Exactly. It is the same for a non-Christian. "Fear of God" for me, means exactly that... a fear and respect for consequences of my decisions.

It serves no purpose to be afraid of death, because physical death is inevitable. I think sometimes Christians fear death more than atheists because of their beliefs. Some may have doubts that they will be worthy of heaven and end up in hell for their sins.

Do I fear death? Yes, in the respect that I want to live as long as possible. I have been close to death, and I think when the time comes, I will be ready.

Thanks a lot for answering this. I mean it.

np

and just some trivial information but as I was reading this, out of the blue, guess what song pops in my head

'your love keeps lifting me higher,,than Ive ever been lifted before'


kewl huh?

Having a desire to live, is not the same as fearing death.

If I was in immediate danger of dying, say, I'm standing in the road and a car is coming, would I do what I could to avoid death? Sure, I would jump out of the way of the car!

However, to be perfectly honest about it I would fear getting mangled and surviving more than I would fear death itself. I do my best to avoid unnecessary PAIN. Especially if it's going to long term pain, as in having your entire body severely mangled and surviving the situation in terms of still being alive.

In fact, I would much prefer death over living in pain.

But back to the point. A desire for life, is not a fear of death. Unless of course the desire becomes so obsessive that a person actually fears the thought of 'losing life'.

These are different.

In other words, even an atheist could fear "losing life". But at the same time, they do not fear actual death, because if death is just "lights out" then there is nothing to fear in death itself.

The fear of "losing life" is actually a fear that can only exist when you are alive.

Do you see what I'm saying?

I real fear of death could be like you had mentioned earlier. A Christian may fear death because they may fear that they might be judged to go to hell and suffer torment for eternity (the precise reason why I would fear LIFE in a mangled state).

What they are fearing is not "death" but rather they are fearing eternal LIFE in a state of eternal torment and punishment.

In fact, an atheistic death would be greeted with open arms by a person in such a states of affairs! That would be a welcome relief to the nightmare.

The only "death" that I can imagine "fearing" would be the hell of Christianity. That's the worse nightmare anyone can possibly imagine. Eternal torture and suffering night and day endlessly with no hope of ever being relieved of the situation.

What kind of an entity would be required to have even thought of such a horrifying predicament much less to actually CREATED IT to be reality?

An all-merciful, all-loving God?

That's a blatant contradiction right there.

Interesting point, Abracadabra. As opposed to me answering it, I'll leave it to the masses.

He writes: "An all-merciful, all-loving God? There's a blatant contradiction right there."

Is God all-mericful and all-loving? If so, how is it that people go to Hell?

[I know the answer to this, but am curious to see what others think.]

God is not all merciful and all loving, at least not according to the old testament. Jesus came along and started working on correcting things but you never know when God might go on a rampage again and decide he doesn't care about us anymore.

I have alot of fear, but my fear comes from my life experiences. I do not fear death at all, I just hope I don't have a painful death.

Yes I am fully expecting the defense force to come and claim that God will not do it again, but you have no way of knowing 100% that he won't.

Well, if God sends people to hell for the reasons that the Christians claim (i.e. for simply not supporting their religious bigotry), then this God would indeed be unmerciful and unrighteous.

So the only way this God could possibly be righteous is if the Christians have it all wrong.

Christians seem to love nothing more than spreading hatred and fear toward anyone who doesn't support their religious bigotry.

I personally can't see any all-wise, all-loving God supporting such hatred and ignorance.

I don't believe that any all-wise, all-loving God hates me because I refuse to support Christian bigotry.

But I do believe that the Christians would LOVE for their God to hate me.

And of course, they would LOVE to somehow "justify" their hatred of non-Christians.

So what's your "justification" for this God who casts innocent decent people into a state of everlasting punishment just because they refuse to support the Christian hatred of non-believers?

RE: Note bold statement above.

You know nothing of the sort. You only believe what you have been told and accepted it.

Is God all merciful and all loving?
~~ a silly question to ask an atheist.

But then, I'm not an atheist and I can only answer that question according to what I believe "GOD" to be.

Are people all merciful and loving to each other?....answer: NO.

Is the law of cause and effect merciful and loving?... answer: NO.

But it is what it is.

This world is what we make of it.

Care about yourself and others.
Save yourself.

The world is what we make of it.

my parents love me and yet they punished me, they were merciful(compassionate)in their punishment

i dont profess to know Gods heart (and the bible requests that I do not try to)

Isiaah 55:8-9 “‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.”

