choice for him.

    This is the "God who allows all to come to him" counter, if you want to argue against a different god then move on down the aisle. I'm sure you'll find someone peddling this god you're looking to object to. I'm not however..

    :)
    But how can they come to him if they were born in the deepest jungles of Borneo and have never seen a person outside of their own tribe, let alone learned anything of world religions? How can a person 'come to [god]' if they have never heard of him, never heard of Christianity, and don't know that he, for the sake of arguement, exists? HOW???


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  • #52
    sbsquarepants
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 11,810 ✭✭✭✭sbsquarepants


    I find the whole concept of hell in particular to be a bit ridiculous. I mean god wants people to do all these things, the devil wants them to do the opposite. If you do the opposite you get sent to hell, who are then entrusted with torturing you for all eternity. Or in other words, their job is then to punish you for doing exactly what they wanted you to do in the first place and they do this, for all eternity to help out someone they hate! Does anyone else see the flaw in this plan?

    Hell will be packed to the rafters with sluts, rock stars, columbian drug lords etc.
    Heaven on the other hand is full of clean living, chaste, abstainers, playing harps and praying.

    Who would you rather spend eternity with, Dana and Daniel O'Donnel, or Kurt Cobain and Terra Patrick?


  • #53
    Panrich
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,008 ✭✭✭Panrich


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    Large swathes of Christianity see no problem with such a man potentially being saved and 'going to heaven'. "Christian" is a status one holds before God - whatever about the earthly labels that might be attached to people.

    So an atheist can go to Heaven then? After all, that is just a label and we may live similar lives to our friend in the jungles of Brazil without harming anyone.


  • #54
    Penn
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 35,946 ✭✭✭✭Penn


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    Let me guess, you scored 7 on Dawkins scale?

    Let me guess, you use modern medicine instead of just allowing God to either heal you or let you die?


  • #55
    Dades
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 25,606 Mod ✭✭✭✭Dades


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    With God is all pleasure. Without God is without pleasure (metaphor: lakes of fire).
    Metaphor? That would be too easy.

    Just because some biblical descriptions of Hell describe it as a place 'without God' doesn't give you a pass to call all the rest metaphors as they don't fit with a 21st century loving God concept.

    Hell is described in detail and your God concept stands charged with creating and filling it with people who didn't worship him or simply never heard of him.


  • #56
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,464 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    Are you saying I can't know the mind of God?
    I'm saying that you're speaking too confidently of what you cannot yet know. Know, in the sense of know-as-an-undisputed-fact, as opposed to know in the sense of "believe to be true".

    Thinking that something is true doesn't make it true.

    And your belief that you know the mind of your deity, effectively perfectly so far as I understand, but certainly well enough to assess its motivations and act on its behalf is really quite worrying.


  • #57
    kylith
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,741 ✭✭✭✭kylith


    sbsquarepants wrote: »
    I find the whole concept of hell in particular to be a bit ridiculous. I mean god wants people to do all these things, the devil wants them to do the opposite. If you do the opposite you get sent to hell, who are then entrusted with torturing you for all eternity. Or in other words, their job is then to punish you for doing exactly what they wanted you to do in the first place and they do this, for all eternity to help out someone they hate! Does anyone else see the flaw in this plan?

    Hell will be packed to the rafters with sluts, rock stars, columbian drug lords etc.
    Heaven on the other hand is full of clean living, chaste, abstainers, playing harps and praying.

    Who would you rather spend eternity with, Dana and Daniel O'Donnel, or Kurt Cobain and Terra Patrick?
    You're right there. Either Satan is in the employ of God to punish unbelievers, evil people, and people who just aren't the right sort, in which case what's with the Satan V God thing? Or Satan's against God, in which case you'd be met in Hell and handed a Cuban cigar and a bucket of brandy, and introduced to some of the greatest thinkers and musicians the world has ever known.

    Of course, all that is based on, iirc, a flawed understanding of hell. IIRC Lucifer, Beelzebub et al are toasting in the flames just as much as the rest of it; Hell being hell for them too. This begs the question that if we're being punished and they're being punished - who's doing the punishing? It must be angels, though one could argue that that's not very nice of them, but then I don't believe that angels have ever been said to be very nice, and it's not evil to torture people if you're doing it for their own good. Of course, that's not what the current church teaches, or any of the lauded Christian artwork shows; instead teaching and showing Satan lording it over Dis.

    My favourite depiction of Satan is in an old novel called The Sorrows of Satan. After God made humans he gave them Free Will, believing that non of them would choose not to follow his commandments and so go to Heaven. Lucifer reckoned that this was a load of hooey and said to God "I bet I could tempt them away from you". God was so hacked off that he told Lucifer to prove it, and said that everytime he succeeded he'd be one step further from heaven, but for every human he couldn't tempt he'd be one step closer. So there's Lucifer; honour bound to keep tempting humans to the dark side, all the time secretly hoping that they'd reject him. Makes him quite a likeable character, really.


  • #58
    Mistress 69
    Closed Accounts Posts: 527 ✭✭✭Mistress 69


    MisterEpicurus wrote: »
    2. Immoral Concept of Hell -- Imagine a location on Earth where 'bad' people were continually tortured for their entire lives. I would certainly feel uncomfortable with such a regime and no doubt human rights watch would be on the move. But Hell exists right now and we are supposed to feel comfortable with such a location and forced to be happy about it in Heaven. People are apparently being tortured when you eat dinner, have sex, and sleep...you wouldn't be comfortable with it on Earth but we're expected to be comfortable with a celestial version. That's not an argument against it, but sounds too tribalistic to be real and immoral if it were.



