Who's going to Hell? Let's have a show of hands...come on, raise them up high!!!

Right in Two - Tool - 10000 Days.

This approaches the current topic as well as brings in the whole Israel/Hezbolah situation. (not that I agree with it.. I just think it's a cool song and adds some topics for discussion )

Code:

Angels on the sideline,
Puzzled and amused.
Why did Father give these humans free will?
Now they're all confused.

Don't these talking monkeys know that Eden has enough to go around?
Plenty in this holy garden, silly monkeys
Where there's one you're bound to divide it
Right in two

Angels on the sideline,
Baffled and confused.
Father blessed them all with reason,
And this is what they choose?

Monkey killing monkey killing monkey over pieces of the ground.
Silly monkeys give them thumbs they forge a blade
And where there's one they're bound to divide it
Right in two

Monkey killing monkey killing monkey over pieces of the ground.
Silly monkeys give them thumbs they make a club,
And beat their brother down.
How they survive so misguided is a mystery.
Repugnant is a creature who would squander the ability,
To lift an eye to Heaven, conscious of his fleeting time here.

Gotta divide it all right in two (x4)

They fight till they die, over wind, over sky
They fight over lie, over blood, over anything
They fight over love, over sun, over nothing
They fight till they die, over what? for their lives end

Angels on the sideline again,
Benched along with patience and reason.
Angels on the sideline again,
Wondering where this tug of war will end.

Gotta divide it all right in two (x3)
Right in two (x2)

You may listen Here: (Requires Windows Media Player)
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Bad wording on my part, it's not elitist to have the choice of heaven/hell but that we are trying to make that choice for people. We, you, me, the next reader of this, have no clue who will go to heaven for in the end - it isn't our choice is it? Only He (She?) will decide.

As for working off your sins, why shouldn't you have to atone? Why should it be as easy as "Sorry Father, I have sinned"? Doesn't that strike you as an easy out?

-qor72

 

The religious hell is a construct developed and supported to give religions more control over you.

 

All the Biblical quotes and questions as to their intended meaning floating around the thread have gotten me thinking. All the quotes here are in modern English, a language that didn't exist between 7,000 and 1,900 years ago, the timespan during which the various parts of the Bible were first recorded in writing. The Old Testament was derived from the Jewish Torah, originally written in Hebrew. The New Testament was originally written in Greek. Obviously, the original text has been translated several times in order to arrive at the current English version which we have today. The copy-of-a-copy nature of this process would seem to suggest the possibility of the intended meaning of biblical passages being diluted due to things like words with dual meanings, words with different meanings in different cultural contexts, different cultural contexts themselves, etc.

I decided to do a small, not entirely scientific, translation experiment with Babel Fish, just to translate a simple sentence a few times to see what happened to the original meaning. I chose the old typewriter-calibration text, which works well enough, as it illustrates a fairly simplistic concept, which should minimize the possibility of the translation engine misinterpreting context:

"The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs."

I translated it from English to German first:

"Der schnelle braune Fuchs sprang über die faulen Hunde."

Next, I translated from German to French:

"Le renard brun rapide a sauté sur les chiens putréfiés."

Finally, I translated French back to English:

"The fast brown fox jumped on the putrefied dogs."

Here, you can see that small ambiguities in these languages are enough to change the meaning of the original phrase a bit. We're dealing here with three modern languages with a fair amount of common ground culturally between them, and a fairly simple concept. The Bible has been translated from ancient languages with which we have less cultural context, and deals with the greatest questions facing humankind. It seems to me that the possibility is very high that the current Bible contains translation errors which have altered its meaning. I have to confess to being ignorant of the process of translation and refinement, though.

 

I'm afraid I'm trying to get ready to leave town tomorrow and will be gone for at least a week, so the time I have to resond is less that what I need to effectively do so. None-the-less, i'd like to try to reply to some of the posts here, although I'll not get to all. Perhaps I'll be able to pick back up when I get back.

