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A question for the atheists here
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Firstly, think of the person that you LOVE most in the world.
Now try and take a moment to imagine how long eternity must be. :eek:
And so, the question is this :-
If you consider yourself an atheist, would you be confident enough to state now on this topic board (like a sworn affidavit) that you are prepared to confine that person you love most in the world, to an eternity of pain, fire and damnation if it transpired you were wrong about "god" and the "afterlife" (i.e. they would go to "hell" in your place)?
In other words, are you so confident that there is no "god" or "afterlife" that you would be prepared to gamble the eternity of the person you most love, on your belief?
:hyper:
Now try and take a moment to imagine how long eternity must be. :eek:
And so, the question is this :-
If you consider yourself an atheist, would you be confident enough to state now on this topic board (like a sworn affidavit) that you are prepared to confine that person you love most in the world, to an eternity of pain, fire and damnation if it transpired you were wrong about "god" and the "afterlife" (i.e. they would go to "hell" in your place)?
In other words, are you so confident that there is no "god" or "afterlife" that you would be prepared to gamble the eternity of the person you most love, on your belief?
:hyper:
0
Comments
I'm not asking with Christianity in mind, by the way.
So, are you saying that you WOULD be prepared to make that gamble?
and at verse 6 ...their love and hate have perished ...
if you walk round an old graveyard, on many stones it says that the person under the ground is awaiting the great resurection ...
the day when all those buried in the ground and under the sea will be resurected and judged ...to life or death. this is closer to the bible version than the religous crap ...well he was a rum sod but he now lives in heaven with god ...and all this stuff when a child dies ...god needed this child so took him! religion stinks. what kind of god would do that?
and if so many people are supposed to go to heaven ...who are the meek that will inherit ther earth?
but if we are taught forgive, why is there a 'hell'?
the day when all those buried in the ground and under the sea will be resurected and judged ...to life or death.
hell is a catholic teaching not a biblical one. the word hell simply means the common grave. as for the burning ...it was figurative and compared to gehenna ...the rubbish tip outside jerusalem where a fire burned day and night ...in other words you'd be destroyed ...not forever tormented.
Hell in Judaism is more absract than burning pitts. Was told that it is simply a metaphor for the time the sould flies around on earth reliving and coming to terms with it's actions on earth (should max take a year. The longer it takes the more you need to come to terms with i.e. the more you need to clarify with yourself).
That's utter crap. It's nothing to do with what you might or might not want. I'd love to live in Heaven for the rest of my days, if Heaven is my own personal paradise. Who wouldn't? That doesn't change the fact that I just don't believe that there's a god.
Um ... no, it is relevant just that the topic has gone off subject.
What I am trying to establish is if any atheists here would be happy to draw up a "spiritual contract" whereby their faith in no afterlife is so strong that they'd even be happy to gamble the eternal future of the person they love most in the world to a perpetual "hell". i.e. there is no afterlife so any contract is void anyway. Noone has taken me up on the offer yet ... does that mean that they may just have an inkling of doubt perhaps?
a couple of points
MR has demonstrated again that he knows more about what the bible says than most christians.
and as MR as pointed out hell is not biblical teaching - rather it teaches it does not exist, neither does heaven (as in you go to heaven when you die) for that matter. Death is final, the dead know nothing, the dead that believed shall be rasied at the resurection to a new life.
So if someone doesn't "believe" then they die, end of story. the end, no hell, no judgement.
and anyway, make the decision without regrets. Is there anysuch thing as a wrong decision, becasue surely at the time it was the best decision you could have made, so it was the right thing at the time. we should be careful judging decisions with hindsight, that just messes with your head.
edited to say "should I have posted that?"
Previous posters are indeed right, hell doesn't exist.
Hell was an idea principally invented to keep people in line, indeed much of the Bible is allegorical.
The heaven idea comes from the image of the New Jerusalem of Revelations, a perfect new society for believers.
I'm a Christian, and yet the idea of death still scares me, because it's the one thing about my life that I can't change - it absolutely has to happen. But the concept of a God, who loves me, and everyone else on this earth, no matter what is immensely reassuring.