I can only follow my conscience in which I believe to be the Lord and use the resource left behind (the bible, the words of Jesus) etc....to better understand how to please Him and how to walk a path less likely to DISPLEASE him

Is it mercy to burn someone forever if they do wrong, or kill them outright? Punishing is one thing, but torture is another.

As for the rest, you are making the mistake of putting your faith in the words of a book moreso than God Himself. You don't need to book to know God, and NO book has all of His truth it, nor is any book entirely true.

I learn by putting my faith in books, or more specifically, in the knowledge their authors have. I believe in the knowledge shared in the Bible.

I have never tried to burn someones spirit, which is Gods realm, so I dont know if that has to do with mercy or not and as the book says, its not for me to assume what applies to me applies to God.
Although, I do believe his limits exceed anything that we are capable of. In other words, he is CAPABLE of doing whatever we are and THEN some. If my parents can love and discipline me with forgiveness and mercy, I am certain he is not any more LIMITED in his capability. He says his ways are HIGHER.

God can deal with the flesh, as I can, but unlike me he can also deal with the spirit. I dont believe in eternally burning , but I belive from the perspective of man, forever is often equated with a mortal lifetime. I think when we die our second death, that is it. unless we are born again. I think in between the first and second death we may be in limbo or we may burn,,,,there is no clear distinction for me to know anything but that I prefer neither one.

That some pretty dedicated "faith".

You're not even going to question whether this God's concept of "love" and righteous hold the same meaning as these concepts have for you?

If they don't hold the same meaning, then it's useless to use words like these to even attempt to describe what God is like.

Clearly you have been convinced that the bible represents the "words of Jesus" even though Jesus himself apparently didn't seem to feel that it was important to write anything down in his "own words".

To me, that is extremely questionable right there. That's the very first question I would ask. Why did Jesus himself not write down this all-important message to mankind? Why did he leave it to belated and highly questionable hearsay?

Why also, would have sent conflicting messages by saying that he did not come for the righteous, when supposedly there are no righteous people?

Why also, would he have stated that he will not judge anyone for not believing in him or his words if just the opposite were true?

And supposedly he was saying that live to people he was speaking to face-to-face. He said that he wouldn't even judge them for not believing him.

Yet now the Christians expect us to believe that if we don't accept second-hand hearsay rumors about Jesus we will be judged to be 'rejecting Jesus'?

There are just far too many inconsistencies in this Christian picture for me to believe that refusal to believe in any of this would DISPLEASE Jesus. As far as I can see even these gospels themselves do not support the idea that Jesus would be displeased by anyone for not believing in him directly, much less for not believing in second-hand hearsay rumors of what he might have said.

You talk about not questioning God's love, or righteousness.

Well in a very real sense, I take that to the limit. I accept that God's love is infinite and far ABOVE mine just like Isaiah has suggested:

Isaiah 55:8-9 “‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.”

Higher?

Well, if that implies that God's LOVE is "higher" than mind (i.e. Greater than mine), then I can't imagine God becoming peeved with me just because I refuse to cower down to Christian religious bigotry and support their hatred of non-Christians.

Why should I feel that Christian religious bigotry has anything at all to do with God? Or even Jesus for that matter?

Just because the Christians claim to have the only correct interpretation of the rumors of Jesus doesn't make it so.

All they have is a book of rumors. Their book doesn't even contain a single solitary word that was actually written by this man Jesus.

As far as I'm concerned my conclusion that Jesus was most likely a Mahayana Buddhist Bodhisattva may very well be TRUTH. I have what I feel to be quite convincing evidence of this.

When you say things like,



When you speak like that it just sounds to me like you are deathly afraid that you might accidentally DISPLEASE Jesus. Like to even question the Bible would be FORBIDDEN!

In fact, you've already stated that you have been taught this by the very book that you are now afraid to question because the authors of the book told you that you had better dare not do that!



Well of course not. If you start to question things in the Bible you'll quickly discover that they are filled with contradictions and absurdities. What better way to keep people from questioning the contradictions and absurdities in the Bible than to instill in their mind that to ask such questions would be AGAINST God's very own will!

Don't want to DISPLEASE GOD!

Heaven forbid. Do that and you risk ending up in HELL.

Walk on eggshells, don't ask questions, and just keep the faith!

Pray like HELL that you won't be sent to HELL!

