Who cares whether Hell is brimstone and fire? The fact of the matter is that any eternal punishment is infinite, and any infinite punishment for a finite crime is manifestly unjust. If all that is done is a permanent separation from the true source of joy in the universe then that is still evil. If souls are obliterated by God's will instead of granted eternal life, that's evil too. You don't have to construct a magic torture chamber - whenever you multiply any punishment by eternity, you dole out an unjust torture.
Much to my BFF's wife's chagrin, No Pants 2013 became No Pants 2010's at his house.Thread Hop !!!!
@OP:
Well...
(A while later...)
edited 15th Mar '12 2:39:04 AM by BestOf
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.Hmmm... Would the "problem of suffering" fit in here, or would that be too big for this topic (thus deserving it's own). My earlier questions
went mostly ignored, so that could be a sign that it should be it's own topic...
@Gab: Whilst I am prepared to consider that the people of ancient Sumeria, or Dark Ages Denmark, were brought as close to God in their own way by a perusal of Gilgamesh or Beowulf as contemporary Christians are by a perusal of the Gospels. Why not?
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.Well, the doctrine of salvation by faith preaches that only those who willingly accept Jesus get into heaven when they die, and that everybody else deservedly goes to hell, regardless of their other deeds. This means that the vast majority of human souls will be justly condemned to an eternity in hell by their own creator. This implies that God doesn't actually care how we treat one another. God only cares that we believe one thing only. So who goes to heaven? Jerry Falwell. Who goes to hell? Gandhi.
On the other hand, those very doctrines and ideas tend to be from quote-mined passages in the Bible. Take one verse out of context and make it the backbone of an entire doctrine? Especially since the vast bulk of the New Testament is about how to live, not what happens after we die. It's almost as if the people who wrote the New Testament thought that treating others well and living humbly and justly was more important.
What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.^ The more self-consistent (I hesitate to say more intelligent) folks who argue such a doctrine tend to rely on the assumptions that anyone who's good is really a Christian in at least some way, even if they don't realize it, and anyone who's bad isn't really a Christian.
edited 15th Mar '12 1:37:31 PM by feotakahari
That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something AwfulThis is true. Christianity couldn't all agree to the basic tenants for as long as Christianity existed. I mean even taking to account the time before the East-West Schism that divided St. Constantine's Christianity into Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy or the earlier breaks which brought about the Assyrian Church and Oriental Orthodoxy, there was Gnosticism, which had its followers practically say, "Hey, the Old Testament God's kind of a dick which doesn't make sense with the kindness of love of Jesus in the New Testament... Maybe Jesus was working for a different monoGod sent to bring knowledge of said monoGod into the world and the God of the Old Testament... is the evil Demiurge! Have you read the good book of Marcion
?"
According to historical records, the Bible we have today was compiled as a response to Marcion's Bible, which had versions of Luke and 10 Epistles of Paul that supported his views. So yeah, Christianity has been arguing over the tenants of its religion for millennia.
edited 18th Mar '12 4:49:13 PM by GameGuruGG
Wizard Needs Food BadlyMarcionism isn't the same as Gnosticism anyway, so.
Speaking of which, I think people (Christians especially, but irreligious as well) are way too fast to generalize the Old Testament. There's love and forgiveness and helping others in there as well as well—the Old Testament spans hundreds of years, with all sorts of different genres and people writing from all sorts of different situations. People's relationship and conception of the divine comes out in all sorts of different ways.
The NT in comparison is a lot more "focused" because it was written in a much shorter time frame.
edited 20th Mar '12 2:04:22 AM by Tiph
Well, I did originally wanted to mention Simon Magus instead of Marcion, but this is a Bible topic, not a Gnosticism or Christianity topic. I figured that commenting on the culture the Bible was compiled in would be more on-topic.
Wizard Needs Food Badly![]()
I agree. I'm not even religious, and I still get my hackles up when I see people making Marcionist generalisations about "the God of the Old Testament" killing humans left right and centre, as if God had some sort of Heel–Face Turn when Jesus was born. It's the kind of thing that mainly seems to be said by people who haven't read the Old Testament (or the New). Also, whether the speaker intends it or not, it's pretty darn offensive to Jewish people.
