You're absolutely right. If God is as dispicable as you claim then I want no parts of him. The only thing I know is that if you're right and our creator is that disgusting, then it is possible for mere mortal men to be more benevolent than God. I would certainly be such a man. I wouldn't even let the God you describe walk my dog, much less raise my childern. And I most certainly wouldn't want any parts of his so-called "heaven". That would be like worshiping Hitler just to avoid his wrath. I would rather face the wrath of such a demented demon than bow down and worship it.

I truly feel sorry for all of humanity if the God you describe is real. That would truly be the most disheartening and sad thing I can imagine. Atheism would actually be a far brighter picture. We would have been better off being total freak accidents than to have been created by the God you describe. What a hateful heartless entity he would be.

interesting point of view. But i want you to take a second and think about it.

We are ALL children of God. When a child of yours does something they weren't suppose to or doesn't do something they were suppose to, do you not punish them?

No man will go to hell. None of us will EVER go to hell. In the end of times hell is destroyed. Hell was nothing more then a place to send Satan and his followers for punishment of how they were behaving in heaven. But none the less, hell is destroyed in the end of times, Satan and his fallen angels will be cast into the lake of fire along with anyone on earth that did not love God. And i meen more then just the word love, i mean truely love God by following what he has told us to do and not to do best one can.

No absolutely not. I personally don't believe in punishment. I see no constructive value in it. It doesn't serve to "teach" anything other than the stupid idea that somehow violence is a constructive method for teaching (which I personally reject).

I consider myself to be above that mentality intellectually, emotionally, and morally.

Perhaps this is why it makes absolutely no sense to me that a supposedly all-wise deity would be so focused on such an ignorant method of 'teaching' his childern.

Besides, the idea of punishing a child for not loving me is even more insane. If my child doesn't love me I'm going to take a real close look at MYSELF. I'm certainly not going to punish my child for not loving me, all that would do is JUSTIFY the child's view of me and prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that I'm a jerk.

So no, I would not punish my children. I would teach them using constructive and positive methods. If they can't learn using those methods then it would be futile to punish them. At that point you better call in a doctor because if they are that screwed up it's more than likely that they have medical problems.

I don't even use punishment as a method of teaching animals. So no, the idea of an all-wise God who is supposedly far more intelligent than I am using punishment as a means of teaching lessons makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. Such a so-called "God" would be far inferior to me both intellectually and morally. That would make me intellectually and morally superior to my creator, which is obviously an impossiblity. Therefore, any religious mythology that boasts of a God that is that stupid and ignorant must necessarily be false.

It's pretty simple really.

so if your child looked you in the eye and started calling you all kinds of foul things and just started waling on you like crazy, punching you all over. Then when you fell to the ground you child started kicking you till you started coughing up blood, you wouldn't do ANYTHING to punish this child?

If my child did the things you suggest, I'm sure there would be a medical explantion for it, because there is no way that I would have raised a child to behave like that in the first place.

Your scenario simply doesn't fit. Perhaps if I had simply abandoned my childern and I wasn't there to teach them property, then they might have grown to become like that. But then who's fault would that have been? I would have been an irresponsible parent.

In fact, any God who is not there to personally raise his children on an individual one-on-one basis would indeed be an unfit parent as well. Under today's laws a person neglecting their child in such a way could be in legal trouble for child absuse via neglect.

So your scenario assumes an irresponsible parent to begin with. Moreover, the religion you're trying to sell also boast of a God who is an unfit parent and would be guilty of child abuse via neglect and abandonment as well.

You'll never "justify" the Hebrew fables to me. They are absurd and clearly do not represent anything real. It's just a bunch of ignorant stories made up by an ignorant society. I would have never written a book as disgusting as theirs. I can see through them like a plate glass window.

so your suggesting God just left us? lol no he's here right now guiding us. lol people are blind as bats.

by the way,,, the idea of an eternal hell is from dantes inferno and not the bible

the final 'punishment' is supposed to be a one time,, and very final deal

But that doesn't fit into the religion that you're pushing.

If what you claim here is true, then there would have been no need for this God to have sent his "Only begotten Son" to teach moral lessons. So that flies in the face of the idea of a God who is supposely guiding people and teaching them on a continuous and individual basis.

Moreover, your last attempt at "justifying" this religion by describing an extremely unruly child who is physically beating up on his parent also doesn't fit into your religion.

According to your religion all that is required to earn God's wrath is to simple reject that the Bible is "His Word". Even though the child may be rejecting this because the book contains such absurdities and violence that the child simply can't believe that his parent is so horrible.

This would be more akin to you writing a horrible violent book and then getting peeved at your kid because your kid refuses to believe that the book could have actually been written by YOU! So then you're going to punish your kid for simply NOT believing that you could be such a horrible jerk.

That's really sweet of you.

But that's basically what the Biblical God would need to be like. He sends innocent loving childern to eternal damnation simply because they refuse to believe a book that demands that he's an insensitive jerk. How ironic. Because like I eluded to in my previous post, this would only go to prove that those innocent children are indeed right.

exactly, and is what the lake of fire is. NO ONE is or ever will go to hell, no one as in a person. No human being will ever go to hell.

the idea is not whether people believe God wrote the book ( he actually is said to have inspired the book, which I believe is an action of guidance), the idea is whether people LIVE by the guidelines set in the book, and most importantly, whether they SEEK God and respect his authority


my parents expected me to respect their authority, and acknowledge that they are my PARENTS (as opposed to just an equal or a friend or a peer). I doubt Id have the relationship I have with them as an adult or that Id be welcome in THEIR home if I didnt. I dont think this means they are jerks at all.

Well, if no one goes to hell, then where do they go? Are you suggesting that everyone ultimately goes to heaven?

Is this some kind of "New Age" Christianity or something?

If my creator wants to punish me for not believing the Hebrews, that's fine with me. But like I say, I would never punish my childern for not believing a bunch of male-chauvinistic pigs. On the contrary I would be quite proud of them for standing up for higher moral ground.

for one to answer your question, no one goes to hell cause in the end of times hell is destroyed and Satan, all his fallen angels, and everyone that did not make judgement will be sent and burn in the lake of fire.

And to answer the rest of your response, how do you figure anything in the bible is male-chauvinistic? What proof do you have to support such a statement?

from what I have been taught, and understand people die(the flesh), believers go to be with God, non believers perish eternally

HELL IS REAL

I saw it on a billboard in the rust belt!




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iHkqgKMBDc

"the idea is whether people LIVE by the guidelines set in the book"

That's the problem right there. It has nothing at all to do with seeking any God. The entire religion is nothing more than a sales pitch to proclaim that the Hebrews speak for God.

I don't buy it. Those people were neither intelligent enough, nor did they have high enough morals to speak for God. They were clearly obscessed with concepts of SIN, PUNISHEMENT, and REPENTANCE that even culminated in blood sacrifices.

It's a very NEGATIVE view of life that loses touch with all that's holy and good, IMHO.

it doesnt seem to me that a place of eternal punishment would exist, although it would be reasonable to me if it did,

as we studied it,, Hell was referring to an actual place where Hebrews burned things. The Lake of Fire , which is often mentioned, is Satans punishment along with his demons,, and I also dont feel the fire will last forever, even though their torment will.

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That's the problem right there. It has nothing at all to do with seeking any God. The entire religion is nothing more than a sales pitch to proclaim that the Hebrews speak for God.
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Has everything in seeking God. The holy bible you call a book is a great path into finding God, it's the first stepping stone. More you follow/believe in God, more our great father will reveal himself to you.

Actually that's what I get from the mythology as well. After all, even John 3:16 (which is a Christian favorite) states that eternal life comes with Jesus. Yet to live in eternal damnation also would require eternal life. So the "non-believers" would merely perish and not have eternal life.

And in truth, if I have that choice, I would chose to perish even if I were eligible for this biblical "heaven". Because even in heaven the idea is to serve the will of God, and after having read the Bible I'm sure that I have absolutely no desire to serve the will of either Yahweh or Jesus. So perishing looks just fine to me. Living in a dictatorship would actually be a step down after having lived in a democracy on Earth.

But isn't that ironic? I could have won that same prize from atheism.

Actually if I were going to go for a religion that has something attractive to offer it would be Eastern Mysticism or the Faery Teachings (which is based on a similar principle). Those are the only religions that genuinely offer true nirvana by my standards.

So I'll continue to "believe" in those. After all, religious "beliefs" are supposed to be an act of FAITH. If I'm going to place faith in something I'll place it in the Faery World. That's the most worthy place for it.

Then if God turns out to actually be an evil goon like Hitler, I'll have to deal with that when the time comes.

nm

There is no hell in the old testament. Jews at any rate don't believe in hell. Has nothing to do with Hebrews as far as Hebrews are concerned. I looked it up!

" According to Judaism, what happens in the next world? As noted, on this subject there is little material. Some of the suggestions about afterlife in Jewish writings and folklore are even humorous. In heaven, one story teaches, Moses sits and teaches Torah all day long. For the righteous people (the tzaddikim), this is heaven; for the evil people, it is hell. Another folktale teaches that in both heaven and hell, human beings cannot bend their elbows. In hell people are perpetually starved; in heaven each person feeds his neighbor.

All attempts to describe heaven and hell are, of course, speculative. Because Judaism believes that God is good, it believes that God rewards good people; it does not believe that Adolf Hitler and his victims share the same fate. Beyond that, it is hard to assume much more. We are asked to leave afterlife in God's hands."

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/afterlife.html