hinduwoman

Infidels here even though separated from God are happy. So why should hell be the end of greater suffering?

MadMordigan

Is there anyone here who has objections about my opinion that continued sin entails a loss of self-control, and thus a loss of free will, and ultimately a loss of humanity?

You bet I have objections. Not a single person I know is perfect. Most have, at one point in time or another, done something to hurt another person. Yet they do not lose their humanity.

If we take a biblical view of 'sin', it becomes clear your claim even more outrageous. How could mastrubating, eating shellfish, working on Sundays or caving an image of Zeus make one lose their humanity?

The Other Michael

Hi Mad Mordigan,
I know, I know - because the Bible says so!

Do I get to go to heaven now?

cheers,
Michael

Queen of Swords

Originally posted by luvluv:
<strong>
Let us deal with a more provable angle of our disagreement. Is there anyone here who has objections about my opinion that continued sin entails a loss of self-control, and thus a loss of free will, and ultimately a loss of humanity?</strong>

Let's agree, just for the heck of it.

If I continue to write books that subtly support atheism, the theory of evolution and a woman's right to choose, I'm going to lose my self-control. What does this mean? Who knows? Maybe the next time I post, I won't be spelling so good.

Then (somewhere after the eighth or ninth novel, I guess) I lose my free will. Who now controls my actions? The devil? Who knows? Perhaps I'll start wearing a lampshade on my head, or something.

Finally I lose my humanity. What exactly does this entail? Who knows? Perhaps I'll forget how to use the computer, or maybe I'll regress to a salamander form. Either way, I'll no longer be human. Real sci-fi stuff. What will I look like after writing all these books, I wonder?

Oh, wait, my mistake. This is supposed to be religion, not speculative fiction.

<strong>Is there anyone here who thinks that if a rapist or a drug addict or a murderer who goes on raping or shooting up or killing for thousands and thousands of years will eventually cease to be anything we can recognize as human?</strong>

I have a friend who smokes pot occasionally. Oddly enough, I still recognize him. Of course, he'd have to smoke it for a very long time before he started growing horns and a tail. Man, if I didn't know luvluv better, I'd call that evolution.

<strong>If you do agree with that, then what is God to do? Per his own standards, He will not simply override the will of his creation. If he objects to torturing them, the only option he has is to put those people into a holding pen with each other.</strong>

Poor god. It never occurred to him to put them in holding pens separately. Damn, and to think His own creation invented the solitary cell before He did.

<strong>Now, what exactly do you expect some of the worst people in the history of the world to do when they are locked all in one place? Do you expect they will NOT hurt each other?</strong>

Poor god. It never occurred to him to lock the sadists up with the masochists, so that they could all be happy.

<strong>Even those who were not as heinously evil on earth, is there anyone who does not conceed that after being in such an environment for a few thousand years, that they will not become as sadistic as their neighbors?</strong>

Man, what a pessimistic view to take! What makes you think that the less-evil people might not convert the more-evil people?

<strong>Whatever else Hell may entail, is it not entirely probable that those who have done nothing but hurt other people and themselves on earth will continue to do so in Hell</strong>

What if you only hurt yourself, but not other people? Does your god still lock you up with the real bad guys?

<strong>If we agree so far</strong>

Only that you have the second funniest theory I've ever heard.

The funniest was L. Ron Hubbard's.

But you are getting close to displacing him; please continue.

Gurdur

* so well * not * so good *.

I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I just couldn't resist, and I'm feeling very blue .

Koyaanisqatsi

I'll post another speculative rant for you, Gurd. That ought to cheer you up!

Gurdur

Given enough time, I'm sure you will.

Black ops ! Manichean worldviews ! Magic ! Theist cultish vendettas !

I look forward with bated breath to your next venture into incredible silliness.

Koyaanisqatsi

I see. So, the phrase "afraid of the dark" has no justifiable or verifiable meaning to you?

Far more compelling and unbiased than is yours.

For what purpose? Are you not capable of putting two and two together?

Oh, sorry, from your posts it appears you are not.

Your posts have been nothing but the wildest and most forced speculation I have seen in quite some time here (and that's saying a lot) and yet you seem to have no problem laboring away at the most circuitous and tortured semantics imaginable in order to somehow reconcile the Bible with your own personal beliefs.