    The latest round of revisionism was touched off last summer by a surprising editorial in La Civiltà Cattolica, an influential Jesuit magazine with close ties to the Vatican. Hell, the magazine declared, "is not a 'place' but a 'state,' a person's 'state of being,' in which a person suffers from the deprivation of God." A few days later, Pope John Paul II told an audience at the Vatican that "rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God." To describe this Godforsaken condition, the pontiff said, the Bible "uses a symbolical language" that "figuratively portrays in a 'pool of fire' those who exclude themselves from the book of life, thus meeting with a 'second death.'

    Link to the full very long version.
    http://www.apocalypsesoon.org/xfile-45.html

    PS Hell does exist, check out Iraq or a little us navy base on Diego El Garcia where lots of extraordinay rendition victms reside.


  • #59
    MisterEpicurus
    Closed Accounts Posts: 588 ✭✭✭MisterEpicurus


    Mistress 69 wrote: »
    The latest round of revisionism was touched off last summer by a surprising editorial in La Civiltà Cattolica, an influential Jesuit magazine with close ties to the Vatican. Hell, the magazine declared, "is not a 'place' but a 'state,' a person's 'state of being,' in which a person suffers from the deprivation of God." A few days later, Pope John Paul II told an audience at the Vatican that "rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God." To describe this Godforsaken condition, the pontiff said, the Bible "uses a symbolical language" that "figuratively portrays in a 'pool of fire' those who exclude themselves from the book of life, thus meeting with a 'second death.'

    Link to the full very long version.
    http://www.apocalypsesoon.org/xfile-45.html

    PS Hell does exist, check out Iraq or a little us navy base on Diego El Garcia where lots of extraordinay rendition victms reside.

    I can't take 'revisionism' seriously, it's simply a bunch of ordinary clergy trying to reinvent the Bible to suit our times. Simply performed to deem it more acceptable in the 21st century. They have no authority to change the meaning described in the Bible and I don't accept the Pope as an infallible leader who has a hotline to God for more polished interpretations.

    As a matter of fact, Antiskeptic is doing exactly the same thing, to prop up his arguments as he knows perfectly well if he were to stick to what his holey text describes, his position would be embarrassing and weak. Also Antiskeptic, I'm merely positing these questions from a point of view that God doesn't exist and hopefully they show that it was created by ignorant and tribalistic authorities rather than from the divine.

    You don't know any more than I do what god (with a small g) is or wants so I think my view is valid to some degree.


  • #60
    kylith
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,741 ✭✭✭✭kylith


    Mistress 69 wrote: »
    The latest round of revisionism was touched off last summer by a surprising editorial in La Civiltà Cattolica, an influential Jesuit magazine with close ties to the Vatican. Hell, the magazine declared, "is not a 'place' but a 'state,' a person's 'state of being,' in which a person suffers from the deprivation of God."

    Yet more 'there's no evidence for it, and people are asking too many questions, so we'd better say it's allegorical' waffle. At this rate everything in the bible will be metaphorical soon. "Oh, that Jesus guy? He was a metaphor, dontcaknow."
    A few days later, Pope John Paul II told an audience at the Vatican that "rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God." To describe this Godforsaken condition, the pontiff said, the Bible "uses a symbolical language" that "figuratively portrays in a 'pool of fire' those who exclude themselves from the book of life, thus meeting with a 'second death.'
    So, if hell is to be without God then I'm already in hell? I quite like it; the food's alright, and I get a lie in on Sundays.
    PS Hell does exist, check out Iraq or a little us navy base on Diego El Garcia where lots of extraordinay rendition victms reside.
    Hell is man-made then? Are the torturers blessed angels or cowardly, immoral bastards? Considering that quite a few innocent people have wound up there what does that say about God's sorting policy?


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  • #61
    aidan24326
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,925 ✭✭✭aidan24326


    antiskeptic wrote: »
    Time? In eternity there is no time. Time is a created thing, And so, you need to rework this..

    Mind cannot exist outside of time. It is fundamental to how we think and how we perceive and remember things. Shorn of my memory and all normal thought processes in what meaningful way could I survive my death? I couldn't. Consciousness is temporal. Without time you have no conscious mind to do or think anything at all, and without a mind there is no me, no 'I' in any meaningful sense.
    Ultimately, I've no problem with folk choosing to be without God (a.k.a. Hell).

    It's interesting that this airy fairy new definition of hell has appeared ie 'without god', because you and every other christian knows that the bible has much more to say on the matter than that. A random example:

    •Matthew 13:50 “furnace of fire…weeping and gnashing of teeth”

    and alot more where that came from


    It seems to me the church are downright embarassed at the concept of hell as depicted in the bible (who wouldn't be?) and are now trying to fluffy it up in more tasteful language.

    Immoral against whose standard? Not mine. God-given choice is a great thing - even if it means choosing against God

    If you don't find the concept of eternal suffering immoral then I'd worry about you. You would have to completely lack empathy for other people. That's in effect what you're implying with that post, that you don't care if vast numbers of people are consigned to an eternity of misery so long as it keeps your (obviously psycopathic) god happy? Staggering.


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