And hope against hope that of all the prayers that you ever make in your entire life that ONE PRAYER above all others is ANSWERED!

Sure sounds like a fear-driven religion to me.

it can sound like whatever it sounds like

irrelevant to me in terms of my relationship with God

I simply quoted the scripture

Isiaah 55:8-9 “‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.”


I do have faith that this is true, even if it was written in some more 'acceptible' resource, men would doubt it and its veracity and dependability,, I am not one of those men/women, I do have faith in what it says just as I have faith in any of the books that have filled my FORMAL education

as to what I question, that is between God and I, but I will verify that what I stated was that the bible, (the part that is quoted as GODS words) certainly tells me that I cant KNOW Gods heart with certainty because it is too HIGH for me to truly grasp

so I dont PROFESS to know it

that is not about faith, so much as it is common sense, the creator would be something beyond the creation, my robot would probably never truly COMPREHEND everything there is to me, although they could try to grasp the basics,,,


as to the rest

NO, Im not DEATHLY afraid of anything and not sure what implies that I am.

No. IM not convinced the bible is the words Jesus spoke, only those parts quoted as being from his mouth.

No. I do not know if Jesus wrote things down for us or not, nor do I find it particularly relevant one way or the other, for the reasons stated above concerning written history.

No. I see no contradiction here.
“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners


No. I never stated I was afraid to question the book.

and No, my motive for not displeasing God is not fear anymore than my motive to not displease my family. My motive is love and a desire to make them happy, to make them proud, to contribute to them the same joy they contribute to me.



I dont walk on eggshells, I ask questions, and I keep faith. I dont pray about hell for any reason and I dont place any of my prayers above any other.

I like that passage. It speaks to me in that I have experienced a variety of levels of understanding or levels of consciousness in communicating with people. You don't speak to a child about things that are above that child's understanding usually. Some children are more aware than others, but as you speak to anyone, you will soon be able to feel where their level of understand is and you can communicate with them if you speak on that level.

I like it too.

sorry the viking one again. i may like to point out at this point that one of the 10 commandments is thou shalt not kill. yet on numberouse occasions like the crusades and the roman catholic indoctronation of northern europe christians killed thousands of "no belivers". now forgive me if im wrong but on both accounts these killings and use of force were sanctioned by the current head of the church (pope in most cases)who is supposed to be the sheppard of gods flock if im not to far out (but if i am you know what i mean) hes gods chosen vassel on this planet. now if he has sent forth leagons of zelots out into the world on "gods" war how is that gods work exactly being that murder of ANYONE is a sin surely that make the figureheads of the church of god flawed.
on that note if man cannot comprehend the voice of god then who the hell managed to write the old testament knowing it was god and they just wasnt mad?
and lastly where in the bible does it say "suffer not the witch to live" because that makes a lot of church based activeties very very un proactive in the salem and spanish inqusition kind of way. how can a religion twist its "holy" book to cause death and destruction for there own needs distorting there makers words to gain them more power and influence.
this is also charachterised in the way churches "make things up" to get what they want. now forgive me if im wrong but has the appocolype happened because of jazz or rock and roll? no but thats what we were told that that music was the work of saitan and we will all die because of it and burn in hell. now i dont break the law i dont go out of my way sacrifising virgins or spiting in the face of old women. i love my rock music now im sorry but they guessed that one and where wrong so how many other things have "key" christians of any level of power got wrong and how many things have they twisted to sute there own needs?
this is why i practace my religion. a god shouldnt ask his subjects to kneel for him/her nore expect it. then his subjects will kneel for his humble and honest ways.
my gods dont ask for much but i always offer more because of this as i feel i should because they have helped to guide me in ways that may not have been any beniafit to me in any way but the lesson that was learnt was worth the pain.


please dont think im hateful of christans please i am strong about my views but not abbusive (my other half is catholic)

hope someone understands the drivell i have put up there

religion is an inanimate concept

it doesnt twist anything


people are flawed, they twist many things, including religion

Ok if this is the case, how you can trust a book written by men to tell you the entire truth?

ahh,, truth is a very complicated thing. I trust the book the same way I trust a history book, or a science book, or any other book of 'knowledge'.



The Bible is a very complex HISTORY book , from which I take away many lessons. I Trust in the truth of those messages even though I take into account the many different PERSPECTIVES the writers have about the details of the message, the message itself doesnt falter......for me.