You stated as much previously.

My speculation, conversely, is arguably far more coherent and directly applicable as well as demonstrable.

Matthew 10:28 tells us to be "afraid of the One who can kill both soul and body in hell."

Hades is a Greek construct; it is the land of the dead in Greek mythology. Revelation 20:14 then makes perfect sense.

But, of course, there is another completely logical explanation for 20:14 that no one (that I've seen here) has touched upon and far more simple an explanation.

Regardless, you are consistently and obviously avoiding the point with this irrelevant discussion of what the hallucinatory "visions" of Revelation do or do not mean.

Please stop it.

WE NEED DO NOTHING OF THE KIND BECAUSE NONE OF THIS POINTLESSNESS MATTERS ONE TINY BIT REGARDING FREE WILL AND THE FACT THAT GOD USES THE UNIMAGINABLE CONCEPT OF HELL TO INDUCE ABJECT FEAR INTO HIS SUBJECTS.

That happens to make perfect, logical sense.

You tell me what Matthew meant then when he said, be afraid of the One who can kill soul and body in hell.

The "second" death referred to in Revelation is obviously the death of the soul Matthew was talking about.

Regardless, STOP WITH THIS POINTLESS SIDETRACK NONSENSE.

IT IS ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT TO THE QUESTION.

Now who is speculating? We have no idea who Matthew's audience really was, we just know that surviving fragments of the NT papyrus were written in Greek.

As far as anybody knows, the entire nonsense was written by Paul.

Everything regarding when and who wrote what is entirely speculative.

Regardless and for the twentieth time, this is absolutely irrelevant to the points you keep avoiding with this sidetrack.

Fine. Here's the King James version of Revelation 6:

Happy? Can we now forget the pointlessness of all of this and address the issue of free will and how God punishes non-believers?

AND UTTERLY IRRELEVANT

You have just proved that you have no free will and that God punishes you.

Too bad you have no free will in the matter as well as no choice, since it is entirely up to God who is to be saved and who is to have both body and soul thrown into hell. In fact, according to the book you are so diligently focusing upon, only 144,000 are saved, right, and they've already been written down in the great big book, right, so none of this stupidity matters.

Wait, I retract that. Otherwise you will go off into another pointless rant that has no relevancy to anything we're discussing.

You're entire apologetics is the worst form of speculation since you have absolutely no basis for the tortured conclusions you are drawing.

Regardless, the very fact that you are stating it comes down to two things, "destroyed or tortured" proves that such punishment either way is by no means self-imposed, which is the point, so thank you at least for proving that much.

Bullshit. Pure and simple. The fact that hell is a punishment is abundantly clear from your own circuitous logic. "Destroyed" or "eternal torment" is entirely irrelevant to the fact that God casts you into hell and in hell you suffer an unimaginable fate involving "wailing and gnashing of teeth" and fire.

This is pointless.

You are just too steeped in self-denial and cognitive dissonance to ever admit the fact that your own beliefs are not based on what the Bible says at all.

You have simply decided to pick and choose what you want to believe, making up your own cult. The cult of luvluv.

If you want to discuss the bible, then let's do that directly, but this stupidity is just growing more and more pathetic.

BE AFRAID OF THE ONE WHO CAN KILL BOTH SOUL AND BODY IN HELL. FEAR HIM.

There simply is no question at all of what is the intention of that threat. None.

Only in your own rationalization, which is arguably far more tortured than what might actually occur in hell.

AND COMPLETELY, UTTERLY, IRREFUTABLY IRRELEVANT TO ANYTHING AT ALL THAT WE HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT OTHER AS A DELIBERATE EVASION TACTIC ON YOUR PART TO AVOID DEALING WITH THE ARGUMENTS

Like the scripture I quoted? No, of course not, because your intention is pure rationalization; the reconciliation of the irreconcilable.

Bullshit as evidenced by the very next thing you state:

You just negated your own declaration! The Bible does not clearly define sin as something harmful to us IN AND OF ITSELF regardless of the punishment inflicted by God.

Use the proper terminology if you please.

Matthew 13:41-42: The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Psalm 147:11
The LORD taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in those that hope in his mercy.

Luke 12:5 But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.

