Magus55

I'm shocked at how many of you actually look forward to Hell, if it ends up existing. You don't have parties down there and its not fun, its never ending suffering and torment, there is no relief. I'd rather be in Heaven even if Hitler was there, Hell is not a place you want to go.

Godless Dave

Magus55,

None of us look forward to going to the hell you describe, but we are sure enough that it does not exist that we feel pretty safe joking about it.

Magus55

And Christians are "sure enough" that it does exist. What makes you being sure enough more valid than us? You have even less proof that Hell doesn't exist than we do that it does.

philechat

I still don't get why one would look forward to a Muslim hell anyways. The Muslims would ask the same question to the Christians why they would be looking forward to a hell where people were fed boiling water with their skin shedding off every day for the purpose of everlasting torment.

Either way I am damned, so are the better half of the world's population.

Godless Dave

Because my being sure is based on critical analysis of the facts at hand.

Where do your descriptions of hell and assumptions about its nature come from? The Bible, and later works by Christian authors. So, written by people.

What do I know about the afterlife? Nothing. And I can't think of any way to find out more about it. It stands to reason that no one else (alive) knows anything about it either, and neither did anyone who lived in the past. Did they have methods of research I do not? No. So likely they were just guessing, or making up a story with some allegorical meaning, or using dramatic imagery to get a point across. But the fact remains they were human beings like I am, no more, no less. I have no reason to think that if any kind of afterlife exists that any human being knew or knows more about it than I do. It's a complete unknown - a mystery. And I am not going to live my life on pure speculation.

Magus55

And our critical analysis is on the facts at hand that we have. The Bible is solid evidence to us, just like science is solid evidence to you. Since science is based on observation and theory, you can never prove or disprove Hell and God through science. The apostles saw Jesus perform his miracles, die and be ressurected. They died for spreading Christianity and even based on your "evolitionary theory" and "survival of the fittest", they wouldn't have died had they known it was a lie. On top of that the Bible matches archealogical findings and prophecies have been fulfilled. We know the prophecies to be true, because had the Apostles made it up, they gave their lives to defend something they knew to be a lie. You can deny the evidence all you want and say its not evidence, but you can't prove its not and its certaintly sufficient for 1/3 of the world. Science has never disproven the Bible, its only speculation and assumption based on incomplete facts.

Suppose for example Genesis wasn't meant to be literal and some of evolution is right, doesn't disprove the Bible one bit, only that it was interpreted wrong. The Bible has never been disproven.

philechat

Yes, so did the suicide bombers and the hijackers, the Heaven's Gate believers, the millions of Pagans burnt at the stake, and the willing martyrdom of the Japanese in WW2.
Here we must not exclude the possiblity of self-delusion. There is an element of identity with all the beliefs involved, and a threat on a certain group's beliefs means a threat to their communal identity. A self-deluded person may create a fiction for themselves such that their preceding beliefs are not threatened, as observed in studies of depressed, anorexic, and paranoid patients.

Lobstrosity

Of course it has. It's just that every time someone shows that a part of it blatantly wrong, you all change your "interpretation" of what it means, convinced anew that now you've got it right. The Bible has no true meaning because any passage in it can be interpreted any way anyone wants. That makes it useless.

Mageth

Yes, so did the suicide bombers and the hijackers, the Heaven's Gate believers, the millions of Pagans burnt at the stake, and the willing martyrdom of the Japanese in WW2.

Actually, there's good documentation for the cases of martyrdom you mentioned, unlike that of the apostles, which are mostly based on unsubstantiated church tradition rather than recorded history.

winstonjen

Well, then, why don't you show us that proof? Any tourist brochures of Hell with pictures of the hot baths?