So, the Pope says there's no hell, what do you think?

i am curious what happened to that guy. he got transferred to a pretty ghetto area not long after i gave up on him, and he was about the whitest guy ever so i do wonder how he fared.

i think the "vote for bush or burn" guy was actually the deacon if i remember correctly. i actually liked him outside of that whole issue. i think i heard he died a couple years ago, but he was old when i knew him so it wasn't a huge surprise.

 

Gnosticism is sort of a transitional phase between more egalitarian primitive tribal religions and formal western Christianity. Almost every religion has its equivalent and, you could say, the people who constructed modern Christianity, took lessons from the Gnostics on what to avoid. They were the original Christian New Age believers, but too wishy-washy for the mainstream and a threat to entrenched wealth. The Buddha walked on water centuries before Christ, and everyone has been fighting over the copyrights. The New Testament had over fifty authors, including William Henley who they burned alive for making his Bible much more beautiful. He is considered by many to be a better author than Shakespeare.

Mainstream religions place pressure on the wealthy to spend money on the people when times are bad, but that greasy palm goes both ways. Mainstream religions are a deal with the devil, and Jesus drove the merchants out of the temple because they had violated the terms of the deal. He was royally pissed.

 

Do you follow any type of faith now?

 

Interesting!

I'm convinced if churches were taxed, many 'religions' would go out of business. Since many act like businesses and all.

 

I generally keep quiet on the subject, partly because Jane is a devout Roman catholic due to her upbringing in a remote part of Ireland. She was taught at a convent and her mothers sister was a nun. However today, I think that even she has doubts at times.

For my part, I keep an open mind. Having a strong scientific background, I question many things. Even the theories of evolution are flawed in my mind and seem to have unexplained gaps and more holes than a colander. I ponder on the question that if we evolved from monkeys, why did some monkeys decide to stop evolving and show no signs of evolving even today. Needless to say, no one has even suggested a logical answer.

Having now discovered that their are more than a billion stars and planets where life either is or was possible, bringing me to the question of how we stand in terms of time in the overall picture, I believe that our lack of ability to comprehend infinity may be the key to whether life as we know it is just a flush at cosmic level.

Regarding religion itself. All religions believe in one god, so why are people killing each other over what name we chose to use. We accept that a car is described by a different word in other languages, so how is god any different.

The birth of Jesus is another puzzle to me, particularly 3 wise men following a star that just appeared and disappeared out of nowhere. Is the bible really telling us something. The words of TS Elliot also make me wonder if some people on this planet know a lot more than they are letting on. I even wonder how freemasonry ties in to this almighty hypothesis.

How do you interpret the REAL meaning of Elliot's words.?

A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter.
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory, Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces, And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters, And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices: A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night, Sleeping in snatches, With the voices singing in our ears, saying That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley, Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness, And three trees on the low sky, And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel, Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins. But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember, And I would do it again, but set down This set down This:were we led all that way for Birth or Death?
There was a Birth, certainly We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different: the Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms. But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death

 

Sadly, that's a naive commonplace misconception. Over half of all businesses in America today have some sort of tax exempt status. Businesses such as banks, electronics, and weapons are not among them. Money and the gun do all the talking worth listening to, and if governments do not protect the people, their religions will. They will create a new government, but the idea they will roll over and die is something you can forget about.

 

It's eternal as a final judgement. He describes it as being thrown in a fiery furnace. The end result is ash. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

 

Do they still bob up and down to the little bells? And do that little thing with their hands---"anus, penis, porkus, maximus." That's what a catholic friend said it meant, but I doubt it.

 

nah. officially i'm agnostic since there's no decent evidence of anything one way or the other, but if i had to make a guess i'd go toward the atheist side of the debate.

 

ha you're so bad!