There are beautiful stories of love and understanding in the Tank. But here is the thing:
1) Old Testament is not the Jewish Bible. It is an adapted arrangement.
2) Most of the supreme acts of Love most always originate with humans like Ruth.
3) It is because of the stark contrast between the acts of love that the acts of supreme destruction become even more telling as well as morally confusing.
How us it God can punish David for setting up a man to die so he can marry his wife through the death of their firstborn? How was it the child's fault? Wouldn't making the couple barren be more apt as well as humane to external life?
"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur![]()
Which part do you mean is offensive to Jews? That their God isn't the same one as the one in The New Testament (don't see how that would be offensive, claiming they're the same would seem moreso to me)? Or their God has killed a lot of people (which if you belive the OT is true, but I could kind of see as being offencive).
edited 20th Mar '12 7:56:32 AM by Qeise
Laws are made to be broken. You're next, thermodynamics.Another thing, it isn't offensive to Jewish people to point out they have a fickle God. All my Jewish scripture and philosophy classes were taught by devout Jews. All were quite honest in the quizzical nature of their God's disposition just as some Christians were.
The thing is they broke into two main catagories that has already been discussed:
1) Those who felt the scripture was compiled by men under holy influence, but could see the historical context that could explain that particular edit
2) Those who trusted the mysteries of faith and carried their lives accordingly.
Again, I will highly reccommend going to You Tube and watching "God On Trial". It's a reenactment of a real life event that happened during the Holocaust.
"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur
Well, I don't want to generalize all Jewish people, but its certainly true for the Jewish people I know and its usually accompanied by some condemnation of the Jewish religion/Jewish Bible/Old Testament. MOTWYW.
Saying the OT and Jewish Bible are "different" is technically true, but its pretty misleading given the context of this convo. Here are the major differences between the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament:
- Different Order
- Different Number of Books (due to some books being lumped together)
- Catholic and Orthodox Bibles (not Protestant) contain Tobit, Judith, 1+2 Maccabees, Sirach, Baruch, Wisdom of Solomon, a longer version of Esther, 2 extra chapters in Daniel
- Orthodox Bibles contain 1 Esdras, 3+4 Maccabees, Psalms of Solomon and the Odes
Outside of that, its really the same—the Protestant Bible in particular contains the same God as the Jewish Bible does, making this "the OT and Jewish Bible are different!" thing a red herring. Especially since at the time of Marcion, there would be no difference.
Really ANY generalization about the Old Testament is going to be ignorant as all get out. Even in the passages where God kills people, there's generally a larger thematic element, which, when placed in context, underlines God's love for others and importance of human goodness (Noah's Ark being the supreme example). And likewise, as God kills in some books, he preserves/creates life as well—generally in the very same books. On top of that, there's plenty of love and forgiveness, and charity, forgiveness, and loving others are the things which please God the most. And I think that the whole 'most of the love and goodness is human centered' thing is true, but a bit of a red herring. The Bible and Abrahamic religion in general is human centered to an extent, sure—thats a large part of what makes monotheism different from most forms of polytheism.
I think another issue is that people often don't actually understand genre. NT has only very few genres and outside of some passages in the Gospels and Apocalypse of John, you can read it very straightforwardly. (Even then, people seem to have an easier time understanding Jesus' parables are non-literal than they do OT books like Jonah). OT on the other hand has many many different genres, over many many historical contexts: law, histories, legends, historical fiction, poetry, philosophy, etc. It's very complex, especially if you are removed from those cultural contexts.
edited 20th Mar '12 10:50:39 AM by Tiph
"Christianity couldn't all agree to the basic tenants for as long as Christianity existed."
Most average Christians today hold beliefs that diverge significantly from traditional doctrine, whatever Church they happen to be from. I myself have a fondness for the Pelagian heresy.
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.

hell as understood comes from revelations if you use direct biblical scripture. But there is the mention that those not in god's favor in death will be cast away from him, never to be in his presence.
"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur