Demigawd

Half-Life, for what it's worth, I too once believed due to fear of going to Hell. When I was 10 years old, I got baptised in the Baptist church I had been going to all my life because I was terribly afraid that if I died, I'd be condemned to Hell for my sins. However, the older I got and more I was exposed to other religions and beliefs, the more I realized that fear was no way to judge the truth. Fear kept me combative and isolated; my mind shut behind a nigh-impenetrable gate. That's no way to live. That's no way to learn.

I'm sorry that you're in such a state of confusion. If I remember correctly, the last time you posted regularly here, you went through a similar event and wound up capitulating to the fear. You don't have to have that happen again. Be brave with the support of those of us here who've gone through it.

Half-Life

Yes, but I keep thinking that if I fully deconvert, then I might be giving in to Satan. It's hard because all the religious say "Oh it's so easy to ignore God, but you'll be sorry when you die and realize you had your chance. God will punish you for listening to Satan."

I realize this is probably a fear tactic, but I can't get it out of my head that I will be living "in sin" forever if I deconvert.

To some people if you tell them, "what if you end up burning forever?" they can laugh it off and not think one thing about it. but, I can't just brush this feeling away so quickly.

It's making me think all these people in life, move stars, musicians, sports stars, doctors, etc are just wasting away until Heaven or Hell. It seems like no purpose to live. How can all these people not really care to study the bible and religion so much?

How can a lot of these people just ignore it and not think a second about it? Why am I being so controlled by this fear?

:banghead:

Minimalist

The same way Obi-Wan Kenobi died in Star Wars I. Writers of fiction can make up anything they like.

Wiki articles are not renowned for their scholarship.

Solitary Man

You're dead on there. This doesn't happen in the real world, except with very few examples, and the Jesus story doesn't fit the profiles which we know did this.

Some suspect Peter was martyred in 64 CE. What evidence is there for this? This isn't a negative post, but one of critical thinking. Look into the evidence.

If you're only clinging to faith in order to avoid Hell, do you think that God would accept that? Do you think an omnibenevolent God would punish someone for eternity because they chose reason over faith? Why or why not?

Pun intended?

Toto

Proof by wikipedia? That entry is just a collection of assertions that are generally believed by those who believe in such things.

If he didn't exist, he didn't die in 64. If he did exist, you still don't know when he died, or under what circumstances.

Smile - there is no Hell.

Demigawd

It's not easy for me either to deal with people who preach damnation as part of their belief. I still get angry when I hear people advocating the belief that if you don't do whatever, then you'll be condemned when you die. I still have a small part of me that wonders "what if they are right?" That's not suprising because, as I said, I was brought up in a fundamentalist church. I was indoctrinated into that belief and had it reinforced over and over and over... But as a fairly educated adult, I can see it for what it is. It is control by fear, a method that sadly is not limited to just religion. Find something that scares people and exploit it to manipulate them.

You don't have to go from theist to atheist in 60 seconds here. Just keep an open and honest mind and explore all that people believe and, perhaps more important, why they believe. Learn history. Read psychology. Study, study, study. Don't be concerned with how you classify yourself. The quest itself is more important than the destination.

mg01

There is a lot to be said here too concerning the fact the translations we read in English where for instance in the OT we only see in God's name, "Jehova" (a "corruption" through German) several times. Peek at the translation notes and you'll see how most cases where we see "the LORD" the actual Hebrew has the diety's name, "YHWH". The point is the text read's completely different when the text is read without this substituion.

The same for where we see "the LORD God" which came through Latin as "Dominus Deus" and Greek as "Kryos Theos" but in Hebrew is "YHWH (of the) Elohim" (or "is" or "the"). Elohim is a rather complicated term in Hebrew that is used to denote some since of divinity belonging to a God (El), or as in other cases, a person, a staff, a mountain, a messenger/angel, or even foreign deities. In English the term usually simply lands as "God" or "gods", again amplifing the religious tone of the text.

Or to realize something like the word for "sky" and "heaven" is the same thing, so English translations selectively use one or the other depening on the context which gives different connotations to us for something that for the Hebrews was the same, the big blue expanse overhead that holds back the waters. There is no "Heaven" in the first 11 books of the Bible, when you die you go to the underworld/Sheol/Hades.

Then there is also the number of puns and etiologies you run across in the text. Or the number of similarites between stories, the legendary nature of many of the tales. We don't note these things in the "comic book" version we were taught but in Hebrew they are plain clues to their actual nature.

A close reading of the 1st 11 books reveals little to nothing distinctly different from the Hebrews. Even the big two, an-iconism and monotheism are found to be unsupportable based on condemnations and remarks that they happened.

If the supreme deity of the universe really did appear to this one particular group of people within history, he did so in such a way that the legacy of this appearance is indistinguishable from the mythologies of the neighboring cultures from whom the bulk of early Hebrew culture was borrowed from.

George S

Confusion can be a learning state. Surely you remember past instances of confusion converting to learning suddenly.

Fear is a very useful emotion. It is built into us to keep us from harm.

We model the world. We use most of that model unconsciously. Part of your unconscious is doing some reasoning. Your cognitive unconscious still believes the myth of life after death.

When you get the model right your fear can disappear.

There was a time (you might have to go back deep in childhood) before you first knew fear. Remember that state. Now review each fearful event in turn and release the memory of fear but preserve the learnings.

You might begin to see the future as full of guideposts marking dangers to be sensibly avoided, not feared. There are some near futures that may need attending to long before worrying about the far far future.

mg01

What about a metaphorical perspetive? Some Christians don't believe in a literal hell and consider the idea of heaven and hell as a philosophical concept describing experience on earth. I found this (or via: amazon.co.uk) [*] particularly interesting.

mod note: link to Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor by Joseph Campbell

Sheshbazzar

If this IS what is giving you a "problem", then this is where you need to center and narrow your focus of concentration for a while.

It has already been pointed out to you that any writer, in writing these stories at a latter date, and not wanting the text to clearly betray the fact that the composition wasn't contemporary with the story being told, would be careful not to let anything through that might betray the fact of that late date of writing, other than a few "prophecies", contrived to incorporate events that took place at a time latter than the plots setting.
Writers do this all the time in the composition of mystery stories, where they will have the investigator have a significant insight or or clue early in the plot, that the significance and importance of, will only become apparent at the solution of the plot line.

You ask;
"But, weren't all the prophecies written after the fact in the first century?"

Nobody here has been making that claim, over and over it has been pointed out that many of these "prophecies" are so vague that they would be true at at any time, and were the stock and trade of all "prophets" (and still are)

"There will be wars" Well surprise, surprise,. Who would have ever thunk it?
"There will be famines" yeah, yeah, that happens a lot,
'There will be floods" Really? wow, isn't that just amazing!
"There will be earthquakes" No way man! I mean like that never happens!

Virtually every so called "prophet" that has ever lived has always parroted these same safe "predictions", they had been around for thousands of years before the writers inserted them into Jesus mouth.
So, NO, all the prophecies WERE NOT written after the fact in the first century. some had actually been around for a long time, but were incorporated into a story about the first century, that was compiled, revised, interpolated, and edited over the next four centuries before reaching a somewhat stable form.

Then our intrepid writer introduces his absolute clincher;
The Temple will be destroyed! "There will no stone left unturned on top of one another"!
Does that "prophecy" really validate the claim that a real "Jesus" did, in any actuality so predict the future?
And remember here, within the text of the NT, even "Jesus", is nothing more than a writers plot character, with the writers alone supplying all of his, and every characters alleged dialogue.
But DID "Jesus" actually predict the future destruction of the Temple?
Admittedly there is the possibility, given all the "prophets" that were around at that time with an axe to grind against the "establishment", the government, and the Jerusalem Priesthood, it would not be at all unlikely that some "prophet" by some name would have predicted that the Temple would be destroyed. And why not? It had already happened before, and the fear of such thing happening again was already being voiced by those who were watching the political climate, and who were aware of how the Roman government could effectively "take care" of religious problems.
But of course any such real individual would not at all be any where near to fitting that image of the "Jesus" that the writers eventually developed as the NT character called by the name "Jesus", this "Jesus" is and always will be a writers fictional character speaking only the writers chosen words, and doing only what the writers want.
(Heck, the real man, if there ever was such, is not even allowed to dispute any of the bogus claims the writers make about him, nor object to the sometimes ridiculous statements the writers have inserted into his mouth without his permission.)
Or, sans that supposition of some actual basis to the claim of there having been an actual prophecy that was fulfilled, we have the remaining possibility that the "claim" of the "prophecy" and its fulfillment by Jesus were
entirely products of the creative imaginations of latter NT writers.

So, no matter how we look at it, this "prophecy" does not validate the other claims made within the New Testament writings, and forms no solid basis on which to build any confidence in the rest of that story.