Hell?

[Dharma Wheel]

Christianity thus creates the "fear", then "relieves it".
No doubt this all seems unfair. So be it.

Indeed, you have said that better than I could.

 

[Rationalt]

It sets its "questions" to "man" based upon theological statements......."man has fallen"........"God is Holy"........."God cannot look upon sin"........" to forgive God must find some way to do so while allowing for his justice".....etc etc.............Until the questions are such that only Christianity itself can provide the answer.

So "twas grace that taught my heart to fear and grace my fears relieved"....Just so! Christianity thus creates the "fear", then "relieves it". Perhaps why so many have abandoned it, now it no longer has the clout to create the fear.

Father is ready to punish for eternity and Son is ready to save.That is how i see it in a nutshell.

 

[Jane_the_Bane]

That seems like the usually Christian rhetoric, I am afraid, but I belief man should judge the Bible based on the rules and morality of man.

This brings up a very interesting line of thought.

Imagine that there was a species whose mental abilities and insights were so profound that our own achievements seemed no more impressive to them than a chimpanzee using a stick to catch ants seems to us.
In their ethical system, we rank upon the same rung as "mere animals" do in most of our own.

Now, imagine that this alien species found that human flesh was a delicacy, and started to hunt us for sport.

We'd call them evil, yet to them, their actions would be as morally uncompromising as killing a chicken.

Now, on the same note, a hypothetical omniscient entity might very well operate along the lines of a moral code that is utterly alien to us. Yet there would be no reason whatsoever for us to call him/her/it "good" - that value judgment would only make sense in relation to our own species, and our own ethical dimensions.


Some fundamentalist Christians like to argue along the lines of "your standard vs. God's standard". They do not seem to realize that this argument is not necessarily in favour of their deity of choice.

 

[Tariki]

Father is ready to punish for eternity and Son is ready to save.That is how i see it in a nutshell.

Not sure I agree...........a little bit uncertain......

Never been one for the Trinity, as I can't understand a word of any attempted explanation. But for me, using Christian terminology, "father" and "son" - being "one" - are both "ready" to "save" for all eternity. The rest is on our side of the equation.....(if indeed, there IS an equation....)

 

[Timothew]

#1 reason I left Christianity.

I view that as a horrible revenge mentality. I'd rather go to Hell than worship a being that would eternally punish for finite crimes.

There is another option. Take Chistianity and leave eternal torment. ET isn't in the bible anyway.

 

[hikersong]

This brings up a very interesting line of thought.

Imagine that there was a species whose mental abilities and insights were so profound that our own achievements seemed no more impressive to them than a chimpanzee using a stick to catch ants seems to us.

I think you make a good point, but...our mental abilities and insights are not the only thing that are superior to chimps...not to mention chickens. We have also developed emotional responses of empathy...the ability to understand how someone (human or otherwise) is feeling and to adjust our behaviour accordingly. Therefore some humans become vegetarian for empathetic reasons. And most humans don't believe in a justice that involves malicious revenge.

I would expect (or at least hope) that beings (or gods) who are far more mentally superior to us would also be far more empathetic. Therefore I would
expect them to understand that our pain would be a different, more painful, pain to that of a chicken. I would expect them to adjust their behaviour accordingly.

Which is why the Torturing God of many believers is clearly lower on the evolutionary scale than the humans he is alleged to have created.

 

[Jane_the_Bane]

I think you make a good point, but...our mental abilities and insights are not the only thing that are superior to chimps...not to mention chickens. We have also developed emotional responses of empathy...the ability to understand how someone (human or otherwise) is feeling and to adjust our behaviour accordingly. Therefore some humans become vegetarian for empathetic reasons. And most humans don't believe in a justice that involves malicious revenge.

Empathy is not an exclusively human trait, but has demonstrably been shown to exist in plenty of other social species - and not just the other Great Apes, either.

As for most humans not embracing a code of justice that involves the aspect of revenge: I doubt that this holds true. The death penalty might have been abolished in many countries during the course of the 20th century, but far too many people still hold on to the notion that justice means PAYBACK.

