Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Vampyroteuthis · 09-21-2002, 01:41 PM

My mother, being the kind loving soul that she is, felt it necessary to warn me of the coming of the end days. So she presented me with this nice little pamphlet about the nearing of the end the events that will occur. This is an excerpt from this handy little piece of information:

Quote:

What, then, will be God's means of judging what was worthy of honor and what wasn't? First Corinthians 3:13-15 speaks of a trial by fire. Any works that were done with a selfish motivation will perish in the fire just as wood, hay, and stubble are consumed. But those things that were done on earth with God's glory in mind will live on. Like gold and silver, they cannot be burned. The key elements in testing these works will be their quality and the motivation behind them. What kind of rewards can the Christian work toward? At least five distinct crowns are mentioned in Scripture (entire version of pamphlet found here <a href="http://www.gospelcom.net/rbc/ds/q1204/q1204.html#page5" target="_blank">http://www.gospelcom.net/rbc/ds/q1204/q1204.html#page5</a> )

Yet, after refering to my ancient 1967 King James version bible, I find the following exact verbage (according to this version!):

Quote:

Cor 1 3:13-15 Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.

First of all, I object to inferences made in the first "quotation" in that it places what they (the booklet authors) believe to be the critera for rewarding actions. The entire booklet's motive is to encourage people to join the church and avoid the "lake of fire". But I contend that any actions taken by people to avoid such an occurance can be seen as the very definition of selfishness. Should not (according to my own moral standards) good deeds be done for their sake alone and not for the express purpose of reward or avoiding a horrible punishment? Where is the integrity in such actions if people are only doing "good things" to avoid eternal torment in a lake of fire?

My final and personal conclusion is that this makes no sense to me. Just as you cannot force people to love and admire you by force and threats, neither (and even more so) should a "creator" sink to such inducements in order to gain followers. I just cannot except such an all powerful being would stoop to these levels and if such a thing were true, I see nothing that induces me to be a part of this. I wouldn't harm people with threats of force on my head so why would I prescribe to an a religion that threatens people with dire threats in order to gain members? It's just not rational. My poor deluded mother, she must live in fear for me. I better get out the marshmallows, eh?

Aimee

[ September 21, 2002: Message edited by: akkhir to correct spelling ]

[ September 21, 2002: Message edited by: akkhir...when will I learn to spell??? ]

[ September 21, 2002: Message edited by: akkhir ]

ExChild · 09-21-2002, 03:11 PM

I live in Mississippi...deep in the heart of the Bible belt. There is a church literally on every corner and the new fad in evangelism is to have a big sign on the road near your church on which you place some catchy slogan meant to shock some sense into unchurched passers-by.
My favorite one:
"You think it's hot here? --God"
It's all about filling the pews.

It seems like it would dawn on them that God should know what your motives are for attending church, so appealing to the lowest level of moral development is a waste of time anyway.

Of course Christians would say that they don't do "good things" because they're trying to avoid judgment; they're doing what's "right" because they love God and want to keep his commandments. Actually one friend said she did it to get to Heaven. I don't know which is worse.

Quote from "Dogma:"
"Do it...do it and I'll F&*%ing spank you!"
(Is profanity allowed here?...have to read the rules...)

Radorth · 09-21-2002, 04:06 PM

Quote:

My final and personal conclusion is that this makes no sense to me. Just as you cannot force people to love and admire you by force and threats, neither (and even more so) should a "creator" sink to such inducements in order to gain followers. I just cannot except such an all powerful being would stoop to these levels and if such a thing were true, I see nothing that induces me to be a part of this. I wouldn't harm people with threats of force on my head so why would I prescribe to an a religion that threats people with dire threats in order to join their numbers? It's just not rational. My poor deluded mother, she must live in fear for me. I better get out the marshmallows, eh?

