Ok this might be a bit contravertial as in most of my posts i have sided with the "good" christians but in many of the recent posts people have been talking about Hell and eternal punishment. Now i'm sorry but biblicaly i don't quite see this, Jesus describes those whom don't bare fruit to be thrown into the fire and destroyed like the dead twigs around the living vines, now when i have a bonfire the stuff burns and it is gone it doesn't burn eternaly for a never ending punishment. Then in el revilation the scriptures speak of the second death, the judgment for those that were found guitly, they are to be thrown in the river of flame and destroyed. Now i'm not saying this isn't an eternal punishment, as far as i'm concerned that is no worse punishment than having your existance taken from you. anything is better than being actualy dead, but many people seem to be alright with this and have no problem beleiving when they die they are dead and unfortunately they are very right when they die they will die, the problem is that they could have so much more. But Hell shouldn't be used as a tool for converting people especialy not as a "ooo and the bad will be punished forever, if you don't beleive you are gonna have it really bad" because if they don't beleive they are only going to get what they do beleive, Death! Don't get me wrong though i'm not saying we shouldn't be evangalising, death is not neccesary, The gift of God is Life, and if we can extend this gift to anyone then we must take up the chance 'cause it is the best thing you could ever give some one.
Short version of my theory on this is: God loves us and wants us to learn. Setting fire to us does not teach us anything. Therefore a limited purgatory or reincarnation makes more sense than an eternal punishment.
Yes, God is good and God is loving. He is also completely fair and just. When we sin (lit. to fall short of the mark) we offend God's holiness. The punishment must be equal in measure to the offense. Anything less than that would not be just. So, what is the measure of the offense against a being of infinite holiness? The measure of the offense is, likewise, infinite. The punishment for such an infraction? Infinite. This is the reason that Jesus sacrifice is necessary and sufficient. Christ, as theanthropos (lit. the God-Man), can completely meet the demands of the offense. He, as a man, died and, as God, his infinite holiness satisfied the requirements of justice. He took the punishment. Eternal punishment is no longer necessary because His death completely met the requirements of justice. His sacrifice, due to Him being God, was infinite in measure and therefore was equal to the measure of the offence. Justice is satisfied. Now, anyone who wishes can simply claim Christ's sacrifice as their own. God doesn't want to punish us, but so long as we try to measure up to the standards ourselves (and we can't), God must punish us. Dante had it on the mark, IMHO when he wrote these words at the gates of Hell. THROUGH ME IS THE WAY INTO THE SUFFERING CITY; THROUGH ME THE WAY INTO GRIEF ETERNAL; THROUGH ME THE WAY AMONG LOST HUMANITY; JUSTICE MOVED MY MAKER CELESTIAL; I WAS CREATED BY THE DIVINE POWER, BY THE SUPREME WISDOM, AND BY LOVE PRIMEVAL. ONLY ETERNAL THINGS ARE OLDER THAN I; AND I WILL FOREVER ENDURE. ABANDON EVERY HOPE, YOU WHO ENTER. "I was created ... by love primeval." How could Love create Hell? Simple. God gives us a choice. We can follow His will or our own. Our will is imperfect and separates us from God. God, in His love, does not then FORCE us into heaven, He lets us live forever as we have chosen. Away from Him.
Yes God is good and God is loving but would a fair God let a murderer go free of charge or consider child molestor not guilty. The fact is there has to be punishment for our sins (and we all sin) and that punishment is hell. However, there is a very simple task to be set free from that sin-accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior.
These conclusions drawn... are impersonal projections of the mind... god... is felt within the soul... god is heard within the heart... The fear of eternal hell can be placed upon the mind... through the words of men... but it will not come to the heart and soul from within...
Yeah but what is more infinite than death, it is a loss of everything, if i was offered an eternity getting stabbed in the eye with pins or an eternity of absolutely nothing i would go fo getting stabbed in the eye, at least then i get to have feelings, also life without god, away from him, well without god there is no creator therfore there is nothing, so life without god isn't an eternity of hatred and lies and fire, life without god is nothing, nothing at all.
