Hi Freodin good day to your part of the globe. You say Like telling those who disagree with our world veiw that they should be fed to the lions. Well yes we have had some experience with loins ourselves. But Not to worry unlike your clan we only take atheists to visit the zoo : )
I also said "Or to be eternally tortured for who they love".
"Your clan" also burned people on the stake for having different opinions, holding different views of the world... or even worshipping the same God is a slightly different way.
The people who send Christians to the lions were... believers. Theists. Not christians, but believers in deities and the divine.
They did what they did not out of spite or hatred, but because they were completely convinced that this was what the gods demanded.
Not quite "my clan".
As to eternal punishment and the lake of fire. Yes there are different viewpoints amongst the church to what hell is. But not to worry that shouldn’t concern you. As atheists don’t generally believe in the bible. Hope you are all are right on that one. Or you might all get a really Big fright if your not.
It's all about giving people a big fright, to scare them into submission. It doesn't work anymore once you realize that the whole concept is... empty.
But that is not the problem that atheists have with the idea of "hell".
It is the idea - the human idea, promoted by humans, defended by humans, implemented by humans - that people
deserve to be in hell. And they sell this idea as "love".
Consider this: Let's say I think Christians should be fed to the lions. Not because out of hate... but because you deserve to be fed to the lions. For being a Christian. I would love to spare you this fate... and you could do it, if you just dropped this evil belief. But you won't. You are stubborn. Reprobate. Your heart is hardened. You deserve to be fed to the lions. I'm really sorry that this is the case... but I am just telling you the truth.
That's not very nice. It's in fact quite horrible if you imagine it... and it is not even the worst way to go that humans have come up with.
But we won't stop there. You are so much more evil than that... being fed to the lions is to good for you. You will just die and that's that. You deserve a much worse fate.
So we will make sure that, even while you are being mauled and bitten and slashed and eaten by lions, you won't die. We will keep you alive, for another round. Over and over and over again. No escape. No rescue. No saviour comming for you. Just eternal torture.
And you deserve it. For being a Christian.
That's even less nice. It is too horrible to imagine. Not even I, who think you should be subjected to this, like to imagine it. I am really sorry that this will happen to you. Oh, it pains me so much that you will go through this. But you deserve it. For being a Christian.
Regardless of what I may feel or think about it: you deserve it. This is what will happen to you, inevitably, if you continue in your ways. The ways you think are fine... but they aren't. They are abominable... and you deserve to be horribly tortured for stubbornly keeping to them.
Now that would be about the worst idea that I think any human could come up with about another human being. Any human being... absolutely no exception.
But in reality, it is just an idea. It won't happen. Hurray!
Yet there is a rub. A tiny little problem. If you really think that another person is so absolutely evil that they deserve that monsterous fate... how will it influence your
real behaviour towards them? How are you going to treat them?
Are you going to demand that they should be punished right now, with worldly justice? Because, if they are that evil... surely you cannot simply let them go on? Are you just going to treat them like lesser beings? People who do not deserve the same treatment like the "good" people do?
If you go around and preach that people deserve to be in hell, you are not showing love. You are showing selfishness.
The freedom of conscience tampered with the acknowledgment of rights of others. Equality Liberty and fraternity was not that what the French Revolution taught. Sadly it was a mere changing of the guard the old replaced by the new. But it was a nice thought.
Considering that the "old guard" was the theocratically dominated society of medieval Europe, I don't think this is a point in your favour.
And it is not that this "nice thought" was tried and discarded... the humanistic movement and the enlightenment were, with all their mistakes and failures, the basis of our modern society.
Actually those rights you speak of have always been there ranging from the Bible, Aristotle and Plato and who could forget Buddha and Confucius and so many more. Freodin those freedoms you have mentioned have functioned rather well at times . Freodin I think that It’s not really laws and principles that are at fault.
Yes... so many more. Humans. More humans who have thought about things and came to certain conclusions. Some nice, some not so nice. Some correct, some false. Some helpful, some horrendous. Human.
It just seems that there are two natures continually at war within ourselves that does affect the whole essence of the human race. One seeks to love and the other seeks to destroy which often no moral law or goodness cannot restrain.
I agree. The major driving force behind human history is human nature. Good or bad. The best things that have ever happened to humans was done by other humans. The worst things that have ever happened to humans was done by other humans.
All of it is of human orgin. It won't change, on a general scale.
But as long as we don't recognize that it is
all of human origin, we will keep making the mistakes that are based on the idea that some of it is "divine".
Just my thoughts. Hope your side of the globe a sunny one for you today.
Could be a little less sunny. Heat wave. Though I think an Australian would just laugh about the mild temperatures.