I pretty much agree Aimee. However you seem to assume that every Christian is one because of fear, and we have come to Christ for selfish reasons. I do agree coming out of fear of hell is a selfish reason, but (and you can believe it or not) some come because they have a thirst for justice, and simply hate the evil, hypocrisy and injustice they see around them- INCLUDING what they see coming from theists.

In Christ many of us simply find a fellow-sojourner who seems to have the same hatred of all the above, and to their surprise, is no friend of religious people. In fact he publically condemns them, almost exclusively, to the outer darkness and to gehenna. (Wells, no friend of the church, writes better than I do about the mission and motives of Jesus himself. See his "Short History of the World- The Teachings of Jesus")

I do not know how John gets "lake of fire" from Jesus' teachings. I see hell as a spiritual condition varying from a kind of lonely nothingness, to actual torment in the form of thirst, or "knashing of teeth" indicating the destiny of a fool.

But I can assure you, and my friends will assure you, my first prayer to Jesus was not motivated by fear, but a kind of open-minded importunity bordering on arrogance.

Radorth

[ September 21, 2002: Message edited by: Radorth ]

NOGO · 09-21-2002, 08:49 PM

This is what Radorth wrote in another thread.

Quote:

Radorth
In fact I wish I could be around when Christianity wanes, and the Muslims and skeptics rule the world. I would die laughing, except that evil will doubtless abound and nuclear war will destroy the world and everyone in it. (Unless Jesus comes back of course)

[ September 21, 2002: Message edited by: NOGO ]

Gregg · 09-22-2002, 12:59 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by ExChild:
I live in Mississippi...deep in the heart of the Bible belt. There is a church literally on every corner and the new fad in evangelism is to have a big sign on the road near your church on which you place some catchy slogan meant to shock some sense into unchurched passers-by.
My favorite one:
"You think it's hot here? --God"

I saw my favorite many years ago when I was traveling with my mother and aunt down to Texas to see some relatives. As we drove through Arkansas, we were getting very hungry and were looking for a restaurant, but all the signs said, "church this way, church that way, church ahead." Finally as we came up over a slight rise we saw an enormous sign saying, "YOU NEED GOD!" My mother said plaintively, "I need food!"

You had to have been there. The situation, the plaintive tone of my mother's voice--I laughed hysterically in the back seat for 15 or 20 minutes.

Gregg

Sojourner553 · 09-22-2002, 06:52 AM

Alas, this is nothing new.

When my mother was in high school, her father (my grandfather) fought with my grandmother whether my mother should go to college.

He belonged to one of those Jehovah Witness offshoots that counted stones in the Great Pyramid to determine the "date" when Jesus would come back... and "discovered" the date to be soon, indeed the next few years (THEIR livetimes of course).

According to my grandfather, "Because Jesus was coming soon, it wasn't "necessary" for my mother to go to college".

My grandfather and his group had already gone up the mountaintop several times waiting for Jesus. After a few days they determined they had "miscounted" and always had to leave.

Luckily my grandmother (feisty and skinny) would hear none of it.

My mother went to college. Today she is 79 years old.

Of course, belief in the "End" is even older than Christianity:

And the first millennium was the craziest ever...

Quote:

The First Millennium (1000 C.E.), and the "End of the World" Scenario

Belief in the "immediacy" of the Second Coming was, of course, nothing new! There have almost always been LOCAL movements, that were headed by self-proclaimed prophets or messiahs. For example, Gregory of Tours HISTORY OF THE FRANKS, tells how in 591 C.E., a man claiming to be the Messiah performed miraculous cures, and indeed gathered a following of some 3000 people including priests. According to Gregory, the man encouraged all to pray to him directly, so as to "adore him". Further this "messiah" encouraged his disciples to steal from the rich, so as to redistribute the money to the poor. The local Bishop arranged for this madman to be cut down to pieces.

The Catholic Church had NOT sanctioned any of these earlier movements that believed the End was near. However, as the approach of the year 1000 C.E. drew closer (ie the first millennium), essentially everyone--including Church officials--believed that the "End" was imminent!

Strong biblical support for this view could of course be found, in the following verses in Revelation 20:

"And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison and shall go out to deceive the nations...And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works."

Revelations also described Four Horsemen that would be the forerunners of the Apocalypse--War, Plague, Famine, and Death.

The gospel of Matthew, described the days before Judgment as follows:

"Nation shall rise against nation; kingdom against kingdom; and there shall be famines and pestilences and earthquakes in diverse places.
And these are the beginning of sorrow." (Matthew 24:7-8)

These conditions seemed all to well to describe the period of the Dark Ages. The wars and overall misery that the people saw around them, seemed to be a sure "sign" that the End was almost upon them.

On the Eve of the "Millennium"

Most people, including Church officials, believed that Judgment Day would fall on the last day of the year in 999 C.E. According to the monk Raoul Glauber, author of TALES, although people disagreed about the exact day and hour, they all agreed that "Satan will soon be unleashed because the thousand years have been completed."

Because many expected the Last Judgment to occur in Jerusalem, there was a surge of pilgrimages to Jerusalem. Some groups were so large, that they were compared to the size of a huge army. Many had sold all their worldly possessions to undertake the pilgrimage. In addition, many had made last minute donations to the churches and monasteries--some of them donating all their earthly goods, as a show of faith and hope in being one of the Elect to rise to heaven.

The monk Glaber chronicled how pilgrims traveled on foot, in carts, riding horseback, and singing psalms, all the while watching the horizon
for a sign of the impending Judgment:

"Every phenomenon of nature filled them with alarm. A thunderstorm sent them all upon their knees in mid-march. It was the opinion that thunder was the voice of God announcing the Day of Judgment."

Other contemporary chroniclers told of miraculous signs that were believed to presage the great event. One writer told how the sky split open, and a gigantic torch fell from the sky as a lightening bolt. After the sky closed back together, the image of a dragon with blue feet appeared, whose head grew so large, that it filled up the whole sky. In Aquitaine, came reports of bloody rain, whose stain would not wash out. This was seen to symbolize wars and violence. In Italy, came reports of increased activity of the volcano at Mt Vesuvius. (Richard Erdoes, C.E. 1000-LIVING ON THE BRINK OF APOCALYPSE, Harper & Row San Francisco, 1988. p 2-4)

According to one medieval chronicler, on that fateful day, crowds thronged the sacred buildings in Rome, waiting for the sound of the trumpets and angels that were to initiate the Day of Judgment. Some had come wearing sackcloth and ashes, and had spent weeks doing penance for their sins.

As mentioned earlier, many had already given away all of their money and possession to the poor in the hopes that they would be presumed worthy during the imminent Judgment to be taken up into heaven.

As midnight, a great bell within the old basilica of St. Peter's in Rome began to ring. According to one report, there were "not a few dying from fright, giving up their ghosts then and there." Everyone waited, but nothing happened. Finally, everyone breathed a sigh of relief, and there was much weeping and laughing. After days of waiting, some people began thinking of returning home. (The Church declined to return any of the donations that it had earlier received).

Many determined that the End was STILL near, but that the date was a little off-- say due in 1033 C.E. (ie 1000 years from the date of Jesus'
DEATH instead of his birth!) The "End" did not occur then either. Still, many people interpreted violent storms and serious food shortages in 1033 to be the "signs" described in Matthew 24:7-8--meaning that the End could not be very far away.

<a href="http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/DARKAGE1.TXT" target="_blank">http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/DARKAGE1.TXT</a>

<a href="http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/index.html" target="_blank">http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/index.html</a>

for earlier apocalypse history, see:

<a href="http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/APOCALYP.TXT" target="_blank">http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/APOCALYP.TXT</a>

Sojourner

[ September 22, 2002: Message edited by: Sojourner553 ]

09-22-2002, 07:09 AM

It is an evil age that looks for a sign of the times.

The end of the old world will be when the new world comes as a thief in the night. So how can a Christian look for the end of the world if he/she is already in the new world? Are they all pretenders?

Gregg · 09-22-2002, 07:21 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Radorth:


I pretty much agree Aimee. However you seem to assume that every Christian is one because of fear, and we have come to Christ for selfish reasons. I do agree coming out of fear of hell is a selfish reason, but (and you can believe it or not) some come because they have a thirst for justice, and simply hate the evil, hypocrisy and injustice they see around them- INCLUDING what they see coming from theists.

I don't get it, Radorth. If you already thirsted for justice and hated evil, hypocrisy, and injustice, why'd you need to become a Christian? What does believing that the Hebrew tribal god, Yahweh, incarnated 2,000 years ago as a Jewish carpenter/rabbi and was crucified by Roman and Jewish authorities, whereupon he supposedly rose from the dead, have to do with anything (especially since the god who this Yeshua was an incarnation of is hardly a paragon of moral consistency and justice himself)? Millions of people belonging to other religious groups, and even to no religion, have willingly died opposing evil, hypocrisy, and injustice. Why are the people who do this while holding to the Christian belief system the only ones you would consider joining up with?

Quote:

In Christ many of us simply find a fellow-sojourner who seems to have the same hatred of all the above, and to their surprise, is no friend of religious people. In fact he publically condemns them, almost exclusively, to the outer darkness and to gehenna. (Wells, no friend of the church, writes better than I do about the mission and motives of Jesus himself. See his "Short History of the World- The Teachings of Jesus")

So if that's all that Jesus was, what's so special about him? If he existed, which is doubtful, He was hardly the only preacher of the times who railed against the evil, injustice, and hypocrisy of the religious establishment and died cruelly for it.

Quote:

I do not know how John gets "lake of fire" from Jesus' teachings. I see hell as a spiritual condition varying from a kind of lonely nothingness, to actual torment in the form of thirst, or "knashing of teeth" indicating the destiny of a fool.

Actually, John is much more merciful than Jesus. The "lake of fire" is the "second death," where sinners are burned into non-existence, annihilated. Better that than having to endure utter aloneness or thirst (I'm sure people who have experienced true thirst can tell you how much better that is than burning) for eternity, wouldn't you say?

Quote:

But I can assure you, and my friends will assure you, my first prayer to Jesus was not motivated by fear, but a kind of open-minded importunity bordering on arrogance.

Radorth

Well, of course. You wanted to join Jesus' private club, be one of the True Believers (tm), and be on the side of the Absolutely Right About Everything. That the membership package included a wallet-sized, laminated "get out of hell free" card was just incidental.

Gregg

[ September 22, 2002: Message edited by: Gregg ]

[ September 22, 2002: Message edited by: Gregg ]

Vampyroteuthis · 09-22-2002, 07:50 AM

Thanks for the response, Radorth. While I appreciate your opinion and respect your right to worship whomever and in whatever manner you wish I would like to mention a few things.

YOU may have joined the church out of love rather than fear of punishment, that's great BUT...do you want to associate yourself with a god that feels the need to threaten others to join? While I'm sure many sided with Hitler out of fear of ending up like the jews I'm sure that there were many others who thought he was a great guy.

How about this...you meet a stranger on the street who said come with me and I will give you a perfect life and love you like no other but you were already happy with your life so you say no thanks. Then the person says that if you do not go with them you will be tortured for all eternity. If a PERSON did this you would promtly call the police and get a restraining order or have the person arrested. I would expect that a devine being would have better behavior than the most unstable of people, wouldn't you? If I witnessed a friend treating others this way I would have to re-think my relationship with that person.

While I believe that there is possibly "something" out there I don't believe it is this disfunctional entity. I believe the bible was written by some ancient people trying to round up members. I don't feel the need to have more than one governing authority (the federal government) over me much less some ancient laws that support the suppression of women.

