How Christians Can Make The World A Better Place

Yet the NT is the same type of fear and submission in the OT, just repackaged for a new generation of human. Instead of God being like the pagan pantheons (generally indifferent to people), he's more compassionate yet still sees to punish you if you're out of line for all eternity. Underline on the 'all eternity' part because that's important.

I really don't even see how people would desire to live in heaven if some family members or friends didn't make it. It'd be a dealbreaker for me even if I was a strong theist and would cause all sorts of chaos on a cosmic scale.

"You've made it to Heaven but Grandpa Seth is down in hell broiling over an open flame. So.. Milk and Honey, anyone?"

Hell and it's existence alone show this precarious balance of reward and punishment being meted out by the monotheisms. Other religions have come up with other ways of describing afterlives but if you use your mental faculties to question God or stray off the set path (we're not even talking about murder, rape or genocide) for you, this is rewarded with eternal hellfire? Why would God be so... insecure? Does he not know of human curiosity?

Not to mention the whole loophole of being a total douchebag and converting before death to get your mealticket to heaven.


If and when any evidence for that comes forth I'd be fine with admitting we're just someone's bad run at SimUniverse.


The idea that religions are atheistic to one another was pretty much the point I was making a few pages back. The idea of a supreme being is well and good (though without evidence) but to tell me that across time you're sure of the correct religion to follow is a stretch... a great big stretch.

Wow I left for work with my beginning post on page 10, hit refresh and now page 17! Lol. Not sure if I should back read.

The description of the afterlife states that you would be unaware of the fact that family members didn't make it. Because of the 'no pain, no suffering' I don't know if you would forget about the ones that don't make it entirely or what. The focus is to be praising God, and that overwhelms your "conscious" so to speak so much, that really nothing else matters.

You should, the discussion has taken on many new facets it never touched in the first 10 pages.

At this point we've made it to matter preservation and teleportation.

I HAVE THE ANSWER

Teleportation?! Beam me up Scotty!

DON"T COME JAMMING THAT STUFF DOWN MY THROAT!


jk <3

Hwang Mi is so beautiful...

lmao!

& I agree wholeheartedly

I'll give you my answers for all of this when I get home. I can't guarantee that it won't sound like I'm dropping acid. You're putting me in the hippie-sphere. LOL!

Then we'd all basically be automata in heaven caught in a cycle of infinite worship.

That sounds frightening from your description. Being unable to think of family, friends and unable to do anything of our own volition? Basically free will revoked.

KIRK NEVER SAID BEAM ME UP SCOTTY IN THE SERIES.

To quote a friend who happens to be a ST nerd.


Boldly go where no religion thread has gone before!

The description is more along the lines of you will not feel the pain of their loss, not that you will not remember them.

Point being, it won't bother you that someone you know didn't make it. How that works, is only for me to find out once I've passed. You aren't forced into a cycle of worship in heaven, you are joyous to be in His presence and the want to do so consumes you. It isn't scary at all. Ever had a moment in your life so amazing that nothing in that moment could wipe the smile off your face? That everything that happened the rest of the day was just awesome by extension of that wonderful thing? That is what worshipping God will be like in the afterlife.

Ever have those moments when you are smoking a fat one and the whole world makes sense for a second, but then you lose that feeling and want it back so bad? That's what I believe the afterlife will feel like.

Had that feeling, but not due to those circumstances.

So god emmits a drug that makes you really happy and WANT to worship him non stop for all eternity.

Mindless cyclic worship for all eternity sounds horrifying, even if you pair it with a "magic happy button".

Also, I don't have the time to review the rest of this thread, did you answer my previous question?

Do you believe people that don't share your beliefs will go to hell and be tortured forever?

The very idea of denying me the knowledge of my earthly life makes me into an automata - a robot devoid of the knowledge that makes me who I am and you who you are. Call it removing 'sin' but the balance of good and evil makes people uniquely who they are.

What if grandfather was a major inspiration to me in life? Without his memories, I would not be who stands before the numbers in heaven. Even if we assume it doesn't bother me, that doesn't make the system right.

My memory will have been wiped because obviously the first thing I'd ask of God is to save my grandfather from being a feast to a nest of demons. So of course the favor was done and the memories removed to avoid anything unfortunate from happening like genuine anger steeped in love for a family member.

But of course this is just human logic at work here.

On having a moment that makes me feel euphoric? Yeah, Ive had those and the only reason I feel the way I do is because I've had times that I have felt lower than the lowest worm in the soil. It's that balance that makes bliss so blissful and sorrow so sorrowful.