I would expect (or at least hope) that beings (or gods) who are far more mentally superior to us would also be far more empathetic. Therefore I would
expect them to understand that our pain would be a different, more painful, pain to that of a chicken. I would expect them to adjust their behaviour accordingly.

You think chickens feel less pain than we do? What gives you that impression? Their reaction to being hunted is the same as ours - fear and flight. Their reaction to being hurt is the same as ours: pain.

And everybody who has ever visited a slaughterhouse or a modern fishing vessel knows just how empathetic humans are when it comes to species whom they consider food.

Which is why the Torturing God of many believers is clearly lower on the evolutionary scale than the humans he is alleged to have created.

There is no such scale in biology. No "higher" and no "lower" ranks - at least not in the way you seem to imply.

 

[Meepy]

That seems like the usually Christian rhetoric, I am afraid, but I belief man should judge the Bible based on the rules and morality of man. Jesus Christ solved none of those problems if men are still to be caste into hell for an eternity, his sacrifice (to himself, apparently) would be pointless. He would only offer salvation to those that believe in him, and thus he would not be saving mankind. What is the point of dying for the sins of mankind, if many of mankind still has to suffer because of it? He adds nothing new (apart from a new focus to salvation), unless you believe that Jews all went to hell because they didn't have Christ.

Jesus died for the whole world. Whether humans choose to respond to God's grace is up to them, but God's grace always precedes human free will. Humans don't go to hell unless they actively reject God's free gift of grace.

Humans respond to God by the Holy Spirit invigorating them towards God. However the supression of this calling is imputed upon the humans free will, and thus justice is only left for them, which is hell.

Complaining about this is like complaining there is a cure for cancer but that you have to take the pill by your own choice. And then you lament the pill and cure itself for "making" you choose its cure. It is a ridiculous analogy.

If you don't take the cure , you die. You died because you refused to take that cure. Not because of the cure itself "blackmailing" you to take it. Surely you don't lament doctors for "blackmailing" you to take a medicine when you are sick.

 

[Tariki]

Jesus died for the whole world. Whether humans choose to respond to God's grace is up to them, but God's grace always precedes human free will. Humans don't go to hell unless they actively reject God's free gift of grace.

Humans respond to God by the Holy Spirit invigorating them towards God. However the supression of this calling is imputed upon the humans free will, and thus justice is only left for them, which is hell.

Complaining about this is like complaining there is a cure for cancer but that you have to take the pill by your own choice. And then you lament the pill and cure itself for "making" you choose its cure. It is a ridiculous analogy.

If you don't take the cure , you die. You died because you refused to take that cure. Not because of the cure itself "blackmailing" you to take it. Surely you don't lament doctors for "blackmailing" you to take a medicine when you are sick.

Thank you for your exposition of your theology. "Complaining" about it is what I have sought to do throughout this thread, and has nothing to do with refusing to take cures, for cancer , or what not. If such justifications for other human beings suffering eternally seems justified to you, OK. I find your theology repugnant. But as I say, if you are happy with it, so be it. Live with it.

For me, there are far better ways of understanding the Christian Faith ( in fact I debate and commune with many Progressive Christians on another forum), but mainly because of those like yourself, I choose to live within the Pure Land Faith of Buddhism, where Reality itself seems more congenial to the developement of empathy towards others, and where I have found the reality of Grace to be expressed with wonderful clarity.

All the best

 

[hikersong]

Empathy is not an exclusively human trait, but has demonstrably been shown to exist in plenty of other social species - and not just the other Great Apes, either.

I didn't mean to imply it was. It is more developed in human beings...though not that developed:

As for most humans not embracing a code of justice that involves the aspect of revenge: I doubt that this holds true. The death penalty might have been abolished in many countries during the course of the 20th century, but far too many people still hold on to the notion that justice means PAYBACK.

Right. I agree. If you read my post I added the word malicious. I am thinking of revenge that goes beyond the OT concept of an eye for an eye. None of this negates the point I was trying to make though.

You think chickens feel less pain than we do? What gives you that impression? Their reaction to being hunted is the same as ours - fear and flight. Their reaction to being hurt is the same as ours: pain.

A big factor in human pain is the imagination. I have seen evidence (sorry, I can't provide it) which suggests that the pain a human anticipates is greater than the physical pain they experience. But you are correct I can't tell you exactly what a chicken is experiencing. And I wasn't meaning to imply that a chicken doesn't feel pain.

