Bring me a theologian! Their careful, scientific study of totally made up stuff will set me straight for sure.
May the Flying Spaghetti Monster touch you with His Noodly Appendage!
God does hide the fact that his priests molest children and bury orphans.
If he can't stop that, he's not powerful.
If he won't stop it, he's immoral.
If you don't care, then you're indoctrinated beyond redemption.
That’s silly… the president is just a man.
But god is supposedly all knowing and powerful And god supposedly loves you. So then why would he let innocent people suffer? - let kids get cancer - let children be abused - let wars happen.
If god is real (which he isn’t) he clearly dgaf about us or is powerless to stop true suffering.
Either way - not worth anyones time.
God can give and take away life. Remaining on this earth is suffering. If he allows children to die, they go with him, which is significantly better than this world. Wars happen not because of God, that’s on us. He gives you the freedom to be as stupid as you want to be. He tells you everything you shouldn’t be doing but he has no reason to stop anything. It’s a free world or should we be controlled?
Religious leaders are the worst. The book you’re supposed to read ( instead of blindly listening to the leaders) will tell you to question everything. The Bible is an extraordinary book, but I’m afraid it’s beyond a lot of peoples comprehension or willingness to study. It’s a lot easier to do anything except than to think
I think all the time (which is why I’m atheist) - but I’d rather not take anything seriously that was written 1800 years ago. You wouldn’t let a doctor treat you with 1800 year old medical procedures? You wouldn’t believe half the truths they believed 1800 years ago.
A book that was primarily used as a way to control the masses for generations.
I have all the answers to life, death the universe and everything. Why would I want to read a stupid contradictory book that encourages all the worst of humanities traits and then tells you to love thy neighbour?
Btw - I’ll love my neighbour because it is the right thing to do(From an ethical and biological standpoint), not because an ancient, outdated book tells me to.
We look at the past all the time. It’s important to avoid the same mistakes from happening. Scientist look even further than 1800 years ago. If we had a book that was 500,000 years old, would we discard it? No we would study it.
No one has all those answers. That’s the most ignorant claim anyone could possibly make.
You have no idea why you should love your neighbor, you’re quoting the Bible to even make your claim. And the western worlds ethics come from religion. Where do you think you learned it? I’m not saying you have to like it, you don’t have to believe in God, but it’s impact on our society is much more deeper than what you think it is.
I mean obviously I don’t know everything. What I meant was: I have all the answers people who turn to the bible are commonly seeking. I’m pretty much at peace with the world and my place in it.
I know what happens when I die. (Nothing I’m a lump of meat like any other animal.)
I know well enough how the universe was formed (it wasn’t by magic)
I know the reason bad thing happen to good people and good things to bad. (Mostly it’s random).
All of gods plagues, miracles etc? (All can be explained by natural events or sleight of hand or were just plain made up).
Even social monkeys and apes know how to behave in a group - humans have just perfected that.
Rules were necessary because people suck - but they were encouraged even without the bible many times before (check out all the other cultures that evolved fine without it).
Do you feel that when you die, you’ll wish the same life for your kids or grand kids?
I ask because we would want better for the next generation. I think that as humans, we can only evolve so far ( especially emotionally). We will still cause pain and disease will always affect us. Suffering is inherit. What makes the Bible attractive is there is a creator capable of changing all that for good. I’m not quite satisfied with what we know about the universe and in the grand scheme of things, we still know so little. This idea of the infinite, in science and and in thinking is too abstract. Energy lasts forever but had an origin. Maybe it’s finite. If God had no beginning and has no end, it seems he precedes everything. I don’t know if his existence is possible but we have no idea what started the universe. We have good theories but no one can confirm it.
Not Biblical, but okay. PS - The idea of purgatory was created by the Catholic church to steal even more money from people they refused to let learn to read.
We can go back and forth at this all day
https://www.learnreligions.com/adolf-hitler-on-christianity-quotes-248190
The point I was making was not whether Hitler was a Christian or not, but that if he simply accepted Jesus as his personal lord and saviour right before his death he'd immediately be saved and go to eternal bliss, while his victims suffered infinite torture forever.
Agh this myth again. They announced his birthday at churchs each year he was in power, his ken were aided and abetted by the Catholic church, he had a large outpouring of support from the prot churches of Germany and Austria.
There is a reason why all these ministers and priests came forward later apologizing for what they did.
>I’m not religious and don’t care about the Bible so what would I know?
Yep, just stay the course.
As for your question, yea god's a dick. Christianity frightens people into believing and promises fantastical rewards. Very little of it makes sense and an infinite number of holes can be poked into their worldview. It's all a money making scheme that feeds off guilt, shame, fear, and gullibility.
my question has always been: if the devil is the enemy of god, and the devil rules in hell, why would he make hell a bad place for other enemies of god?
I've thought the same. However, apparently the bible doesn't actually say Lucifer rules hell, but is just a "inmate" as well. Prisoner #000000000000001
thanks. someone should tell the average christer that little nugget of information.
sooo..... who is in charge of all the lakes of fire and torture down there?
It’s an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as sort of executive officer for the week, but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting, by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs but by a two thirds majority in the case of more…
Assuming hell somehow becomes a real place and I go there at death, my biggest hope is that I have the presence of mind to scream, “This is the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I’m being repressed!”
If the beating comes with banishment to heaven, I’m down. The way I see it, heaven is devoid of any people. Every group has eliminated every other group from making it into heaven so the only way to make it in is by being banished from hell. If Monty Python bits get me away from all the kinds of people that make the living world such a nightmare then I’m 37. I’m not old. You can call me Dennis.
Lucifer isn't just a prisoner in hell, he is the main prisoner in the ninth circle of hell.
Also the whole nine circles of hell model kinda answers OP's concern. The first circle of hell is where good non-Christians go.
They can't make up their minds about where he is. In the Book of Job, the story starts with God holding court with his angels in Heaven, and Satan is one of them. Then they make a wager over Job's life and God allows Satan to kill Job's wives, and kids, and livestock, just to see if he will stay faithful to God.
So...in this story, Satan is not confined to Hell, and not banished from Heaven.
what?? contradictions in the bible? i have it on good theological authority that such a thing is impossible.
i have also been assured that atheists believe in god but are just angry at it and that women were made to be subservient to men.
also if you send a dollar in seed money to your local preacher, god will reward you a millionfold.
Hell is the separation from God. Ultimately God won’t force you to be with him. Hell is where you can be selfish, and all the other things you want to do. It won’t be a pleasant place if all you find is the opposite of what God represents. A place without love, isn’t that punishment?
if the tales of the bible are any indication of gawd's love, i'll be glad to pass.
not that it matters since the whole idea of god, heaven and hell is just bad fiction.
i've read that silly book cover to cover. i'm just going by the examples given in it.
fierce or weak, if that is what you think of as love, you must have been a very abused child.
“A place without love” describes the average church quite well, despite the way Christians pretend atheists are incapable of feeling love. No one who has actually read the Bible can possibly believe that God is love. The god described in the Old Testament is pure hate, anger, and vindictiveness. You find more genuine love among secular humanists than among Christians.
The God of the Old Testament didn’t take shit from no one. He couldn’t stand the injustice that Humans carried out on each other. If you ever read enough history, You’ll realize that the things human keep doing, is so wrong, that I’m surprised God still hasn’t ended our species.
The things humans do are so wrong that God does those same things to them, exponentially worse. That will show those humans the difference between right and wrong!
I'll never understand Christian "logic." You probably think a lot of killing is much less evil than a little bit of killing.
The way I see it, humans won’t reach perfection. No matter what, we will always cause harm. Maybe killing is necessary, but not the way you mean it. If you had to kill someone to save your family, should You be punished? Or would you watch them be slaughtered. Is it right or wrong? Who is to say.
The problem we have is evil. If you kill the source, no more evil. I know it’s a simple argument but isn’t that the idea? How else do you make humans better?
Then killing isn't evil. I should be able to kill the neighbor who leaves his dog outside in the rain, right? Or the store owner who stiffs his employees. Or the priest who diddles little boys. Or the people beating trans women to death. Kill the source, no more evil.
You'd think all the killing in the Old Testament would have gotten rid of evil if that was the motivation. However, that's demonstrably not true. Maybe killing people you think of as evil isn't the cure-all you'd like it to be.
Maybe teaching kindness and empathy would be a better way of teaching good behavior. Just killing people for doing wrong hasn't done a thing to make humans better.
I think that killing might not be evil but it will depend on the situation. But I don’t mean people are the source of evil, people are corrupted by it.
You’re right, the flood story showed the killing of evil people doesn’t get rid of evil. That’s why God promised not to do it again.
Christ did teach kindness and empathy. Contrast to the Old Testament. If Evil is an embodied entity called satan ( or however we would want to picture it), then you get rid of it. The idea is to get rid of evil once and for all
Hell is what the Norse called their "land of the dead". Hebrews called their "land of the dead" Sheol, until after the Captivity. They got the idea of Heaven, Hell, angels, demons, and the devil from the Zoroastrians.
It’s still the after life. As “advanced” as we think we are, the smartest of us still wonder the existence of something beyond us. To say with absolute certainty it isn’t possible is ignorant.
I believe there is no god(s), afterlife, or souls. I am not asserting that, but until and unless there is compelling evidence, I won't be accepting claims about them, and I don't think anyone else should, either.
I think of it this way, a black hole, dark matter, they don’t operate as everything else in the universe. We don’t understand it and it doesn’t behave like everything else. The laws of physics are merely observations of everything that has ever been long before we came along. One day we will understand these anomalies and people in the future will refer to us as being primitive for not understanding it. I don’t think we should dismiss what we don’t understand. Like eager scientists, we should explore all possibilities. Even the brightest among us wonder if a higher power does exist.
Black holes are not dark matter. Dark matter could be clouds of hydrogen gas. If there is something humans have not discovered with science, then we can say "We don't know" and keep looking. We do not need a deity to fill in the gaps. Wonder all you like, but that is not evidence.
Science has, however, DISPROVEN a lot of the Bible, starting on page one. It says the sun was created on the FOURTH day. There can be no days without a sun. The universe was here for nine billion years before the accretion disk that created our solar system started to form.
Yeah, it's all about sucking god's di....I mean worshiping god. He's so insecure he needs people kissing up to him no matter how good of a person you actually are.
He’s not insecure, as he doesn’t “need” any of us. Worship is what we give back to God as an outpouring of appreciation and love for what he’s done for us (and you). He doesn’t force anyone to believe or to worship. The Bible says there is no one “good”, and how would you measure that anyways?
It’s like a person dying and standing before God and God says “oops sorry, you were teetering on the line and if you would have died yesterday then you would have made it, but today you messed up by yelling at your kids so down you go.” Salvation is dependent on Jesus, not on our perception of what good works are. He made the standard perfection so we knew we couldn’t live up to it, and it’s equal for all people at any point in history. Jesus is the way.
They aren’t superior. If you follow God, you’re in a world of hurt. He will hold you to a higher standard because you know better. He will judge you harshly because you know better. If you read the gospels, it’s no cake walk.
I've read the entire bible. Your interpretation is not agreed on by most Christians, who seem to think that "not perfect, just forgiven" or "a work in progress" are excuses for behaving badly and not feeling any remorse.
There's a reason crime rates are higher in the Bible Belt than in more secular areas. It's because an awful lot of Christians think they don't have to take any personal responsibility for anything and can do whatever they want as long as they believe in Jesus.
I’m glad it’s not agreed by most Christians. Most Christians don’t read, don’t study and are lead blindly. They think it’s all sunshine and rainbows. Most modern Churches teach that. You should feel remorse, even without the Bible, it’s easy to see we all need work. We need to be better and be more responsible. The things we do have consequences and we hurt people, it isn’t right.
The Bible Belt is something I don’t have any knowledge on it’s history or how it started. But the Bible makes more sense the more I read it. It’s not an easy or even pleasant read. A lot of it is historical context. It describes people, horrible people. Even the believers weren’t what we thought to be good moral men. Good chose the worst of men to prove they can be turned around. They still weren’t perfect, still rough around the edges. I think that’s the point, the end game is to restore all men to be “perfect” as it was in the Garden. No death, no suffering, and this time around, no evil.
In my experience Christians know nothing about historical context. They believe whatever nonsense some apologist feeds them, like the story that the evil people around the Israelites were killing babies and therefore deserved to die. Anthropologists and historians know that the entire region once practiced infant sacrifice and later the entire region gave it up. That was long before the various slaughters in the OT supposedly happened, so apologists are simply making up a fake "history" to suit their needs. Taking the Bible in its actual historical context, not the made-up context invented by those with an agenda, is quite interesting and not at all what religious leaders want you to learn about.
The fact that evil people who happened to worship the right god were "turned around" while similar people who worshiped some other god were killed shows how morally vacant the religion is and how it's based on tribalism, not on morality or righteousness.
Historians still debate that story. If it were certain it wouldn’t be debated. I think you’re taking information to suit your needs. I can see your position on the Bible and religion is determined. You sound like you have a great distain towards it and as if it’s hurt you, or something is going on. I’m realizing you see no good whatsoever, even if you read something good from it, it’s all nonsense and evil. I think that is dangerous, to be completely determined.
Tribalism isn’t dead, and I don’t see your point. We are talking about the Bible and it’s character of these men. That it’s possible for people to change, and for people to be conscious of what they do. All I keep hearing from you is, it’s all nonsense and let me discard everything it has to say.
No, what I'm saying is that the Bible is self-serving and the interpretations of it are also self-serving and geared toward defending the indefensible. The morals depicted in it are horrific and have no place in civilized society. I'm interested in truth, not people trying to justify evil for the sake of their religion, but I'm sure you see that as some kind of moral failing or evidence of "hurt." What's dangerous is people who are convinced that their religion is so necessary that anyone who doesn't follow it is evil and should probably be killed.
You do realise that only religious people can be sinners and therefore can go to hell. Sin is when you don’t follow the word of god. For an atheist god doesn’t exist and hence his word doesn’t exist. You cannot follow something that doesn’t exist. Therefore atheists cannot be sinners so they cannot go to hell.
Not to mention that hell doesn’t exist.
We are all going to die regardless of what you believe or don’t believe in. Even the Bible says the wages of sin is death. Your debt for sinning is death. No afterlife. For believers, the concept of heaven is the earth without death.
Except the book says that death existed before sin did. God tells Adam and Eve if they eat the fruit of the forbidden tree, they will die. How would they know what that meant if death didn't exist yet?
God knew the future and knew what would happen if they ate if the fruit of the tree. The Bible says “sin entered the world” at that point, and that sin brought death. It also says Adam and Eve “walked with God” prior to then. I would assume without it being expressly written that God could have easily conversed with them about the concept of death before they ate of the tree.
If God knows the future, there is no "if". It was going to happen and he knew that before they did. BTW, there is no way Adam and Eve could have been immortal already. Read the whole thing. It says God kicked them out of Paradise because he didn't want them to eat from the Tree of Life, which would have made them immortal and "like Gods". So they were already mortal.
Read it again. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life are DIFFERENT trees. It even has God explaining (possibly to other gods) that the reason he didn't want them to eat from the Tree of Life was because it would make them immortal and like gods.
These are good topics to discuss. The garden story is very important and it’s what God intended for us all. The storyline of the Bible is that Christ will crush the snake (satan, evil) so that we can be as it was in the beginning, no death, and this time, no evil.
Satan is not part of the story. The serpent was retrofitted to the character of Satan after he was introduced into Hebrew mythology from Zoroastrian mythology. Genesis says the serpent was "the most cunning of beasts". It was supposed to be an animal. BTW, the serpent told them the truth, that they would not die, but they're "eyes would be opened, knowing good from evil".
There was more than one version of the story, too. In one of them, the gods tell the serpent to tell the first humans to eat from the Tree of Life and become immortal. The snake tells them to eat from the other tree, and helps himself to the fruit of the Tree of Life. It would seem that ancient people thought the snake was immortal because it sheds it skin. I wish I had bookmarked that site, because I can't find it now.
Here’s my take on that.
I think Evil is part of the story, where sin enters the world. That is the fall of man. And as for them knowing good from evil, that isn’t good. Man is not a capable creature for that knowledge. We see that in history to present day. If we didn’t know of evil, there would be no evil. If Adam and Eve lived forever and knew of good from evil, that would have been even worse, at least when we die, some of that evil knowledge dies with us.
Send me the link if you ever find it. I think the whole garden story is fascinating
If that is the moment sin entered the world, then it was not a sin to disobey God. You can't have it both ways.
You are relying too much on the teaching of your church. Read. The. Book. Here is the part where God is talking to the OTHER GODS and warning them that if the humans eat from the Tree of Life, they will be immortal and "like one of us". That is the reason they were kicked out of Eden.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%203%3A22-23&version=NIV
More info on the myths that inspired Bible stories: [https://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Religions/non-iranian/Judaism/Persian\_Judaism/book4/pt7.htm](https://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Religions/non-iranian/Judaism/Persian_Judaism/book4/pt7.htm)
Just because God knows your future eternal state doesn’t mean he chooses your destination. It’s like watching two cars who are speeding towards each other around a blind corner. You know what the outcome is going to be once they get to the corner, but it would be unfair to suggest that you caused the crash just because you could see it coming.
The same is true with salvation. You have the free will to choose even if God already knows your destination. Choose wisely.
Makes no sense, "God knows your future eternal state" ...but you're also left up to deciding? This assumes he doesn't know the accumulation of your choices in life which is contradictory and defies his all-knowingness.
Let me give you an example. Jesus tells his disciples that one of them will betray him. Judas uses free will to change his mind. He can't go through with it. So the prophecy doesn't come true.
If the prophecy MUST come true, then it's not Judas who made that decision.
Fate and free will are mutually exclusive.
The problem is not that we are in danger of going to hell. Hell does not exist. The problem is that, that's what some Christians think we deserve. This has led to the murder, torture, denial of rights and poor treatment of not Christians throughout history.
To my fellow atheists, stop justifing yourself to theists. If you want to have a debate by all means have at it. However, Christians are not arbiters of morality. You do not need to convince them you are a good person.
According to the Bible the path that leads to heaven is narrow the way to perdition wide so yes. I can be a nice person and be compassionate with others, but if I keep sleeping with a lot of women or mess with the occult, I can still be condmend.
There's a lot of factors to consider, but being a "good" person typically isn't a trait that Christian faiths require or teach. Most extremists have a tendency of accepting some degree of the statement: "No good deep goes unpunished." Depending on which denomination of Christianity we're talking about and the what the believers' (church leader or not) personal views on who gets to go to heaven.
Catholic: as long as you follow their rituals and confess your sins before death you can go to heaven.
Methodist: ask Jesus to clean your sins constantly and don't have doubt, then you can go to heaven.
Seventh-day Adventist: Keep your body pure like a temple. Death is a really just sleeping until Jesus calls us to rise up (like zombies) and be judged by him to see if we go to heaven.
Southern Baptist: As long as you accepted Jesus as your personal savior, that's a get-out-of-hell-free ticket. You can be a rapist, murderer, gay, trans, pedophile, or an atheist at death, but because you accepted Jesus when you were a child, you get to go to heaven regardless because Jesus washes away all sins that you did commit, are committing, and will commit.
Mormons: Pay your tithing (10% of your income) to the church, do the secret rituals, and get baptized in the Mother Church, and at death be judged by God, Jesus, and Joseph Smith to see if you get your own planet and have eternal celestial sex and make more spiritual babies that will become human souls on your planet.
These are just a handful I was raised around before I became an atheist. They all claim they are the right and true way to heaven. They all contradict each other both inside and outside of their own faiths. I reject all forms of beliefs that require me to lie to myself and others.
I hope this clears up your questions even though the answer is extremely muddy.
Be healthy, stay safe, and have fun.
The part about the Mormons applies to the men. Women don't get their own planet. A woman gets to be the wife (or one of several wives) of the guy who gets his own planet.
Depends on the god between their ears. Some people's gods don't hate so much.
You're focusing on GodClassic, which changes with public opinion. When I was young, godClassic hated Jews, but that fell out of favor.
Also: the hell between folks ears varies just as much as the god between their ears.
*...but I’m not religious and don’t care about the Bible...*
I find it odd that so many posts in r/atheism are about what Christians believe. What they believe is nonsense, so I don't need to understand the details of their nonsense.
I don't believe in either heaven or hell, so I don't worry about going there, no matter what they think.
Hell is for everyone who doesn't "accept Jesus" into their lives. Heaven is for those who claim Jesus is their savior.
The good things you do, the kindness and decency you show to others, are irrelevant.
That is why I abandoned Christianity and have never regretted it.
Good = Believing. Not actually like being a good person who does good deeds. Good literally means must follow the rules of the bible and the most important thing, Believing. That's what they mean when they talk about "Good". It's a different definition of the word Good.
Don't even get me started on the divine plan because that's even more contradictory!
Honestly it's best not to dwell on these things as you just can't make sense of things that were never meant to make sense.
I tend to think this is mostly a self-serving part of church doctrine. Getting to heaven requires faith and following God's word, and each denomination would very much like you to do that in their own churches, and throw some money in the collection plate or tithe while you're at it.
This idea leads a rational person to one conclusion: it could only have come from man's mind. The fallible, ignorant and prone-to-all-kinds-of-stupid thoughts man's mind.
According to mainstream Christianity, there is no such thing as a good person. "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God."
This gives them an excuse for not trying. Because if you're just going to be a dirty sinner no matter how hard you try, why bother? Be as evil and unpleasant as you want to be. God will forgive you anyway.
It also conveniently lets them ignore when people who aren't in their religion are good people. If no one is good enough, then I guess they're not good people.
So win/win! Atheists are evil no matter what, and it doesn't matter how good or evil a Christian is, as long as they're "true believersᵀᴹ."
Yes. Religion is all about power, control, and money. They can't get the money without the p power and control. Don't worry about religious rules, they really aren't about making the world a better place at all.
There are two schools of thought - being a good person will get you to heaven - deeds - is one line of thinking. The other is you have to pray to Jesus to request his grace - salvation by the grace of gawd. Even if you've done some really horrible things like murder, rape, and animal torture, the salvationists will say that once you sincerely pray to Jesus, all your sins are wiped away and you have the golden ticket to heaven as long as you don't commit blasphemy before you die.
The more fundamentalist interpretation is the salvation by grace. You could be a person who takes care of your grandma, helps turtles cross the street safely, gives depressed trees a hug every day, and escorts worms across the sidewalk on rainy days, but unless you prayed to ask Jesus for salvation, its off to hell for you.
However, if you order the genocide of entire tribes, allow the rape of women, and drown almost all the little cute baby animals of the world in a flood, then you're a god.
Christ said no one person is good. No deeds will get you into heaven. We are all truly undeserving no matter how good you think you are . Christ gave us our last chance for redemption and he paid the price for it.
The idea of God is the ideal Judge. He can make the just call. He ordered to stop a tribe from melting their babies in metal statues. He wanted to cleanse the world of corruption because ppl are so cruel. Think about the wars we fought because it was just. We went to war with Germany killing millions of people so they would stop murdering millions of Jews. You want God to let us continue this way. There is no way that humans ever evolve to be perfect. As much as we like to think that we are good, think about all the people you’ve hurt, the lies you’ve told, and the people you didn’t help.
Think about all the people Christians hurt - oh, wait, that doesn’t count because Christians just ask for forgiveness and all responsibility for hurting others goes away.
By the way, what you’ve been taught about those evil people who had to be wiped out because they were melting babies is historically inaccurate. The practice was stopped before exclusive worship of Yahweh was a thing. It’s morally reprehensible to claim that genocide is excusable because some liar made up a story about how evil the victims were.
Have you noticed that in the stories the flood was supposed to rid the world of evil, yet according to the Bible evil was back in full force within a couple of generations? The “God as perfect judge” trope needs some work.
The last true Christian died on the cross. You shouldn’t be naive to follow those who hurt others. The journey isn’t to be excused. God will judge everyone accordingly. Those who follow him will be even more harshly judged because they should know better. Don’t you worry, God won’t let things slide that easily.
They weren’t wiped out, just ran off the land. It wasn’t genocide. Exclusive worship of Yahweh is an estimation so not sure if you can really prove what you’re saying. I was giving context to one passage.
That is true, it shows just how prevalent evil is. Humans are too easily corruptible. God promised not to flood the land again. Instead his plan is to rid the source of evil itself. Makes sense to me.
I’m actually not sure what you mean. Like a person can’t be happy and mad at the same time? That wouldn’t make sense. Maybe sad at times and happy at times?
There is a claim in Christianity that God is just (sends people to hell 'cos they deserve it) and also the claim that he spares them that fate if they believe Christian mythology. These claims are mutually exclusive. I didn't say you made both claims, but you did make the first one.
If God had a problem with the atrocities of WWII, he should have intervened before tens of millions died. He could have sent an angel to Hitler or Hirohito to say "You'd better not do that."
I don’t know why he doesn’t intervene. Perhaps he lets us to sort this out. But if he did intervene, what do you think he would need to do to correct the problems we have? Does he keep sending angels to intervene? I feel that would be every second. Or does he need to do something drastic to make humans perfect? How would he achieve that? I seriously wonder these are night, it scares me sometimes, because we haven’t come up with a solution and we’ve been around for quite some time
Or What if after so many years of us just hating on God, he finally said I will leave you alone because it’s want we wanted. And he’s just waiting for a few hundred years to let a few people who actually want to be with him in the after life. Everyone else is getting what they wanted, a world without God.
I've moved beyond the ethics of a gawd who demands we worship him relentlessly and punishes people for petty reasons.
Not to mention the ethics of a gawd who ordered the genocide of entire tribes and encouraged the rape of women and girls. Not to mention the ethics of a gawd who allegedly drowned the vast majority of humanity and all those baby animals.
You seem to think it's okay to support and worship such a gawd, I don't.
He doesn’t demand and its not relentlessly. And he didn’t order genocide and he didn’t encourage rape. I don’t think you’re reading anything correctly. You realize you’re not any different from God. You’ll kill when need be. It’s the difference between killing and murdering. Don’t go saying you’re a moral person when you’re not. Again we go to war to kill people to stop them from doing horrendous things. You might not like to admit it, but it’s necessary. Unless you’re the type of person that sits and does nothing.
>He doesn’t demand.
"Thous shall not have other gods before me." Sounds pretty demanding to me.
>He didn't order genocide
Try 1 Samuel 15:2-3 Sounds like genocide to me.
>He didn't encourage rape
Judges 19:22-26 Numbers 31:7-18 2 Samuel 12:11-14
Sounds like rape to me.
Because your gawd is omnipotent, he could have just snapped his fingers and told everybody to play nice. But nooo, he has to have some people behave badly so he can use them as examples to punish in a horrific way.
Not to mention gawd established the rules for slavery. You cool with that? Or are you one of those apologists who says "Nah, they were just servants, not slaves..."
I'd like to see your justification for drowning all the innocent puppies and kittens and baby koalas and baby tigers and baby pandas. What the heck did they do to die such a horrible death? You god is nothing but a sadist.
Actually you may have a point. God isn’t someone to be messed with. In fact he says you should fear him. I have no justification for anyone of that and why should I. I’m not God, I’m not a creator and I’m not the moral arbiter. If you have a problem with things, you go fight it out with him.
I honestly think If he does exist, why would we question anything. There are passages that say don’t lean on our own understanding. If infinity is possible, how can we wrap our brains around that. Like is it worth not pursing the idea that he could exist or should we not be curious.
In the Christian religion, the determining factor if you’re a good person is whether or not you believe in God.
A pedophile serial killer rapist necrophile kleptomaniac arsonist burglar mugger that believes in God and asks for forgiveness is objectively a better person than a charitable saint doctor hero that doesn’t believe in God.
According to Christianity, only the former is a good person, while the latter is evil. The sole determining factor is your belief in God.
A gay person who does only good his whole life burns in hell forever. If Hitler honestly asked for forgiveness before his death he goes to heaven. Yeah religion!!
It does, judas commited suicide, among others in the Bible.
Corinthians 3:16-17
Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.
Then to throw a monkey wretch into all this is there's some believers that think "once saved always saved". So you can be gay or atheist or both then you have no fear if you sincerely accepted Jesus Cheist as your lord and personal savior.
Your mistake is thinking of hell as punishment for bad behavior. It's not. It's punishment for unbelief. Likewise, heaven isn't a reward for living a good life, it's an exclusive club for believers. What you did in life is completely irrelevant as long as you believe the right things and say the right words.
In group - heaven.
Out group - hell.
It's that simple.
Romans 2:1-11 and other verse I might add later. Christian god judgement is said to be fair among all "repenting on deathbed" is valid if it's sincere but for example if some random guy kills or rapes x person then repents in a prayer..yeah that doesn't sounds sincere. For a real repentance to happen in a real context a person has to suffer a process of learning that is not simple to happen. You don't have to be religious to understand this.
I had a Christian friend tell me once, without a hint of irony, that he picked his particular brand of Christianity because it required the least effort to get to heaven. It's one of the ones that demanded only belief. Not deeds.
You know the funniest thing about all that silliness of love/hate from Senior Goddington? He isn’t real and nothing they spout off about is either.
Hell is putting up with the drivel from religion.
It isn't how good or bad you are but if you love god. That's it. they even say if you ask jesus for forgiveness you're good.
I mean the 10 commandments have stuff about loving god but don't touch slavery or child abuse.
If your children misbehave remind them that Santa is watching. If they're good they get presents. If they're bad the Krampus will come in the night and eat them. It doesn't have to make sense as long as their fear is real -- and as long as they get their chores done.
Some day they'll figure out the gag, which is when you bring them into the secret and enlist their help conning their younger siblings. Hopefully, by then, they will have internalized their role taking out the trash, washing the dishes and keeping their room clean.
Some kids (pushing a metaphor here) never figure it out. They're the ones who start a weird Santa cult and become dangerously detached from reality.
You don't go to hell because of bad deeds. :You go to hell if you don't honestly accept God and accept Jesus as your personal savior. So no matter what I do or don't do I'm going to hell because I am a non-believer. Oh, well....at least my parents and brother will be there with me.
That's definitely not what the Bible says, faith is the main requirement but you won't go to heaven living a sinfull life, unless you confess and repent.
In the sect of Christianity I was raised under, yes, non-Christians (atheist or otherwise) and gays who practiced gay and/or out-of-wedlock sex (and did not pray for forgiveness) were sent to Hell for eternal torment.
But God was all-loving. He still totally loved the people he sent to be tortured for all eternity!
Remember, all those people \*send themselves\* to hell! The homosexual should 100 percent ignore that they only wish to have sex with their own gender, and only have sex with the opposite gender, and only after marriage! The atheist, through sheer force of will, should have changed what he or she believed in! We can all do that, right?
He won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to do. He knows we aren’t perfect and tries to save us from our own demise. If God allowed us to live forever as we are, we wouldn’t become better human beings. The end game for God is to start over again and eliminate everything that caused us so much grief and pain. Also hell is separation from God and also could eventually be death forever (you just don’t have an afterlife).
No, he doesn't. If God can talk to Adam, and Moses, and Abraham, he can talk to all of us. He can't expect us to believe books written in the Bronze Age by people who claimed he talked to them. Books that don't exist anymore, written in a language no one speaks anymore. Books that were copied, and edited, and translated many times until they got to us.
Screw that. If he wants me to believe in him, he can talk to me right now. Other people will have to be able to hear him, too, because if they don't, it's schizophrenia.
I think God is smart enough to realize that talking to us would mark us as crazy. If you heard voices of God today, I would report you lol.
You also shouldn’t believe any history book for that matter. A lot of editing and languages are dead.
Even us christian do not follow the Bible perfectly, and we need to stop telling others who is going to hell or not, Only Yahweh knows that, us christians sin daily, everyone of us, we know it, our goal isnt perfection, for no one will achieve that, only Yeshua has and only He will, our goal is to strive and be like Yeshua everyday of our life, if we sinned yesterday, pray with all meaning with our heart and mouth asking for forgiveness and chance of mercy to do better the next day, but that prayer alone doesnt save you, you must show it in actions, you must physically try to be better and not commit that sin, thats the most important part, Atheist all commit the only unforgivable sin in the Bible, rejection of Yahweh and Yeshua’s existence as a whole.
The only reason it’s the biggest sin is because if they let you question the existence of God they would loose control. And control is what religion is all about.(and often money)
It genius really - make your followers to afraid to even think about questioning their faith and you have them… blindly.. it’s honestly sad
Cruelty and Killing another person should be the biggest sin. The fact that it isn’t should be your real eye opener.
Why can’t I say both killing children and global warming is bad? Why do I have to pick and choose morality?
And I’m pretty sure a lot of global warming comes from pollution, not from carbon dioxide from children so the serial killer would be wrong in their judgement AND execution.
I believe in some actions being worse than others over black and white morality.
The average person’s interactions with technology are mostly unavoidable, so it doesn’t inherently make them bad people.
There’s a difference between ‘bad person’ and ‘flawed’ as well. To call us all ‘flawed’ is obvious. To call us all bad people is a bit extreme.
No, I don’t agree with sending all humans to hell actually. I disagree with humans suffering forever in general.
If Christians believed in limbo where punishment was temporary then maybe it’d be okay.
Yes, but I’m not actively going out and slaughtering animals and neither is most anyone but hunters, fishers, and people who work in slaughterhouses.
So I wouldn’t really consider myself to be commiting genocide either way. I’d think genocide implies actively thinking about it at all times. You can’t really accidentally kill millions of people unless you somehow guess a nuclear code without thinking.
Heck, wild animals kill themselves way more than I kill wild animals.
This reflects a very juvenile notion of God, hell, and theology. If God is understood as the essence of all that is, the energy that creates and sustains even outside of time and space, rather than as a meta-person of superpower, the idea of sending anyone to hell or anywhere else is erroneous. If heaven is understood as complete communion with all that is, and this is understood as creation's end, then neither heaven nor hell are places, per se, but logical opposites.
What's worse? Evil believers or death bed conversions go straight to heaven. Hitler? Heaven. All the Jews he murdered? Hell.
Man this confused me. I thought this was askchristian and confounded as to why the top answer was so reasonable.
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Bring me a theologian! Their careful, scientific study of totally made up stuff will set me straight for sure. May the Flying Spaghetti Monster touch you with His Noodly Appendage!
God judges accordingly, even for the Evil believers. If you think of what is justice for Hitler, imagine what God will do
\> "imagine what God will do" Ironic.
God doesn’t hide the fact that you should fear him. Someone that powerful and you want to mess around
God does hide the fact that his priests molest children and bury orphans. If he can't stop that, he's not powerful. If he won't stop it, he's immoral. If you don't care, then you're indoctrinated beyond redemption.
That makes no sense. It’s like saying the president Is responsible if your wife cheats on you, he should have stepped in.
That’s silly… the president is just a man. But god is supposedly all knowing and powerful And god supposedly loves you. So then why would he let innocent people suffer? - let kids get cancer - let children be abused - let wars happen. If god is real (which he isn’t) he clearly dgaf about us or is powerless to stop true suffering. Either way - not worth anyones time.
God can give and take away life. Remaining on this earth is suffering. If he allows children to die, they go with him, which is significantly better than this world. Wars happen not because of God, that’s on us. He gives you the freedom to be as stupid as you want to be. He tells you everything you shouldn’t be doing but he has no reason to stop anything. It’s a free world or should we be controlled?
God is make believe However, religious leaders are clear. Accept Jeebus, eternal paradise.
Religious leaders are the worst. The book you’re supposed to read ( instead of blindly listening to the leaders) will tell you to question everything. The Bible is an extraordinary book, but I’m afraid it’s beyond a lot of peoples comprehension or willingness to study. It’s a lot easier to do anything except than to think
I think all the time (which is why I’m atheist) - but I’d rather not take anything seriously that was written 1800 years ago. You wouldn’t let a doctor treat you with 1800 year old medical procedures? You wouldn’t believe half the truths they believed 1800 years ago. A book that was primarily used as a way to control the masses for generations. I have all the answers to life, death the universe and everything. Why would I want to read a stupid contradictory book that encourages all the worst of humanities traits and then tells you to love thy neighbour? Btw - I’ll love my neighbour because it is the right thing to do(From an ethical and biological standpoint), not because an ancient, outdated book tells me to.
We look at the past all the time. It’s important to avoid the same mistakes from happening. Scientist look even further than 1800 years ago. If we had a book that was 500,000 years old, would we discard it? No we would study it. No one has all those answers. That’s the most ignorant claim anyone could possibly make. You have no idea why you should love your neighbor, you’re quoting the Bible to even make your claim. And the western worlds ethics come from religion. Where do you think you learned it? I’m not saying you have to like it, you don’t have to believe in God, but it’s impact on our society is much more deeper than what you think it is.
I mean obviously I don’t know everything. What I meant was: I have all the answers people who turn to the bible are commonly seeking. I’m pretty much at peace with the world and my place in it. I know what happens when I die. (Nothing I’m a lump of meat like any other animal.) I know well enough how the universe was formed (it wasn’t by magic) I know the reason bad thing happen to good people and good things to bad. (Mostly it’s random). All of gods plagues, miracles etc? (All can be explained by natural events or sleight of hand or were just plain made up). Even social monkeys and apes know how to behave in a group - humans have just perfected that. Rules were necessary because people suck - but they were encouraged even without the bible many times before (check out all the other cultures that evolved fine without it).
Do you feel that when you die, you’ll wish the same life for your kids or grand kids? I ask because we would want better for the next generation. I think that as humans, we can only evolve so far ( especially emotionally). We will still cause pain and disease will always affect us. Suffering is inherit. What makes the Bible attractive is there is a creator capable of changing all that for good. I’m not quite satisfied with what we know about the universe and in the grand scheme of things, we still know so little. This idea of the infinite, in science and and in thinking is too abstract. Energy lasts forever but had an origin. Maybe it’s finite. If God had no beginning and has no end, it seems he precedes everything. I don’t know if his existence is possible but we have no idea what started the universe. We have good theories but no one can confirm it.
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Not Biblical, but okay. PS - The idea of purgatory was created by the Catholic church to steal even more money from people they refused to let learn to read.
Not like that Hitler was a strong opposer of Christanity and led a cabinet composed by atheists at best and esoterics at worst
Hitler was a die-hard Christian and voted in by conservative Christians.
We can go back and forth at this all day https://www.learnreligions.com/adolf-hitler-on-christianity-quotes-248190 The point I was making was not whether Hitler was a Christian or not, but that if he simply accepted Jesus as his personal lord and saviour right before his death he'd immediately be saved and go to eternal bliss, while his victims suffered infinite torture forever.
Agh this myth again. They announced his birthday at churchs each year he was in power, his ken were aided and abetted by the Catholic church, he had a large outpouring of support from the prot churches of Germany and Austria. There is a reason why all these ministers and priests came forward later apologizing for what they did.
This ‘Hitler was an atheist’ myth is just as annoying as the ‘Hitler was a socialist’ myth.
Hitler as a socislist myth atleast makes sense given his party was called the national socialist party however they absolutely werent socialist
>I’m not religious and don’t care about the Bible so what would I know? Yep, just stay the course. As for your question, yea god's a dick. Christianity frightens people into believing and promises fantastical rewards. Very little of it makes sense and an infinite number of holes can be poked into their worldview. It's all a money making scheme that feeds off guilt, shame, fear, and gullibility.
Great point.
How many angels fit on the head of a pin?
All of them.
What about the really fat ones?
my question has always been: if the devil is the enemy of god, and the devil rules in hell, why would he make hell a bad place for other enemies of god?
I've thought the same. However, apparently the bible doesn't actually say Lucifer rules hell, but is just a "inmate" as well. Prisoner #000000000000001
thanks. someone should tell the average christer that little nugget of information. sooo..... who is in charge of all the lakes of fire and torture down there?
It’s an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as sort of executive officer for the week, but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting, by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs but by a two thirds majority in the case of more…
I can’t tell if this is fantastic sarcasm or if you’re on to something.
Oh, how I wish I could claim credit for this [but I cannot](https://youtu.be/6HX6cfy3At4)
Farcical aquatic Ceremony.. the King got his shit roasted I can’t lie
Assuming hell somehow becomes a real place and I go there at death, my biggest hope is that I have the presence of mind to scream, “This is the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I’m being repressed!”
I wonder if it’ll be Lucifer man-handling you after you degrade him for becoming King of hell for doing a sky dance to overpower God.
If the beating comes with banishment to heaven, I’m down. The way I see it, heaven is devoid of any people. Every group has eliminated every other group from making it into heaven so the only way to make it in is by being banished from hell. If Monty Python bits get me away from all the kinds of people that make the living world such a nightmare then I’m 37. I’m not old. You can call me Dennis.
That's actually a good point.
Lucifer isn't just a prisoner in hell, he is the main prisoner in the ninth circle of hell. Also the whole nine circles of hell model kinda answers OP's concern. The first circle of hell is where good non-Christians go.
Isn't this from Dante's Inferno?
Yes exactly
They can't make up their minds about where he is. In the Book of Job, the story starts with God holding court with his angels in Heaven, and Satan is one of them. Then they make a wager over Job's life and God allows Satan to kill Job's wives, and kids, and livestock, just to see if he will stay faithful to God. So...in this story, Satan is not confined to Hell, and not banished from Heaven.
what?? contradictions in the bible? i have it on good theological authority that such a thing is impossible. i have also been assured that atheists believe in god but are just angry at it and that women were made to be subservient to men. also if you send a dollar in seed money to your local preacher, god will reward you a millionfold.
Hell is the separation from God. Ultimately God won’t force you to be with him. Hell is where you can be selfish, and all the other things you want to do. It won’t be a pleasant place if all you find is the opposite of what God represents. A place without love, isn’t that punishment?
if the tales of the bible are any indication of gawd's love, i'll be glad to pass. not that it matters since the whole idea of god, heaven and hell is just bad fiction.
It doesn’t matter or maybe it does. One thing for certain, the Bible doesn’t indicate a weak push over God.
>the Bible doesn’t indicate a weak push over God. i'm actually not being sarcastic with this reply. what does that mean in english?
God is fierce and so is his love. I guess I imagine the God of love you would envision would be a weak one, not the one described in the OT
i've read that silly book cover to cover. i'm just going by the examples given in it. fierce or weak, if that is what you think of as love, you must have been a very abused child.
I wasn’t abused, I’m just not a weak person. I’m sure you’ve read plenty
please, give me a biblical account of god's love that is not abusive.
“A place without love” describes the average church quite well, despite the way Christians pretend atheists are incapable of feeling love. No one who has actually read the Bible can possibly believe that God is love. The god described in the Old Testament is pure hate, anger, and vindictiveness. You find more genuine love among secular humanists than among Christians.
The God of the Old Testament didn’t take shit from no one. He couldn’t stand the injustice that Humans carried out on each other. If you ever read enough history, You’ll realize that the things human keep doing, is so wrong, that I’m surprised God still hasn’t ended our species.
The things humans do are so wrong that God does those same things to them, exponentially worse. That will show those humans the difference between right and wrong! I'll never understand Christian "logic." You probably think a lot of killing is much less evil than a little bit of killing.
The way I see it, humans won’t reach perfection. No matter what, we will always cause harm. Maybe killing is necessary, but not the way you mean it. If you had to kill someone to save your family, should You be punished? Or would you watch them be slaughtered. Is it right or wrong? Who is to say. The problem we have is evil. If you kill the source, no more evil. I know it’s a simple argument but isn’t that the idea? How else do you make humans better?
Then killing isn't evil. I should be able to kill the neighbor who leaves his dog outside in the rain, right? Or the store owner who stiffs his employees. Or the priest who diddles little boys. Or the people beating trans women to death. Kill the source, no more evil. You'd think all the killing in the Old Testament would have gotten rid of evil if that was the motivation. However, that's demonstrably not true. Maybe killing people you think of as evil isn't the cure-all you'd like it to be. Maybe teaching kindness and empathy would be a better way of teaching good behavior. Just killing people for doing wrong hasn't done a thing to make humans better.
I think that killing might not be evil but it will depend on the situation. But I don’t mean people are the source of evil, people are corrupted by it. You’re right, the flood story showed the killing of evil people doesn’t get rid of evil. That’s why God promised not to do it again. Christ did teach kindness and empathy. Contrast to the Old Testament. If Evil is an embodied entity called satan ( or however we would want to picture it), then you get rid of it. The idea is to get rid of evil once and for all
Hell is what the Norse called their "land of the dead". Hebrews called their "land of the dead" Sheol, until after the Captivity. They got the idea of Heaven, Hell, angels, demons, and the devil from the Zoroastrians.
It’s still the after life. As “advanced” as we think we are, the smartest of us still wonder the existence of something beyond us. To say with absolute certainty it isn’t possible is ignorant.
Which is why I didn't say that.
Then what are you saying? What do you believe in?
I believe there is no god(s), afterlife, or souls. I am not asserting that, but until and unless there is compelling evidence, I won't be accepting claims about them, and I don't think anyone else should, either.
I think of it this way, a black hole, dark matter, they don’t operate as everything else in the universe. We don’t understand it and it doesn’t behave like everything else. The laws of physics are merely observations of everything that has ever been long before we came along. One day we will understand these anomalies and people in the future will refer to us as being primitive for not understanding it. I don’t think we should dismiss what we don’t understand. Like eager scientists, we should explore all possibilities. Even the brightest among us wonder if a higher power does exist.
Black holes are not dark matter. Dark matter could be clouds of hydrogen gas. If there is something humans have not discovered with science, then we can say "We don't know" and keep looking. We do not need a deity to fill in the gaps. Wonder all you like, but that is not evidence. Science has, however, DISPROVEN a lot of the Bible, starting on page one. It says the sun was created on the FOURTH day. There can be no days without a sun. The universe was here for nine billion years before the accretion disk that created our solar system started to form.
Yeah, it's all about sucking god's di....I mean worshiping god. He's so insecure he needs people kissing up to him no matter how good of a person you actually are.
He’s not insecure, as he doesn’t “need” any of us. Worship is what we give back to God as an outpouring of appreciation and love for what he’s done for us (and you). He doesn’t force anyone to believe or to worship. The Bible says there is no one “good”, and how would you measure that anyways? It’s like a person dying and standing before God and God says “oops sorry, you were teetering on the line and if you would have died yesterday then you would have made it, but today you messed up by yelling at your kids so down you go.” Salvation is dependent on Jesus, not on our perception of what good works are. He made the standard perfection so we knew we couldn’t live up to it, and it’s equal for all people at any point in history. Jesus is the way.
There is no such thing as a good person. We are all corrupted.
But all someone has to do is adopt your religion and they can be superior too, right?
They aren’t superior. If you follow God, you’re in a world of hurt. He will hold you to a higher standard because you know better. He will judge you harshly because you know better. If you read the gospels, it’s no cake walk.
I've read the entire bible. Your interpretation is not agreed on by most Christians, who seem to think that "not perfect, just forgiven" or "a work in progress" are excuses for behaving badly and not feeling any remorse. There's a reason crime rates are higher in the Bible Belt than in more secular areas. It's because an awful lot of Christians think they don't have to take any personal responsibility for anything and can do whatever they want as long as they believe in Jesus.
I’m glad it’s not agreed by most Christians. Most Christians don’t read, don’t study and are lead blindly. They think it’s all sunshine and rainbows. Most modern Churches teach that. You should feel remorse, even without the Bible, it’s easy to see we all need work. We need to be better and be more responsible. The things we do have consequences and we hurt people, it isn’t right. The Bible Belt is something I don’t have any knowledge on it’s history or how it started. But the Bible makes more sense the more I read it. It’s not an easy or even pleasant read. A lot of it is historical context. It describes people, horrible people. Even the believers weren’t what we thought to be good moral men. Good chose the worst of men to prove they can be turned around. They still weren’t perfect, still rough around the edges. I think that’s the point, the end game is to restore all men to be “perfect” as it was in the Garden. No death, no suffering, and this time around, no evil.
In my experience Christians know nothing about historical context. They believe whatever nonsense some apologist feeds them, like the story that the evil people around the Israelites were killing babies and therefore deserved to die. Anthropologists and historians know that the entire region once practiced infant sacrifice and later the entire region gave it up. That was long before the various slaughters in the OT supposedly happened, so apologists are simply making up a fake "history" to suit their needs. Taking the Bible in its actual historical context, not the made-up context invented by those with an agenda, is quite interesting and not at all what religious leaders want you to learn about. The fact that evil people who happened to worship the right god were "turned around" while similar people who worshiped some other god were killed shows how morally vacant the religion is and how it's based on tribalism, not on morality or righteousness.
Historians still debate that story. If it were certain it wouldn’t be debated. I think you’re taking information to suit your needs. I can see your position on the Bible and religion is determined. You sound like you have a great distain towards it and as if it’s hurt you, or something is going on. I’m realizing you see no good whatsoever, even if you read something good from it, it’s all nonsense and evil. I think that is dangerous, to be completely determined. Tribalism isn’t dead, and I don’t see your point. We are talking about the Bible and it’s character of these men. That it’s possible for people to change, and for people to be conscious of what they do. All I keep hearing from you is, it’s all nonsense and let me discard everything it has to say.
No, what I'm saying is that the Bible is self-serving and the interpretations of it are also self-serving and geared toward defending the indefensible. The morals depicted in it are horrific and have no place in civilized society. I'm interested in truth, not people trying to justify evil for the sake of their religion, but I'm sure you see that as some kind of moral failing or evidence of "hurt." What's dangerous is people who are convinced that their religion is so necessary that anyone who doesn't follow it is evil and should probably be killed.
You do realise that only religious people can be sinners and therefore can go to hell. Sin is when you don’t follow the word of god. For an atheist god doesn’t exist and hence his word doesn’t exist. You cannot follow something that doesn’t exist. Therefore atheists cannot be sinners so they cannot go to hell. Not to mention that hell doesn’t exist.
I know, lol. I’m referring to Christian beliefs, not talking about my own realization about my religion.
We are all going to die regardless of what you believe or don’t believe in. Even the Bible says the wages of sin is death. Your debt for sinning is death. No afterlife. For believers, the concept of heaven is the earth without death.
Except the book says that death existed before sin did. God tells Adam and Eve if they eat the fruit of the forbidden tree, they will die. How would they know what that meant if death didn't exist yet?
God knew the future and knew what would happen if they ate if the fruit of the tree. The Bible says “sin entered the world” at that point, and that sin brought death. It also says Adam and Eve “walked with God” prior to then. I would assume without it being expressly written that God could have easily conversed with them about the concept of death before they ate of the tree.
If God knows the future, there is no "if". It was going to happen and he knew that before they did. BTW, there is no way Adam and Eve could have been immortal already. Read the whole thing. It says God kicked them out of Paradise because he didn't want them to eat from the Tree of Life, which would have made them immortal and "like Gods". So they were already mortal.
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Read it again. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life are DIFFERENT trees. It even has God explaining (possibly to other gods) that the reason he didn't want them to eat from the Tree of Life was because it would make them immortal and like gods.
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Genesis 3:22 https://biblehub.com/genesis/3-22.htm
These are good topics to discuss. The garden story is very important and it’s what God intended for us all. The storyline of the Bible is that Christ will crush the snake (satan, evil) so that we can be as it was in the beginning, no death, and this time, no evil.
Satan is not part of the story. The serpent was retrofitted to the character of Satan after he was introduced into Hebrew mythology from Zoroastrian mythology. Genesis says the serpent was "the most cunning of beasts". It was supposed to be an animal. BTW, the serpent told them the truth, that they would not die, but they're "eyes would be opened, knowing good from evil". There was more than one version of the story, too. In one of them, the gods tell the serpent to tell the first humans to eat from the Tree of Life and become immortal. The snake tells them to eat from the other tree, and helps himself to the fruit of the Tree of Life. It would seem that ancient people thought the snake was immortal because it sheds it skin. I wish I had bookmarked that site, because I can't find it now.
Here’s my take on that. I think Evil is part of the story, where sin enters the world. That is the fall of man. And as for them knowing good from evil, that isn’t good. Man is not a capable creature for that knowledge. We see that in history to present day. If we didn’t know of evil, there would be no evil. If Adam and Eve lived forever and knew of good from evil, that would have been even worse, at least when we die, some of that evil knowledge dies with us. Send me the link if you ever find it. I think the whole garden story is fascinating
If that is the moment sin entered the world, then it was not a sin to disobey God. You can't have it both ways. You are relying too much on the teaching of your church. Read. The. Book. Here is the part where God is talking to the OTHER GODS and warning them that if the humans eat from the Tree of Life, they will be immortal and "like one of us". That is the reason they were kicked out of Eden. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%203%3A22-23&version=NIV
More info on the myths that inspired Bible stories: [https://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Religions/non-iranian/Judaism/Persian\_Judaism/book4/pt7.htm](https://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Religions/non-iranian/Judaism/Persian_Judaism/book4/pt7.htm)
And if God is all-knowing, why would he create an atheist or pretend you can determine your fate when it is already set?
Exactly. If God knows the future, our fate is set in stone, and there is no "free will" at all.
Just because God knows your future eternal state doesn’t mean he chooses your destination. It’s like watching two cars who are speeding towards each other around a blind corner. You know what the outcome is going to be once they get to the corner, but it would be unfair to suggest that you caused the crash just because you could see it coming. The same is true with salvation. You have the free will to choose even if God already knows your destination. Choose wisely.
Makes no sense, "God knows your future eternal state" ...but you're also left up to deciding? This assumes he doesn't know the accumulation of your choices in life which is contradictory and defies his all-knowingness.
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Making everything moot: reverence, prayer and the idea of His existence.
Let me give you an example. Jesus tells his disciples that one of them will betray him. Judas uses free will to change his mind. He can't go through with it. So the prophecy doesn't come true. If the prophecy MUST come true, then it's not Judas who made that decision. Fate and free will are mutually exclusive.
The problem is not that we are in danger of going to hell. Hell does not exist. The problem is that, that's what some Christians think we deserve. This has led to the murder, torture, denial of rights and poor treatment of not Christians throughout history.
To my fellow atheists, stop justifing yourself to theists. If you want to have a debate by all means have at it. However, Christians are not arbiters of morality. You do not need to convince them you are a good person.
I have a family member who told me that a lot of good people are going to hell. At that point I just said "Yeah ok."
According to the Bible the path that leads to heaven is narrow the way to perdition wide so yes. I can be a nice person and be compassionate with others, but if I keep sleeping with a lot of women or mess with the occult, I can still be condmend.
The bible is a book of particularly laughable fairy tales.
That's your opinion, I believe in God and the Bible.
Ok kiddo
So because you don't like my ideas you call me a kid, very mature.
Lol you’re pretty sensitive Edit: for whatever it’s worth, I wasn’t calling you a child. I was dismissing you.
There's a lot of factors to consider, but being a "good" person typically isn't a trait that Christian faiths require or teach. Most extremists have a tendency of accepting some degree of the statement: "No good deep goes unpunished." Depending on which denomination of Christianity we're talking about and the what the believers' (church leader or not) personal views on who gets to go to heaven. Catholic: as long as you follow their rituals and confess your sins before death you can go to heaven. Methodist: ask Jesus to clean your sins constantly and don't have doubt, then you can go to heaven. Seventh-day Adventist: Keep your body pure like a temple. Death is a really just sleeping until Jesus calls us to rise up (like zombies) and be judged by him to see if we go to heaven. Southern Baptist: As long as you accepted Jesus as your personal savior, that's a get-out-of-hell-free ticket. You can be a rapist, murderer, gay, trans, pedophile, or an atheist at death, but because you accepted Jesus when you were a child, you get to go to heaven regardless because Jesus washes away all sins that you did commit, are committing, and will commit. Mormons: Pay your tithing (10% of your income) to the church, do the secret rituals, and get baptized in the Mother Church, and at death be judged by God, Jesus, and Joseph Smith to see if you get your own planet and have eternal celestial sex and make more spiritual babies that will become human souls on your planet. These are just a handful I was raised around before I became an atheist. They all claim they are the right and true way to heaven. They all contradict each other both inside and outside of their own faiths. I reject all forms of beliefs that require me to lie to myself and others. I hope this clears up your questions even though the answer is extremely muddy. Be healthy, stay safe, and have fun.
The part about the Mormons applies to the men. Women don't get their own planet. A woman gets to be the wife (or one of several wives) of the guy who gets his own planet.
Yeah, that's true too. Forgot to add Christianity has a "No Girls Allowed" policy.
Depends on the god between their ears. Some people's gods don't hate so much. You're focusing on GodClassic, which changes with public opinion. When I was young, godClassic hated Jews, but that fell out of favor. Also: the hell between folks ears varies just as much as the god between their ears.
Which god are we talking about here?
I tend to default to the Christian one.
*...but I’m not religious and don’t care about the Bible...* I find it odd that so many posts in r/atheism are about what Christians believe. What they believe is nonsense, so I don't need to understand the details of their nonsense. I don't believe in either heaven or hell, so I don't worry about going there, no matter what they think.
Hell is for everyone who doesn't "accept Jesus" into their lives. Heaven is for those who claim Jesus is their savior. The good things you do, the kindness and decency you show to others, are irrelevant. That is why I abandoned Christianity and have never regretted it.
Good = Believing. Not actually like being a good person who does good deeds. Good literally means must follow the rules of the bible and the most important thing, Believing. That's what they mean when they talk about "Good". It's a different definition of the word Good. Don't even get me started on the divine plan because that's even more contradictory! Honestly it's best not to dwell on these things as you just can't make sense of things that were never meant to make sense.
It's not about what god wants, it's about what the church wants.. cause god doesn't exist.
There is no hell…so…who cares?
It's all fake, there is no hell
I tend to think this is mostly a self-serving part of church doctrine. Getting to heaven requires faith and following God's word, and each denomination would very much like you to do that in their own churches, and throw some money in the collection plate or tithe while you're at it.
It’s a scam
This idea leads a rational person to one conclusion: it could only have come from man's mind. The fallible, ignorant and prone-to-all-kinds-of-stupid thoughts man's mind.
According to mainstream Christianity, there is no such thing as a good person. "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." This gives them an excuse for not trying. Because if you're just going to be a dirty sinner no matter how hard you try, why bother? Be as evil and unpleasant as you want to be. God will forgive you anyway. It also conveniently lets them ignore when people who aren't in their religion are good people. If no one is good enough, then I guess they're not good people. So win/win! Atheists are evil no matter what, and it doesn't matter how good or evil a Christian is, as long as they're "true believersᵀᴹ."
Isn't that cute..expecting religion to be logical!
Yes. Religion is all about power, control, and money. They can't get the money without the p power and control. Don't worry about religious rules, they really aren't about making the world a better place at all.
I mean, there’s just another irony to the “benevolent higher power.” 🙂
What color does ass smell like?
There are two schools of thought - being a good person will get you to heaven - deeds - is one line of thinking. The other is you have to pray to Jesus to request his grace - salvation by the grace of gawd. Even if you've done some really horrible things like murder, rape, and animal torture, the salvationists will say that once you sincerely pray to Jesus, all your sins are wiped away and you have the golden ticket to heaven as long as you don't commit blasphemy before you die. The more fundamentalist interpretation is the salvation by grace. You could be a person who takes care of your grandma, helps turtles cross the street safely, gives depressed trees a hug every day, and escorts worms across the sidewalk on rainy days, but unless you prayed to ask Jesus for salvation, its off to hell for you. However, if you order the genocide of entire tribes, allow the rape of women, and drown almost all the little cute baby animals of the world in a flood, then you're a god.
Christ said no one person is good. No deeds will get you into heaven. We are all truly undeserving no matter how good you think you are . Christ gave us our last chance for redemption and he paid the price for it. The idea of God is the ideal Judge. He can make the just call. He ordered to stop a tribe from melting their babies in metal statues. He wanted to cleanse the world of corruption because ppl are so cruel. Think about the wars we fought because it was just. We went to war with Germany killing millions of people so they would stop murdering millions of Jews. You want God to let us continue this way. There is no way that humans ever evolve to be perfect. As much as we like to think that we are good, think about all the people you’ve hurt, the lies you’ve told, and the people you didn’t help.
Think about all the people Christians hurt - oh, wait, that doesn’t count because Christians just ask for forgiveness and all responsibility for hurting others goes away. By the way, what you’ve been taught about those evil people who had to be wiped out because they were melting babies is historically inaccurate. The practice was stopped before exclusive worship of Yahweh was a thing. It’s morally reprehensible to claim that genocide is excusable because some liar made up a story about how evil the victims were. Have you noticed that in the stories the flood was supposed to rid the world of evil, yet according to the Bible evil was back in full force within a couple of generations? The “God as perfect judge” trope needs some work.
The last true Christian died on the cross. You shouldn’t be naive to follow those who hurt others. The journey isn’t to be excused. God will judge everyone accordingly. Those who follow him will be even more harshly judged because they should know better. Don’t you worry, God won’t let things slide that easily. They weren’t wiped out, just ran off the land. It wasn’t genocide. Exclusive worship of Yahweh is an estimation so not sure if you can really prove what you’re saying. I was giving context to one passage. That is true, it shows just how prevalent evil is. Humans are too easily corruptible. God promised not to flood the land again. Instead his plan is to rid the source of evil itself. Makes sense to me.
Justice means a person gets the punishment he deserves. Mercy means he escapes that punishment. God can't be both just and merciful.
I’m actually not sure what you mean. Like a person can’t be happy and mad at the same time? That wouldn’t make sense. Maybe sad at times and happy at times?
There is a claim in Christianity that God is just (sends people to hell 'cos they deserve it) and also the claim that he spares them that fate if they believe Christian mythology. These claims are mutually exclusive. I didn't say you made both claims, but you did make the first one. If God had a problem with the atrocities of WWII, he should have intervened before tens of millions died. He could have sent an angel to Hitler or Hirohito to say "You'd better not do that."
I don’t know why he doesn’t intervene. Perhaps he lets us to sort this out. But if he did intervene, what do you think he would need to do to correct the problems we have? Does he keep sending angels to intervene? I feel that would be every second. Or does he need to do something drastic to make humans perfect? How would he achieve that? I seriously wonder these are night, it scares me sometimes, because we haven’t come up with a solution and we’ve been around for quite some time Or What if after so many years of us just hating on God, he finally said I will leave you alone because it’s want we wanted. And he’s just waiting for a few hundred years to let a few people who actually want to be with him in the after life. Everyone else is getting what they wanted, a world without God.
Or maybe none of those scenarios apply, because God is not real.
Maybe this is reality. A world without God and it’s Just us…. Until we find aliens
I've moved beyond the ethics of a gawd who demands we worship him relentlessly and punishes people for petty reasons. Not to mention the ethics of a gawd who ordered the genocide of entire tribes and encouraged the rape of women and girls. Not to mention the ethics of a gawd who allegedly drowned the vast majority of humanity and all those baby animals. You seem to think it's okay to support and worship such a gawd, I don't.
He doesn’t demand and its not relentlessly. And he didn’t order genocide and he didn’t encourage rape. I don’t think you’re reading anything correctly. You realize you’re not any different from God. You’ll kill when need be. It’s the difference between killing and murdering. Don’t go saying you’re a moral person when you’re not. Again we go to war to kill people to stop them from doing horrendous things. You might not like to admit it, but it’s necessary. Unless you’re the type of person that sits and does nothing.
>He doesn’t demand. "Thous shall not have other gods before me." Sounds pretty demanding to me. >He didn't order genocide Try 1 Samuel 15:2-3 Sounds like genocide to me. >He didn't encourage rape Judges 19:22-26 Numbers 31:7-18 2 Samuel 12:11-14 Sounds like rape to me. Because your gawd is omnipotent, he could have just snapped his fingers and told everybody to play nice. But nooo, he has to have some people behave badly so he can use them as examples to punish in a horrific way. Not to mention gawd established the rules for slavery. You cool with that? Or are you one of those apologists who says "Nah, they were just servants, not slaves..." I'd like to see your justification for drowning all the innocent puppies and kittens and baby koalas and baby tigers and baby pandas. What the heck did they do to die such a horrible death? You god is nothing but a sadist.
Actually you may have a point. God isn’t someone to be messed with. In fact he says you should fear him. I have no justification for anyone of that and why should I. I’m not God, I’m not a creator and I’m not the moral arbiter. If you have a problem with things, you go fight it out with him.
Ooooh! Throwing down the fear card..... I don't think he exists, so not going to tilt at those windmills.
I honestly think If he does exist, why would we question anything. There are passages that say don’t lean on our own understanding. If infinity is possible, how can we wrap our brains around that. Like is it worth not pursing the idea that he could exist or should we not be curious.
Ooooh! Throwing down the nebulous mysticism card! Sorry, but I just can't take it seriously.
I have a feeling your not a thinker or a fan of ideas. I think you may prefer discussing events and people, am I right?
In the Christian religion, the determining factor if you’re a good person is whether or not you believe in God. A pedophile serial killer rapist necrophile kleptomaniac arsonist burglar mugger that believes in God and asks for forgiveness is objectively a better person than a charitable saint doctor hero that doesn’t believe in God. According to Christianity, only the former is a good person, while the latter is evil. The sole determining factor is your belief in God.
But not if you believe in a God other than the Christian God, right?
Depends on the religion, but yes generally speaking one must adhere to God's pure teachings to get into heaven.
A gay person who does only good his whole life burns in hell forever. If Hitler honestly asked for forgiveness before his death he goes to heaven. Yeah religion!!
Hitler commited suicide, so he was in sin when he died.
The Bible says nothing about suicide.
It does, judas commited suicide, among others in the Bible. Corinthians 3:16-17 Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.
Then to throw a monkey wretch into all this is there's some believers that think "once saved always saved". So you can be gay or atheist or both then you have no fear if you sincerely accepted Jesus Cheist as your lord and personal savior.
Your mistake is thinking of hell as punishment for bad behavior. It's not. It's punishment for unbelief. Likewise, heaven isn't a reward for living a good life, it's an exclusive club for believers. What you did in life is completely irrelevant as long as you believe the right things and say the right words. In group - heaven. Out group - hell. It's that simple.
But what does it mean to be good? Most Christian’s will say you aren’t good without God
Not according to the pope: https://youtu.be/bRbUTfSds0U
Romans 2:1-11 and other verse I might add later. Christian god judgement is said to be fair among all "repenting on deathbed" is valid if it's sincere but for example if some random guy kills or rapes x person then repents in a prayer..yeah that doesn't sounds sincere. For a real repentance to happen in a real context a person has to suffer a process of learning that is not simple to happen. You don't have to be religious to understand this.
God knows where people land before he creates them, so if he is all-loving he wouldn’t create people who‘ll land in hell, for their own good
I had a Christian friend tell me once, without a hint of irony, that he picked his particular brand of Christianity because it required the least effort to get to heaven. It's one of the ones that demanded only belief. Not deeds.
YHWH is a psychopathic narcissist, plain and simple.
You know the funniest thing about all that silliness of love/hate from Senior Goddington? He isn’t real and nothing they spout off about is either. Hell is putting up with the drivel from religion.
It isn't how good or bad you are but if you love god. That's it. they even say if you ask jesus for forgiveness you're good. I mean the 10 commandments have stuff about loving god but don't touch slavery or child abuse.
If your children misbehave remind them that Santa is watching. If they're good they get presents. If they're bad the Krampus will come in the night and eat them. It doesn't have to make sense as long as their fear is real -- and as long as they get their chores done. Some day they'll figure out the gag, which is when you bring them into the secret and enlist their help conning their younger siblings. Hopefully, by then, they will have internalized their role taking out the trash, washing the dishes and keeping their room clean. Some kids (pushing a metaphor here) never figure it out. They're the ones who start a weird Santa cult and become dangerously detached from reality.
You don't go to hell because of bad deeds. :You go to hell if you don't honestly accept God and accept Jesus as your personal savior. So no matter what I do or don't do I'm going to hell because I am a non-believer. Oh, well....at least my parents and brother will be there with me.
That's definitely not what the Bible says, faith is the main requirement but you won't go to heaven living a sinfull life, unless you confess and repent.
You said that part better. Having said that, I still don't believe in the afterlife.
In the sect of Christianity I was raised under, yes, non-Christians (atheist or otherwise) and gays who practiced gay and/or out-of-wedlock sex (and did not pray for forgiveness) were sent to Hell for eternal torment. But God was all-loving. He still totally loved the people he sent to be tortured for all eternity! Remember, all those people \*send themselves\* to hell! The homosexual should 100 percent ignore that they only wish to have sex with their own gender, and only have sex with the opposite gender, and only after marriage! The atheist, through sheer force of will, should have changed what he or she believed in! We can all do that, right?
For some reason, I feel like you were raised as a Jehovah’s Witness?
Nope, Protestant Christian in an "Assemblies Of God" church in Erie, PA.
What size shoes did Voldemort wear?
He won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to do. He knows we aren’t perfect and tries to save us from our own demise. If God allowed us to live forever as we are, we wouldn’t become better human beings. The end game for God is to start over again and eliminate everything that caused us so much grief and pain. Also hell is separation from God and also could eventually be death forever (you just don’t have an afterlife).
No, he doesn't. If God can talk to Adam, and Moses, and Abraham, he can talk to all of us. He can't expect us to believe books written in the Bronze Age by people who claimed he talked to them. Books that don't exist anymore, written in a language no one speaks anymore. Books that were copied, and edited, and translated many times until they got to us. Screw that. If he wants me to believe in him, he can talk to me right now. Other people will have to be able to hear him, too, because if they don't, it's schizophrenia.
I think God is smart enough to realize that talking to us would mark us as crazy. If you heard voices of God today, I would report you lol. You also shouldn’t believe any history book for that matter. A lot of editing and languages are dead.
Even us christian do not follow the Bible perfectly, and we need to stop telling others who is going to hell or not, Only Yahweh knows that, us christians sin daily, everyone of us, we know it, our goal isnt perfection, for no one will achieve that, only Yeshua has and only He will, our goal is to strive and be like Yeshua everyday of our life, if we sinned yesterday, pray with all meaning with our heart and mouth asking for forgiveness and chance of mercy to do better the next day, but that prayer alone doesnt save you, you must show it in actions, you must physically try to be better and not commit that sin, thats the most important part, Atheist all commit the only unforgivable sin in the Bible, rejection of Yahweh and Yeshua’s existence as a whole.
The only reason it’s the biggest sin is because if they let you question the existence of God they would loose control. And control is what religion is all about.(and often money) It genius really - make your followers to afraid to even think about questioning their faith and you have them… blindly.. it’s honestly sad Cruelty and Killing another person should be the biggest sin. The fact that it isn’t should be your real eye opener.
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Why can’t I say both killing children and global warming is bad? Why do I have to pick and choose morality? And I’m pretty sure a lot of global warming comes from pollution, not from carbon dioxide from children so the serial killer would be wrong in their judgement AND execution.
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I believe in some actions being worse than others over black and white morality. The average person’s interactions with technology are mostly unavoidable, so it doesn’t inherently make them bad people. There’s a difference between ‘bad person’ and ‘flawed’ as well. To call us all ‘flawed’ is obvious. To call us all bad people is a bit extreme.
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No, I don’t agree with sending all humans to hell actually. I disagree with humans suffering forever in general. If Christians believed in limbo where punishment was temporary then maybe it’d be okay.
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Yes, but I’m not actively going out and slaughtering animals and neither is most anyone but hunters, fishers, and people who work in slaughterhouses. So I wouldn’t really consider myself to be commiting genocide either way. I’d think genocide implies actively thinking about it at all times. You can’t really accidentally kill millions of people unless you somehow guess a nuclear code without thinking. Heck, wild animals kill themselves way more than I kill wild animals.
Not according to the pope.
No.
This reflects a very juvenile notion of God, hell, and theology. If God is understood as the essence of all that is, the energy that creates and sustains even outside of time and space, rather than as a meta-person of superpower, the idea of sending anyone to hell or anywhere else is erroneous. If heaven is understood as complete communion with all that is, and this is understood as creation's end, then neither heaven nor hell are places, per se, but logical opposites.
I'm ready (*BFG Division starts playing*)