Aimee

Radorth · 09-22-2002, 04:55 PM

Quote:

Millions of people belonging to other religious groups, and even to no religion, have willingly died opposing evil, hypocrisy, and injustice. Why are the people who do this while holding to the Christian belief system the only ones you would consider joining up with?

In my case, because I don't believe anyone can meet God's requirements for admission through good works. In fact we seldom, if ever, come close IMO.

re: Aimmee's excellent and difficult question:

Quote:

do you want to associate yourself with a god that feels the need to threaten others to join?

I do not see this in the NT, except as applicable to what I call hypocrites and hypercrites. I believe each person will hear an unpolluted version of the Gospel before or after death, and will be given the opportunity to be saved. Some will still refuse yes, but those who choose to remain in rebellion against God will be put somewhere to more or less torture themselves and each other forever. Not sure what else you could do with the completely reprobate. There is some evidence God will put an end to their misery via "the second death."

These are difficult questions. All I can say is that in the end no one will be able to say they were not warned, or that they were judged unfairly. If I think the latter, I will complain myself, but the scripture is pretty clear to me that we are self-judged.

Does Jesus condemn the Queen of the south? (Hardly a Christian) No, he says she will rise up in judgement and condemn the hypocrites Jesus is speaking to.

Either you judge yourself or you must be judged. Otherwise there is no justice and I'm sure atheists would give God an earful about that. He can't win IMO.

(BTW, I'm one of 5 Protestants on earth who sees purgatory in the scripture).

Radorth

[ September 22, 2002: Message edited by: Radorth ]

[ September 27, 2002: Message edited by: Radorth ]

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09-21-2002, 03:11 PM	#2
ExChild Junior Member Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Jackson, MS Posts: 18	I live in Mississippi...deep in the heart of the Bible belt. There is a church literally on every corner and the new fad in evangelism is to have a big sign on the road near your church on which you place some catchy slogan meant to shock some sense into unchurched passers-by. My favorite one: "You think it's hot here? --God" It's all about filling the pews. It seems like it would dawn on them that God should know what your motives are for attending church, so appealing to the lowest level of moral development is a waste of time anyway. Of course Christians would say that they don't do "good things" because they're trying to avoid judgment; they're doing what's "right" because they love God and want to keep his commandments. Actually one friend said she did it to get to Heaven. I don't know which is worse. Quote from "Dogma:" "Do it...do it and I'll F&*%ing spank you!" (Is profanity allowed here?...have to read the rules...)

09-22-2002, 07:09 AM	#7
Amos Guest Posts: n/a	It is an evil age that looks for a sign of the times. The end of the old world will be when the new world comes as a thief in the night. So how can a Christian look for the end of the world if he/she is already in the new world? Are they all pretenders?

09-22-2002, 07:50 AM	#9
Vampyroteuthis Contributor Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Wisconsin Posts: 14,915	Thanks for the response, Radorth. While I appreciate your opinion and respect your right to worship whomever and in whatever manner you wish I would like to mention a few things. YOU may have joined the church out of love rather than fear of punishment, that's great BUT...do you want to associate yourself with a god that feels the need to threaten others to join? While I'm sure many sided with Hitler out of fear of ending up like the jews I'm sure that there were many others who thought he was a great guy. How about this...you meet a stranger on the street who said come with me and I will give you a perfect life and love you like no other but you were already happy with your life so you say no thanks. Then the person says that if you do not go with them you will be tortured for all eternity. If a PERSON did this you would promtly call the police and get a restraining order or have the person arrested. I would expect that a devine being would have better behavior than the most unstable of people, wouldn't you? If I witnessed a friend treating others this way I would have to re-think my relationship with that person. While I believe that there is possibly "something" out there I don't believe it is this disfunctional entity. I believe the bible was written by some ancient people trying to round up members. I don't feel the need to have more than one governing authority (the federal government) over me much less some ancient laws that support the suppression of women. Aimee

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