BECAUSE HE CREATED IT TO BEGIN WITH is the central omitted fact you continue to avoid like poison at all costs!

No, only you do.

Incorrect. BE AFRAID OF GOD BECAUSE HE HAS THE POWER TO THROW YOU INTO THE FIRES OF HELL. That is a constantly repeated threat throughout both the Old and New Testament, in and of itself and therefore exists independently and primarily separate from any other edict or commandment or leit motif or anything else you wish to try and hide behind for your rationalizations.

You cannot avoid it, only deny it, which is precisely what you are here doing.

It is obvious, transparent and exceedingly tiresome, but most importantly, IT IS ENTIRELY OFF TRACK FROM THE TOPIC OF THIS THREAD.

Incorrect. The "overwhelming mass of Christian" apologetics, throughout history, is that God wants you to avoid sin, blah, blah, blah.

Apologetics, as in spin control, the disingenuous rationalization of the irreconcilable contradictions found in the Bible, aka, PRECISELY WHAT YOU ARE HERE DOING.

Don't blame me that your own book posits a logically inconsistent pack of obvious, self-contradictory lies, as evidenced by the extreme lengths you are here going to in order to somehow reconcile the obvious meaning of all of the direct threats of punishment by God and the creation of Hell by God for this purpose.

Hell is God's punishment for non-believers. It is torture and torment for non-belief meant to scare the living shit out of non-believers to coerce them into believing.

I used to be a cult member, mind you, I know precisely what this horseshit is all about and precisely what it is used for. To terrify ignorant people into becoming members of the cult.

Period.

It is as obvious as your desperate attempts to find any possible way to rationalize it so that you can continue to believe in what you want to believe in, instead of what is actually written in the Bible.

I say just do what you're already doing and admit that you're simply making up your own cult according to your own personal whims and throw the worthless bible in the trash where it belongs.

Incorrect. Your rationalization totally omits the fact that God uses hell to punish not just the sinners and the "wicked," but the non-believers, which in turn has been rationalized by your cherished cult leaders throughout history as being sin.

Regardless, it is God who created all existence and the doctrine of "free will" was made up by those same historical cult leaders in order to do exactly what you are here doing; rationalize a cognitively dissonant contradiction inherent within the mythology: God can not have created sin and still remain God.

That is why "free will" was concocted, in order to take the blame off of God and put it onto Man.

The only problem, of course, as I have been pointing out again and again and again and you have been doing everything in your power to avoid addressing is that, if we have "free will" then we cannot be punished in any way shape or form for exercising that free will or else it ceases to be either "free" or an exertion of "will."

It is an invalid construct that only renders the dogma more contradictory than it already was.

This is why you are now attempting to rationalize it further by claiming that we are the ones who are ultimately responsible for our actions and that hell is self-imposed; you are attempting to exonerate God and it cannot be done without destroying God.

If we are ultimately responsible for our actions, then we do indeed have "free will," the ability to act independently of God's will so that our actions are truly and completely our own, in no way ultimately connected to God. We are free agents.

If we are free agents and we choose not to believe in God--a sin according to the Bible--then we will be thrown into hell as punishment for non-belief, which in turn means that we were never free agents to begin with; that it was all a sham right from the start.

IF WE ARE PUNISHED IN ANY WAY, SHAPE OR FORM FOR EXERCISING OUR FREE WILL THEN IT CEASES TO BE EITHER FREE OR AN EXERTION OF OUR WILL.

Do not attempt again to equivocate "consequences" with "punishment."

If I state, "I do not believe in God of my own free will" then absolutely nothing at all can happen to be as a result of that declaration or I do not have free will.

Nothing.

And no, everything does not have "consequences" when we're talking about the alleged ultimate state of being that God is alleged to represent.

Any "consequences" (aka, punishment) for my exercising my free will to not believe in God automatically and irrefutably negates post hoc my free will, rendering the entire event a sham and a dictatorial imposition by God upon me.

Period.

This is not speculation or opinion or any other nonsense and it does directly contradict what God has allegedly inspired his authors to relay in the Bible; it is the irrefutable consequent of the doctrine of free will.

Again, don't blame the messenger; blame the idiots who tried to slip this logically inconsistent construct through without expecting intelligent, critical analysis to easily and readily destroy it.