To only know bliss with no sorrow undermines the power of bliss itself.

how does a simple thread about how its better to be nice to other people become this huge distracted debate over everything under the sun except for the OP's point?

Someone justified genocide, and it all went crazy after that.

Why is water wet?

I think a few people here would argue that some concepts do not mesh with the OPs "intent" of good will to others.

It's hard to say "I just want to love everyone", then simultaneously broadcast that you believe everyone that thinks differently will be TORTURED FOR ALL ETERNITY IN THE FLAMING HELLFIRES OF DESTRUCTION by the god of love.

Alright! Three Mexican martinis with my meal...LET'S DO THIS!!! =)


I would rather take the lessons of redemption and forgiveness from the NT, but yeah...I understand that that is nothing but cherry-picking to atheists.

I know we have been all over the subject of Hell in a couple of threads. 'Dante's Inferno', plain and simple. A human illustration of the afterlife that, to me, is pretty similar to the Greek idea of Tartarus. Now, I can't for the life of me remember the author of 'Dante's Inferno', but seeing as though it was written during the Renaissance period, I've always thought that the author was just swiping his description of Hell from 'Aeneid' (sp?), so the Christian idea of Hell is simply Greek. Which is funny, because the Christian kissing-cousin is Judaism, and isn't their version of hell just nothingness where EVERY dead person goes? (I could be very wrong.)

I, personally, would like to think that there is a place for everyone, and that maybe evil people just rot in the ground. I know that this may be some sort of childish consolation for myself, but, like you, I would hope that we would rejoin family and friends at some point. If it's not souls, in the traditional sense, that take the next step over, then I'm still open to thinking that maybe things like Quantum Consciousness (What I think you were touching on earlier.) and Morphic Resonance are how beings "continue".

As for the bolded, I LOLed. Yeah...That's pretty deplorable. I know I don't have all the answers, but at least I'll say that while I'm on my deathbed. At least some people can stick to their guns whether they're loaded or not.


Fair enough. I think /shrug, "I don't know," should be my mantra now.


See, I completely understand you on this. It's probably one of the tricks that atheists have of up their sleeve in discussions that can make a conversation come to a halt because it leads back to intolerance within deists. I know I probably have very very superficial knowledge of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam, but at least I'm trying. Can't say much for others, but whatever. They're accountable for their selves.

Whether we like to admit it or not, ALL religion is fascinating in the historical, sociological, and psychological sense. I mean, why is this even a topic available to us if it wasn't something so thought provoking?

Wow, I missed that one. Work made me miss like 1p pages, and I just don't have the energy to go back and read them.

I do want to once again point out that the majority of atheists are not gnostic atheist, and are agnostic atheists.

"I can't know for sure" is part of our mantra.

It just so happens that it is, in full: "I do not believe in any supernatural deities, but I can't know for sure."

It was Bertrand Russel who said it best. To paraphrase, I am agnostic to religion much in the same way that I am agnostic to the fact that there may be a tea kettle floating between Earth and Mars. I cannot prove there is not one, but until there is any evidence for it I dismiss the claim.

Q: how can Christians make the world a better place?
A: moving to Mars

repost?

TL;DR

Oh I agree the sociological, historical and psychological aspects of religions are fascinating and worthy of study because they represent the myriad ways humanity has gone about trying to explain the unknown. Our observations across cultures have resulted in some very creative explanations for stuff observed over our centuries of development.

From Bifrost being a rainbow bridge between Midgard and Asgard explaining the purpose of an aurora (or a literal rainbow) to Norseman to reasons why certain foods are banned within the Islamic, Hindu and Jewish culture humans have really stretched the limits of the imagination to tell tales that still intrigue our modern internet-age society today.

Just sun-worshipers could occupy a thread worth of information.

I left the thread at page 10 before going to bed and it's already at 17 in the morning >.>
A quick skim of 7 pages made me want to comment on couple points, but I guess I'll have to wait for another chance.

About why life on earth instead of other planet, why are we so quick to conclude on something? There is yet something to denounce life could flourish on certain place in the universe. What we always look for is earth-like life. That is, the planet must be in Goldilocks zone, have atmosphere and certain habitable temperature, etc.
Our exploration to what universe call 'life' is probably just only at the very small slice.
If we are to travel back in time before primordial soup formed, without the knowledge what we have now regarding Goldilocks zone and other requirements of habitable zone, we probably wouldn't be able to say that this earth going to be a habitable planet.. not until the next 1 billion years of the planet life time.

Maybe the title of this thread should be "How people can make this world a better place."