And everybody who has ever visited a slaughterhouse or a modern fishing vessel knows just how empathetic humans are when it comes to species whom they consider food.

I'm not arguing with you. But I'll clearly need to explain my point a bit more explicitly next time.

There is no such scale in biology. No "higher" and no "lower" ranks - at least not in the way you seem to imply.

And yet you yourself were describing an imaginary species with profoundly greater intelligence and insight than us. Which seems to me like some sort of scale. But now you say that this is not biologically possible. I'm a little confused.

Anyway, for clarity's sake, my main point was that a creator God should be more evolved in areas of empathy than his or her creation.

 

[Robban]

Fire, flames, pain. What do you folks think about cremation?
I am against it, absolutely.
Or does this deserve it,s own thread?

 

[Eudaimonist]

Fire, flames, pain. What do you folks think about cremation?

It seems fine to me. I will most likely take this option.

I am against it, absolutely.

Why?


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[Robban]

It seems fine to me. I will most likely take this option.



Why?


eudaimonia,

Mark

Well, simply because, when the soul leaves the body, the body is just a shell that should best be buried the same day if possible. It is not at all certain that the soul leaves the body completely at once. It depends how much it has attached itself to it,s surroundings, for example if it has been longing for home since it was awakened, or if it was so in love with everything down here, so it maybe difficult to say good bye.
It most probably is a great mistake to think of the body suffering at all after the soul has gone out of it. The only way this would be possible is, God forbid, that someone should be buried alive. It is the soul that if need be goes through a cleansing process. So if a body were to be put into an oven to be burnt, and the soul was still lingering, this would cause awful pain to the soul.

 

[razeontherock]

Father is ready to punish for eternity and Son is ready to save.That is how i see it in a nutshell.

How can you harmonize that with this?

Isaiah 33:22 For the LORD [is] our judge, the LORD [is] our lawgiver, the LORD [is] our king; he will save us."

 

[razeontherock]

This brings up a very interesting line of thought.

Imagine that there was a species whose mental abilities and insights were so profound that our own achievements seemed no more impressive to them than a chimpanzee using a stick to catch ants seems to us.
In their ethical system, we rank upon the same rung as "mere animals" do in most of our own.

Now, imagine that this alien species found that human flesh was a delicacy, and started to hunt us for sport.

We'd call them evil, yet to them, their actions would be as morally uncompromising as killing a chicken.

Now, on the same note, a hypothetical omniscient entity might very well operate along the lines of a moral code that is utterly alien to us. Yet there would be no reason whatsoever for us to call him/her/it "good" - that value judgment would only make sense in relation to our own species, and our own ethical dimensions.


Some fundamentalist Christians like to argue along the lines of "your standard vs. God's standard". They do not seem to realize that this argument is not necessarily in favour of their deity of choice.

Cue the Hitchkock theme song, but even while it's playing realize G-d's goodness is not determined by our logic. He's simply not the alien from "Alien."

 

[Jane_the_Bane]

Cue the Hitchkick theme song, but even while it's playing realize G-d's goodness is not determined by our logic. He's simply not the alien from "Alien."

And again: if a deity's concept of goodness is not our concept of goodness, and in fact bears little to no relation to it - then what reason do we have to call it "good" to begin with? It would make more sense to call it "zangness", with "zang" being the unfathomable quality that totally baffles our logic and our feeble minds.

"Good" is defined in very specific ways. Even those who have never spent too much thought on the issue would recognize it instinctively, for the most part.
Yet ordering a community to execute one of their own (a neighbour, friend, cousin, father, son) by pelting his screaming, agonized body with stones until he finally succumbs to death - and issuing this order on account of the heinous offense of picking kindlewood on the wrong day of the week - that's not ethically good or just by any definition of those terms.

 

[Eudaimonist]

I zang all of you.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[Tariki]

And again: if a deity's concept of goodness is not our concept of goodness, and in fact bears little to no relation to it - then what reason do we have to call it "good" to begin with? It would make more sense to call it "zangness", with "zang" being the unfathomable quality that totally baffles our logic and our feeble minds.