It is entirely irrelevant what you believe or don't believe. The Bible is unquestionably clear on this issue; God created everything, which means he created hell. God throws you into hell as punishment for non-belief (or sends you to heaven as reward for belief or as reward for your deeds or just because the wind is blowing southerly or because you were previously written in the great big book billions of years before you were ever born).

You have no free will.

Then the bible supports the fact that he has harmed himself.

You are welcome to your opinion, but it has nothing to do with the Bible and, as before, you should simply consider creating your own cult since you clearly do not base any of your beliefs (other than the initial indoctrination of Jesus as God, I'm sure) on the bible.

It is abundantly clear that you are simply picking and choosing what you like and don't like depending upon your own personal whim.

Regardless, WHAT HAS THIS SOAPBOX YOU'VE DECIDED TO STAND UPON GOT TO DO WITH ANY OF THE ARGUMENTS YOU CONTINUE TO AVOID?

I do not. This is more than enough.

According to your own apologetics (and the Bible) there never was any free will to begin with as has been conclusively demonstrated here ad nauseum.

Denial means never having to say you're sorry.

We have no "disagreement;" we have only your apologetics and your inability to adequately support them, other than personal whim and blind denial.

Others have addressed these, but my only question in response would be, what's your point?

Strike that. I withdraw the question, as it will only mean yet another pointless redirection away from the issues.

Let us instead deal with the fact that non-believers are punished for their non-belief and leave the hypothetical at that and that alone.

Speculation regarding what should or should not happen to rapists and murderers is nothing more than pointless shock evasion.

Since we are now only discussing the "sin" of non-belief, then he will not also punish us for exercising that will to not believe.

The bible, however, tells us that this isn't the case, so either you are right or the bible is right.

If you are right, then discard the bible for the worthless ancient mythology that it is and start your own cult.

If the bible is right, then, according to your own beliefs, God does indeed do "harm" to himself and is ultimately entirely to blame for every single sin we commit, whether the authors acknowledge or obfuscate that inescapable fact.

But, again, according to the bible, he does no such thing. He throws them into the fires of hell where there is much "wailing and gnashing of teeth."

Again I would ask you describe a "holding pen" wherein there is "wailing and gnashing of teeth" and eternal fire, and yet no torment.

Straw man. Confine your speculation to the punishment of non-believers and only non-believers in order to address the salient issue.

No one would argue that murderers or Hitlers shouldn't be tortured eternally for their atrocities.

Being punished for non-belief, however, is a direct violation of free will, so either you discard the doctrine or God is not allowed to punish anyone for not believing.

Your choice.

What an entirely irrelevant question...

Did you post here in order to actually discuss anything or did you just wish to post your own cult dogma, because that's what is so far happening.

Well, that would be up to God now wouldn't it, since he has the power to simply change all of that with the blink of an eye?

After all, he created us that way and he is omniscient and omnipotent and blah, blah, blah.

In short, it's all God's fault so why he is punishing us to begin with? Oh, that's right, it's not all God's fault, God is never to blame, thus your tortured, logically inconsistent and contradictory rationalizations.

This comment serves no purpose at all and addresses nothing salient regarding this thread.

Don't ever imply in any way shape or form that my speculation is somehow less impactful or considered than your own again.

And how would you be able to do such a thing when you are suffering yourself in the unimaginable fires of God's holy Hell?

You are suffering in the most unimaginable way possible in a place that is so terrifying that it goes beyond death at the hands of a being so powerful that he can kill not just your body but also your soul, within it.

All you are trying to do is say that black is actually white and that Hell is actually Heaven.

Just astounding.

It would be impossible to inflict more suffering on another than the suffering God has inflicted upon you in hell.

See, we can both make shit up; only mine is biblically implied.

They are not torturing each other; they are being tortured. That is the purpose of hell according to the bible.

Even my five year old nephew knows this.

Enough of this stupidity.

[ April 19, 2002: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>

Koyaanisqatsi

Just try not to jump down my throat if I state at the outset: This is my incredible silliness, yes?

Of course, yes...

Pomp

Koy,

No one would argue that murderers or Hitlers shouldn't be tortured eternally for their atrocities.

Actually, I would argue that very thing.