In Mk. 9:48, he described hell as a place where "the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched." In Mt. 25:41 he speaks of an eternal fire and in Mt. 25:46 eternal torment. Rev. 20:10 clearly says that those thrown into this fire are tormented forever. Rev. 22:15 mentions those "outside" the city of God, which would be a very strange way to refer to the nonexistent.
peppy you are misconcieved. no one who really understands total death would shrug it off. you do understand, and thats why you would chose eternal suffering over death. how many people would agree to that? we are in teh minority. it is interesting to see that you, being a christian, believe in ultimate death the same way as i, a pure atheist, do (though i do not fear death because of leaving a god). however it seems to me that youve fit your understanding of ultimate death into your christian beleif system. as an atheist, all death is ultimate death. however, if you think most atheists think of ultimate death as we do, your mistaken, for ive tlaked to many, and your the first person who has ever agreed that eternal pain, some sort of feelings, are better than absolute death. most people seem to think ultimate death will bring peace, balance, some sort of resolve. when it brings none of them. you obvisouly apreciate feeling and mind. however, you do not apreciate life if you beleive you can life in an afterlife. no christian trully apreciates life as much as an atheist as myself. im not bragging, itsjsut in the nature of the religion that devalues life as some sort of temporary stage bfore 'joining god in heaven'. god says that he is the Alpha and the omega, first and last, beggining and end.this is according to christianity. according to my beelifs, human life is the alpha and omega, its the first and last (of ONE, not of everyhintg; subsequently, a human life is the first life in its existance, and the last), the begginning and the end (for there is nothing before the midn is concieved shortly before birth, and thre is nother after the life ends). christianity, the way i see it, is the placing of these limits onto a higher being, and infitely high being, which allows for infinite scope of life. if a being is infinit such as god, then no one ever need fear the end. the end is waht strikes fear in humans. in a way though, I can simply go to say that we beleive in everything teh same, except that the elements alpha, omega, end, beggning, first, last, are given to the finite being (ie, the human life) or the infiite being (ie, god). everything else about our beleifs are biproducts of our two different base-beliefs. i hope that ive conveyed my message, i jsut want to put certain thigns in perspective.
adn huck finn, how dare you post a contradiction in the bible! campbell, come kick his ass *rolls eyes* oh and why isnt nonexistance able to be referred to as being outside the kingdom of god? assume inside is life (for god created life, and so life is part of his kingdom) tehrefor outside is nonexistance, assuming teh realm of gods kingdom = existance. the bible thought cannot descibe nonexistance becuase such a concept would have been too complex for people to understand at the time the bible was concieved.
stoner bill if you were a girl i would be proposing to you right now, nice to know some one else is on my wavelength at least to some extent, although to me as it says in the bible "the gift of god is life" so i'm not really waiting for heaven as far as i'm concerened i've got my place booked and the only reason i would get life eternal turned away from me was if i was not to get the full out of life itself, if i gave you some chocolate but you didn't like it i wouldn't give you any more, so if God gives us a life and we don't enjoy it to the full why should we have eternal life?
But that isn't what is stated or implied in the text. That might be possible implication, but the text plainly states otherwise. Take into account audience relevance (no, Revelation wasn't written to us, it was written to 1st century Christians), and you have pretty much solidified the idea that the lake of fire is eternal torment, not just non-existence. You just don't know history, right? You don't really mean this. The "people of the time" knew that the earth was round (and had calculated the diameter of it), they had concepts of existence and non-existence. The time period is 400 years AFTER Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, and (for eastern thought) Bhudda. The people were ignorant of modern scientific theories (though the idea of atoms had already been hypothesized), but please do not think that makes them stupid or incapable of understanding abstract concepts. These people already had concepts of infinity and eternity. To say that it would have been "too complex" for them is simply pleading your case to an uneducated point of view. The fact is, the people could have understood non-existence (Bhudda, in the far east, had proposed the anatman roughly 500 years earlier), but the author didn't say that. He talked about eternal fire and torment. That is how they understood it. So either the author was wrong or you are. Saying that there is some sort of mystic code that we, as humans, have not been able to interpret till now is speculation that remains unsupported. You are interpreting scripture in light of your own presuppositions and worldview. In this case, you have simply misiterpreted. On a similar note, non-existence might be "worse" than eternal punishment, but remember what I said earlier. If you are unable to experience punishment, have you been punished. Say a thief runs from the police after commiting a crime and is in an accident that leaves him in a coma for 20 years. The he is tried though, and spends ten years of that coma in prison. He wakes up a free man. Now some of you will scream KARMA. He got what he deserved in the form of a coma. That may be (though I would doubt it if all he was stealing a candy bar from a store), but it misses the point. The theif was completely incapable of experiencing the punishment. Can we punish dead people? No, we can't. They are incapable of experiencing any punisment we inflict. If a non-christian death = non-existence then God isn't fair. A person can live a horrible life and the only thing they get is to not exist. They don't truly have to answer for their crimes. They simply get to fade away into nothingness. Punishment must be experienced in order to be punishment. Non-existence prevents punishment. Punishment is necessary in order to meet the demands of justice. In order to be fair and just, God must allow that some people be punished for their crimes against Him. Those crimes are infinite in scope, so the punishment too, must be infinite.