If I read your first statement right, which I might not be doing, I'm not sure that I agree that anyone here has attempted to do so. Again, maybe I'm confused, but I don't believe anyone has the ability to make such a decision for another. I don't think that the expression of one's beliefs constitutes the forcing of those beliefs on another. Now, if i were to constrain you and repeatedly yell them at you, threatening your life and demanding your conversion...well, we all agree that that would be wrong. But even then, no one person can make a decision or even force a decision on someone. Someone can force an action upon another person, but they cannot force a decision upon someone else. Ultimately, everyone is responsible for their own decisions and actions.

Moving on...As for the ultimate decision on acceptance or rejection from Heaven, then yes I would have to say that God is the one who will decide that. It is my belief, however, that God has provided a framework through which we can gain entry. Not only has God established the framework, He committed Himself to the permanence of such a framework, as well as guaranteeing is function.

Its like compulsury registration at a university that you find out doesn't have any teachers or classes, but you are still required to turn in work. Unfortunately for you, you'll be given zero input as to what the work should be about, how long the assignments should be, or what degree of excellence will be required. Tests? Yup, but you don't know where, when, or what kind. Finally, another kicker. You don't get graded along the way. You pay for the four years and at the end they tell you if you pass or fail. Oh...and if you fail, off to the chopping block. How could you decide what to do? What was appropriate? You couldn't. And yet everything - your very continued existence - hinged on your ability to perform. Everything would depend on a potentially capricious judge or a completely unknown set of standards.

I don't believe that God is either capricious or unreasonable. I believe that He has set out a way for us to have relationship with Him. I believe that He clearly outlined that way. I believe that, included in the instructions, God guarantees His faithfulness to the standard and His fairness and justice to those He is responsible for (being all of humanity). If God were not just and faithful, I do not believe He would be God.

Finally, as for the working off of the sins part. I would point you to a piece of text written by Paul, a man of significant historical importance with regards to the early Christian church. He wrote in a letter to the group of Christians at the city of Ephesus the following: "...For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast..." (note: this was a crux of the Reformation) Our forgiveness hinges 100% on the sacrificial gift of Christ on the cross. It is completely dependant on the grace of God (grace being essentially the bestowing of favor to those who have not earned it) because we are incapable of earning His favor through works. The story of the Bible, front to end, cover to cover is full of humanity, broken and sinful; incapable of living perfectly right before God – incapable of following the laws God set forth. And yet!!! God decided to take a hand and do what man could not - re-establish relationship between God and man by making it possible for man to be free from the power of sin and providing for forgiveness of sin. Only God could provide this, as only He could provide the perfect sacrifice – a sacrifice great enough to bear the burden of all the sin of humanity to history’s end – embodied in His son.

Now if man were capable of doing enough ‘good’ to earn salvation – why should omniscient God sacrifice His son on the cross? Why should Jesus allow himself to go through the suffering, rejection, and pain he experienced if it were not necessary? If there was a way for us to atone for our sins by ourselves…then God made a mistake by dying on the cross, thus invalidating his God-hood. God cannot act in a manner incongruent with His nature. God being intrinsically perfect, cannot violate Himself by becoming imperfect.

Ok…this turned out to be much much longer than I thought it would, and this is only a cursory explanation altough perhaps not very concise…Sorry

 

I don't mean to ruffle any feathers or anything, so please don't take what I say too critically, as we all are allowed our own beliefs.

I believe heaven, hell, god, jesus, religion itself is simply a fairy tale no different than santa. Be good, and you'll get presents and go to heaven! Be naughty and you get a lump of coal and an eternity of hellish suffering. It's an ingenious idea however. Lots of evil in this world is curbed by the fear of going to hell. Thats not my main point however.

Religion also gives people peace of mind. It's a hard fact that humans fear the unknown. Why do we fear the dark? Because we don't know what is inside of that darkness. Using the term "darkness" itself makes the sentence it is used in sound evil. What happens when we die? Religion says we either go to heaven or hell. This way when a loved one dies, you can say "They're in a better place." thus alleviating the pain you feel in your heart. It's very painful to think "this person is gone forever" so instead, people choose to believe their loved ones are in the paradise known as heaven. Bottom line: We fear death. Religion gives us an answer to what comes after death, be it true or not.

Christianity vs Evolution. Straight up, which one has more concrete, undeniable facts with physical evidence to support itself? If the Earth hasn't been around for billions of years, why are there native rocks billions of years old on it? Why are there dionsaur bones? Why was a massive "planet killer" sized asteroid crater found that is now probably the confirmed reason dinosaurs went extinct? The bible doesn't meantion anything about a massive rock falling from the sky, and even if it did, it would be explained as "god's wrath". The bible says Earth was created some 5000 years ago, that humans just appeared because God willed it. Then how does God explain the concrete proof that we evolved from primates? It also suggests the sky was just a bubble separating Earth from God's realm. We've already been past that sky. The sky that could not be transcended without death when the bible was written. See where I'm going? Perspectives change, most often thanks to scientific discoveries. Who is to say God's very existence will be disproven some day when we find out we're just a scientific experiment of some aliens? Far fetched? Not so much as a supernatural all powerful being saying "let there be light" and boom, there's light.

I refuse to believe something simply because an old book claims it happened, with little to no supporting evidence. Hell, if the bible said humans were full of cream cheese, people would believe it, because GOD said so. It teaches people to turn away from logic and blindly believe what they're told in exchange for the comfort of "knowing" what happens after death and that God is watching over them.

That's how I see it anyway.

 

... =P

 

Personally, a life without sin is a boring, uninteresting prayer fest.

Las Vegas here I come!

 

I quote the Principia Discordia (http://www.ology.org/principia/body.html) :

 

Most religions have Pagan DNA. We, as simple creatures, thought there must be gods, when we began to think about stuff, so we did what we could to appease them.

Just turns out that eventually some religions got more people to kill the others to become the dominant ones over time.

A strong religion has a large kill percentage behind it. Kill enough opposition, then those that are alive are on your side. It's basic divide and conquer stuff. Religion has been doing it since man came up with religion.

It goes on now, even more. These cowards who want to blow up planes and other things...they are doing it for their god. Not really different from a few century's ago when other religious groups decided their way was the only way.

Odd that people think it is strange now that people do this stuff..religious wars have always been around, and will always be around...as long as one is willing to say "My god is real, yours isn't".

Have your gods....the rest of us will get by under your wars, and we just kinda hope we don't have to take any of you out.

I would say Peace here...but what's the point?

 

*puts on MC FR gear....*

Bratty observation #1...

What belief do most religions in the world share?
The belief that they're the only right one.
​

Check out this definition, taken directly from Merriam-Webster's online dictionary:

1 : formal religious veneration : WORSHIP
2 : a system of religious beliefs and ritual; also : its body of adherents

These are the first two definitions of the word Cult. Surprised?

Although the word Cult conjurs pictures of suicide pacts and "odd leaders" (to put it politely), most religions can be referred to as Cults using the original definitions of the word.

Going back in history, many of the founders of modern religion were labeled as cultists by those in power at that time. Why? They were going against common doctrine and changing the norm. Interesting to think that today's Cult could be the next revelation to millions of people.

Which leads us to bratty observation #2....

So what is the difference between a religion and a cult?
A few million members.​

-qor72

 

On a similar note to religion... I saw a bumper sticker today that said "WARNING, in case of rapture, this vehicle will be unmanned."

That's the attitude that I can't stand. Quite possibly my biggest pet peeve. Just because I'm not into worshiping something I am told to believe in, I'm a pagan doomed to burn in hell for the rest of eternity.

Even if I didn't place my faith in science, I would never associate myself with a religion with such a bigotrous attitude.