Actually the teaching of hell owes a lot to Hades, found in the bardic poetry of Homer. It's like the whole Jesus having a halo thing... no, that was Apollo. :rolleyes:
Just thought I'd be a smartarse and make that clear And Mr Roll, bravo on your knowledge of the Bible man, well played.
Spiritual contact? I know quite a bit about the afterlife coming from spiritualists, although the most accurate reading (I'm cynical, but this person really shook me up) came from a woman of the hereditary witch path. There is no heaven and hell, that's just some form of social control... religion in fact is a damn good example of an idological state apparatus (I didn't invent the term, but I love it). Do this and be rewarded, to that and be punished. Yadda yadda...
What do I believe? There is more evidence for re-incarnation than for heaven and hell. I'm pagan, thus I believe that life is an everlasting circle, both beautiful and painful in many aspects. When we die, we die... but there are things that need doing before we move on to be reborn, which would explain why a lot of spirits stick around to chill with us once they're gone from the material plain. Then, when they're ready they move on to be reborn in to another body.
Heaven and hell? If hell exists then it is here with us now, not on the other side.
a problem for catholics and the teaching of hell ...jesus was found to be a spotless man ...a man without fault ...the son of god (and not god himself) but ...after being nailed to that lump of wood ...he spent three days in hell! now why would JC be roasted and tortured by his father when he was found to be without sin? simple ...hell is the common grave ...
Jesus talks about Hell. (Mark 9:43-48). He asked the Pharisees how they would escape the damnation of Hell. (Matt 23;33)
In Luke (23;42) it says that the wicked and righteous will be separated.
It is described as a 'lake of fire' in Revelations 20:12-15
It is also described as deep (Job 11;8) and dark (Job10:21,22)
These are the refernces that I have found but I'm sure there are more. From a Scriptural point of view, Hell definitely exists.
MR. Jesus went to Hades, the place where souls rest before judgement day, but He rose again. God sent Jesus to Earth to die and suffer in the place of mankind.
well why wuld an atheist be an atheist if they want to go to "heaven", atheists want to die and thats that, mayb u culd define that as heaven for them but they don't want to go to our conventional terminology of heaven, if u believe in heaven and think ur an atheist then you are an agnostic,
Maybe you could not write in text language?
But yeah, an atheist is somebody who in now way believes in divine intervention or the supernatural.
its worth checking the context of those, but as this isn't a bible discussion forum I won't say much except to say that:
The book of Job is believed not to have actually happened but written as a sort of play, that the Israelite used as they travelled through the wilderness. I mean no one in real life puts up with being spoken at for hours on end without even interrupting.
Revelations is a book of visions, pictures and allegories, care should be taken when applying these in a literal way.
Specious question. Why 'the person you love most'? It's your own 'soul' you're risking, surely? Or would you talk them into being an atheist while secretly still Believing, which would probably be a mortal sin anyway..?
The concept that a good samaritan, always charitable and good to others might go to hell because he doesn't happen to believe in and worship another being, while murdering bastards and bigots may go to heaven because they idolatrise the said superior being is so ludicrous it beggars belief anyone at all falls for it.
every religion on the face of the world preaces forgiveness, yet none seem to practice it, least of all christianity, they dont even know where they themselves came from, almost every religion on this planet preaches that thye are right and everyone else is wrong, most of all the christians, ive had priests tell me if your not christian you go to hell, wich myself i think is uttey bull-jobbies
You don't have to have some fanatical conviction to the absence of an afterlife to be an atheist.
I find it perfectly plausible to not believ in any god, any religious techings, and organised faith and still believe in some form of life after death...........
That would explain his apathy towards endless misery, war and holocausts that have castigated mankind for millennia.
Further to BlackArab's comments, it would be a very nasty and unpleasant god indeed who sent people to hell who were worshipping the 'wrong' religion. What options do most people have, when they're brainwashed into the particular beliefs of their elders since they're born?
And how about simple-living rain-forest indians who haven't even heard of the Christian faith? Do they all go to hell and eternal damnation because they didn't get to idolatrise the Christian god during their time on earth?
How Christian of Him...