Howay the Toon

Hell as "cruel and unusual punishment". There's an idea. Perhaps you could haul God before the Supreme Court and have eternal damnation ruled unconstitutional.

d'naturalist

I think you're all giving way too much relative equity to judge & "criminal".

The relationship here is the equivalent (and even this is underexaggerated) of parent & child. An all-knowing, all-powerful, all-this-n-that deity condemning a mortal, mundane, relatively simpleminded person to eternal damnation is roughly the same as a parent telling their 5-year-old child not to play ball in the house, and when child (being a child) does so anyway, parent ships child off to nice Mr. Lechter's house to be tortured and beaten and raped and burned and skinned and brutalized repeatedly for the rest of their natural life. Any parent who would so treat a child is in my opinion a sick, demonic monster not worthy of respect or admiration.

And let's also keep in mind that NO ONE is disobeying the commands of any alleged deity. There is no giant face that appears in the sky on a daily or weekly basis telling us what we're supposed to be doing. It's the old men in robes with their various books of dubious origin that we disobey. All the "holy men" of the various world religions claim to be the sole oracles of some alleged "higher power", and yet, in all the history of the world, none of them has ever proven that claim to be valid. Why should we put blind faith in the words of men (or women) when history shows us that people lie when it suits their purpose? Power corrupts, and there is no greater powertrip in the world than controlling the hearts & minds of humanity.

RJS

It wasnt an analogy.

Walter_Mitty

Actually, I dreamed about coconut cream pies, but I digress...

I did answer your question. Perhaps you should pray to the Holy Spirit for your eyes and ears to be opened. BTW, you never answered my question regarding Christ's 3 days vs. our eternity. To make matters worse, Christ allegedly went to hell with the foreknowledge (he is omnisciencent) that in 3 days he'd be paroled.

The 10 dollar question is that if Christ already paid for our sins, why does God (who is somehow Christ) still send us to hell?

RJS

This is quite a bit off topic, but obviously the household you are born into is unrelated to your salvation. Just ask Saul.

Jove

But all those poor Muslims don't have the luxury of seeing JESUS IN THE SKY IN ALL HIS GLORY.

Walter_Mitty

Don't think it's off topic...

Part of the "cruel and unusual punishment" notion is that your God is sending adherents of some 10,000 known world religions to hell.

In any event, if I or anyone else is off topic I'm sure the moderators would moderate us at which point we'd all shut up. As it stands, we're still waiting for your rebuttals.

Cheers

[ September 27, 2002: Message edited by: Bibliophile ]</p>

RJS

You have asked questions which I have answered. I dont recall being asked to provide any rebuttals to anything.

Cheers.

Walter_Mitty

I disagree with the first part of your statement but I stand corrected in regards to the second. Perhaps I should have asked you to answer all the questions--whether implied or otherwise--that were being tossed your way.

Cheers!

-Bib

RJS

Fair enough. Part of the problem that arises (as I have now found out), it that when I attempt to start a productive discussion with the board (i.e. my first post in this thread), within 12-24 hours I seem to have 10+ regular atheists trying to pelt me with questions. This becomes hard to manage, even noting that half of the atheist posts are usually just sarcastic nothingness.