(but yep, they still do that)

 

Well it's more than that. Matthew had plenty to say about it, and it is mentioned in Mark, Luke and Thess.. Hell=Gehenna, Sheol and Hades
1. Place of unquenchable Fire: Matt. 3:12, 13:41, Mark 9:43
2. Place of memory and remorse: Luke 16:19-31 (Hades)
3. Place of Thirst: Luke 16:24 (Hades) It is hot, a place of fire.
4. Place of frustration - anger: Matt. 13:42
8. Place prepared for Satan and his demons: Matt. 25:41
9. An eternal place: 71 times in NEW TESTAMENT, 64, referred to as eternal. Matt. 25:46 is an example.
10. Everlasting Fire: Matt. 18:8 Jude 7
11. a place of Punishment: Matt. 25:46
12. Chains: II Thess. 1:8
13. Darkness: Matt. 8:12
14. Destruction: II Thess. 1:9

 

1. The fire is unquenchable because God is a consuming fire, but consumption means to use up. Not to sustain forever.
2. A parable about the Jewish people that don't accept the Kingdom. Luke 15:3 tell us it's a parable.
3. More figurative language. Just on drop of water could quench his thirst? Jonah was also said to be in Hades while he was in the belly of a fish.
4. Hades is to be in an unfavorable place and can be frustrating. It contrasts with Abraham's side which is to be favored by God.
8. Romans 16:20 states, "The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet." Satan isn't a physical person that will go to a physical place. Jesus also calls Peter Satan.(Matt 16:23) Satan is just the source of falsehoods namely the carnal mind.
9. Eternal means final judgment which is destruction.
10. Everlasting means final judgement.
11. 11 Thess. 1:9 confirms that the judgment will be destruction as opposed to everlasting life in literal fire.
12. The punishment is destruction.
13. A parable about gentiles being in the kingdom of God while the Jews weren't because of lack of faith. The Centurion was a gentile.
14. Yes, destruction.

 

Yes, I agree, there is no literal place of eternal torture. Unfortunately, people now and then have taken it to be literal truth. I personally don't think of hell as a place we go to after our death, but rather as a state of mind we can put ourselves in here and now by denying personal responsibility for our conduct and putting the blame for the consequences of our actions on others. In other words, hell is a bad attitude.

 

I am not religious by any definition; I haven't believed in god (or gods) since I was quite young. But I believe in doing good for humanity, whether you do it in the name of religion or anything else. Therefore, I believe in this pope. I think he has brought humility and humanity to his position and I think he has done wonderful things and opened many eyes to things that were previously discarded or not talked about in the church. I don't think Francis is just a figurehead; I think he set a course for change early on and reached out to many who had long been ignored by the church.

I don't have to believe in god or have any type of religion to believe that Pope Francis is a good man doing great things. I love him and what he's doing.

 

Monkeys are not direct evolutionary ancestors to humans, Great Apes such as Bonobos and Chimps are much closer in the evolutionary tree to humans but there are even intermediary species between the last common ancestor between Chimps and humans, and the evolutionary branches to what eventually lead to humans.

Keep in mind, evolution, particularly macroevolution (where we get different species), is a very gradual process well beyond the scope of our lifetimes, when it comes to mammals. Evolution doesn't necessarily invoke this transform and replace mechanism you are suggesting of one species replacing the other. Evolution is predicated on successful adaptations to the environment.

So as a really crude thought example to illustrate the point, let's say there was 2 groups of chimp-like animals that occupied different parts of a rain forest Several Millions of years ago. One Winter there is an extremely heavy rain which destroyed one groups part of the forest causing them to seek shelter and food elsewhere, while the other group remains put. The mobile group migrates out of the forest to get away from the storm and find food, in doing so they find caves to be their new habitat, rather than trees and in this new environment they also start dieting differently. The chimp group remaining in the forest still retains it's niche environment, trees, food and can continue on with it's traditional behaviors, the other group is forced to adapt to the new environment and find new food sources. Fast forward millions of years, these 2 groups are going to express different adaptive characteristics to their particular environments.

 

There’s some newer research showing that it wasn’t a gradual process which would point to Genesis being accurate in that a god created all of the various species “at once.” It’s not as simple as that but an interesting theory.

 

Sources?

 

If there is a loving god, there would be no wars , no starvation, no discrimination, etc. If there is a god that allows wars, starvation and discrimination---we're for sure screwed, for he/she/it must enjoy what he/she/it sees. If there is no god--obviously , we're on our own and "we're "doing a shit job of it. Doesn't matter what the pope thinks. He'll be doing what the rest of us will be doing--eating, sleeping, talking, shitting and forever trying to decipher the meaning of it all--just like humans have been doing since sitting around fires and living in the open.

 

well according to the christian version of god at least, he allows free will. it's not like he's going out and encouraging these things, he's just sitting back facepalming at how bad his creation has fucked itself up.

 

There was never a hell for souls, Hell was a prison for Satan. All the wrong doers get their name written on scroll and tossed into Lake of fire. Human souls don't go to hell, it's in the bible.