"Good" is defined in very specific ways. Even those who have never spent too much thought on the issue would recognize it instinctively, for the most part.
Yet ordering a community to execute one of their own (a neighbour, friend, cousin, father, son) by pelting his screaming, agonized body with stones until he finally succumbs to death - and issuing this order on account of the heinous offense of picking kindlewood on the wrong day of the week - that's not ethically good or just by any definition of those terms.

I think I've quoted this before somewhere, a few words from the philosopher John Stuart Mill.......To say that God's goodness may be different in kind from man's goodness, what is it but saying, with a slight change of phraseology, that God may possibly not be good?

Picking up on the working on the sabbath, certainly this is a very unsavory view of Deity, and personally I would not seek to defend it. (Those who would seek to do so, let them go ahead.) But leading on from this, there is the incident during the life of Jesus when his disciples were seen picking ears of corn on the sabbath by the ardent religionists of His own day. They condemned the disciples, as you would I suppose, having studied the OT as they would have done. Jesus tells them that one greater than the sabbath was now before them, and that I will have mercy, and not sacrifice.

So we have a God who orders the death of those who would break His laws, who then Incarnates and condemns those who seek to keep to them to the best of their abililty. No doubt, with the great gift of hindsight, we see ourselves as acknowledging that which is greater than the sabbath and seeing with clear eyes that The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath. Yet, with all the proof texting that goes on with the NT these days among certain of the faithful, it would seem sometimes, at least to me, that it would only be hindsight, and hindsight alone, that would enable them to do so. So often a single verse is enough to condemn the gays, or a host of others who are not up to their own exhalted standards of "morality".

Christ ended the episode by asking for mercy, not sacrifice. That , at least for me, is where the "zangness" enters into the equation!

 

[Robban]

I think I've quoted this before somewhere, a few words from the philosopher John Stuart Mill.......To say that God's goodness may be different in kind from man's goodness, what is it but saying, with a slight change of phraseology, that God may possibly not be good?

Picking up on the working on the sabbath, certainly this is a very unsavory view of Deity, and personally I would not seek to defend it. (Those who would seek to do so, let them go ahead.) But leading on from this, there is the incident during the life of Jesus when his disciples were seen picking ears of corn on the sabbath by the ardent religionists of His own day. They condemned the disciples, as you would I suppose, having studied the OT as they would have done. Jesus tells them that one greater than the sabbath was now before them, and that I will have mercy, and not sacrifice.

So we have a God who orders the death of those who would break His laws, who then Incarnates and condemns those who seek to keep to them to the best of their abililty. No doubt, with the great gift of hindsight, we see ourselves as acknowledging that which is greater than the sabbath and seeing with clear eyes that The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath. Yet, with all the proof texting that goes on with the NT these days among certain of the faithful, it would seem sometimes, at least to me, that it would only be hindsight, and hindsight alone, that would enable them to do so. So often a single verse is enough to condemn the gays, or a host of others who are not up to their own exhalted standards of "morality".

Christ ended the episode by asking for mercy, not sacrifice. That , at least for me, is where the "zangness" enters into the equation!

Could it not be, that to see,realize and receive mercy, would not be possible without a sacrifice. The sacrifice being one,s "self" or pride, ego,
could it be that until one has humbled one,s self, one cannot see, realize or receive "life". Maybe we all battle with this daily.

 

[Jane_the_Bane]

Well, simply because, when the soul leaves the body, the body is just a shell that should best be buried the same day if possible. It is not at all certain that the soul leaves the body completely at once. It depends how much it has attached itself to it,s surroundings, for example if it has been longing for home since it was awakened, or if it was so in love with everything down here, so it maybe difficult to say good bye.
It most probably is a great mistake to think of the body suffering at all after the soul has gone out of it. The only way this would be possible is, God forbid, that someone should be buried alive. It is the soul that if need be goes through a cleansing process. So if a body were to be put into an oven to be burnt, and the soul was still lingering, this would cause awful pain to the soul.

Please don't take this the wrong way, let alone as an attempt to insult you, but this whole train of thoughts and the fears attached to it made me smile.
They remind me of the way my little cousin used to reason when he was eight years old.