you are saying then that you dont think the bible could have been changed since it was written or inspired by god. in the sense it was inspired by god, you could say then that everything is inspired by god, but on to the point. the bible could have been changed and sorry to say it was i believe. i dont believe jesus ever talked about burning in fires of hell, unless it is one you create for yourself out of your own negativity, read this from the gospel of truth: "that is the gospel of him whom they seek, which he has revealed to the perfect through the mercies of the Father as the hidden mystery, Jesus the Christ. Through him he enlightened those who were in darkness because of forgetfulness. He enlightened them and gave them a path. And that path is the truth which he taught them. For this reason error was angry with him, so it persecuted him. It was distressed by him, so it made him powerless. He was nailed to a cross. He became a fruit of the knowledge of the Father. He did not, however, destroy them because they ate of it. He rather caused those who ate of it to be joyful because of this discovery." maybe seperation from god is never gaining the truth about reality, you'll stay here in hell untill you figure it out, heavan and hell are here on earth.
waht date do you put on each part of the bible? and remember, concepts known by the philosophers at the time would still have been oblivious to like 99% of the population. in fact most would have been kept to very very few peopl (relative to poulation that is) mainly to escape persecution from the religious believers! the catholic church was like the biggest scientific nightmare (beheading scientists who proposed the ideas you mentioned) but umm can you show me a link to information about these people who beleived the world was rounda nd had calculated its diametre please? not that im doubting you ok to discuss on same paths, where do you think all religions besides your own (for all must be false)came from? they would have come from the need to avoid 'non existance' of the self. almsot all (if not all) religions of the time believed in an afterlife. there wouldnt have been many atheists back then. i think its safe to say that the idea of non existance was indeed above the people of the time (or at least beyond waht they would have accepted as reality) its clear either you dont comprehend non-existance or that youve got irrational preferences. "They simply get to fade away into nothingness." you speak as though this is a gift? the worst punishment is nothiness. if you think that living with pain is worse than not existing at all, then you simply dont apreciate life. (but then, the nature of christianity pretty much devalues natural life to a tool (if used correctly, gains eternal happiness))
First of all, you sound like you're just upset at the idea that a bad person can die and escape torture or punishment for their bad deeds. Since you can't handle that, you come up with this idea of a cosmic judge, inflicting eternal torture on the person since you cant. So it just sounds like you want to torture a person because they did you wrong, and you solve the problem your hateful attitude causes (that dead people can't be tortured by you) by saying God does. So much for turning the cheek. This attitude is archaic, going back to ancient Mesopotamian law codes. Have we not progressed beyond eye for an eye laws? I say, if a person hurts you then dies, it's time to let it go. Why hold a grudge against a dead man? How irrational is that? Just lick your wounds and move on. Second, I don't like how you implied (in bold, above) that a non-Christian life is a horrible evil life. That's a pretty shitty thing to say, and I'll never understand that kind of narrowmindedness, the kind where only those who agree with you get rewarded, everyone else is burned for eternity. Religion of love my ass. Third, how is a crime against god infinite in scope? I saw perviously someone (maybe you) said that since god is infiinite, any crime against him is also infinite. I don't see how that follows. And if it does, that means the smallest, most minor little thing done against god is infinite, requiring eternal hell. That makes no sense.
The thing is god is forgiving, so although yeah even my smallest sin is fucked up, just as fucked up as murder or rape, as biblicaly paraphrased "the law is an indication that we may see our sins" and yes i would say Jesus is the only way to escape judgement but surely you can see (although obviusely not yet) that Non-existance is the greatest punishment of all. and man that shit about a guy going in a coma and has he really been punnished, firstly: judge not.... we shouldn't even have a penal system, secondly: the only good reason for one is rehabilitaion, not punishment. so i guess if he was in a comma and really needed rehabilitation then yeah he needs longer. but not punishment. and really to be "fair" in our understanding of the word it isn't really fair that i should go to heaven simply for beleiving in Jesus that he is my savioure when i have still sin just like every one else but yet i'm forgiven and others aren't, so don't be using "fair" as if it is "unfair" that these people should be punished because this is the same human "Justice" that is imperfect. i don't truly understand why some people are lucky enough to beleive and some people don't but i didn't really chose myself it just so happened that when i heard about Jesus i beleived, i have done nothing to deserve this honour yet it is given to me. but not to others some people even try to atain faith but cannot in human justice this is "unfair" but evidantly God as the true Judge has Perfect Judgement and although i don't understand it is actualy fair.
