on hell and heaven

Bart Erhman says Christians belief in these two places are misplaced, based on erroneous thinking or reading of the bible and ancient stories. He says Jesus had no such beliefs.

In other troubling news, a guy from Indonesia has been spamming my comments section with viagra sales. Now I have not made any orders to Pfizer for their wonder drug nor i have done a web search anywhere for efficacy of viagra.

Rains are here now. Today it rained in the morning and I couldn’t go out to run. The weather forecast for today and the rest of the week is more rain and cloudy days. I can’t imagine running on a treadmill for 2 hours. I think even hamsters get bored. I would die from boredom even if i had music and tv as i run.

thank god i am not a believer

because if I did and wrote something like this, I should be accused of blasphemy. The juicy part that caught my eye is

People in Hell exist. I think this is the most tragic, but also the most tragically beautiful part. Going back to Point 3: all things that exist only exist because God loves them into existence and holds them in existence through His love. Thus, the fact that people in Hell don’t just “disappear into oblivion” is because God is constantly saying to each one of those souls, “I love you, exist in my love. I love you, exist in my love.” Every single soul in Hell is as loved by God as souls in Heaven, Earth, and Purgatory. But, as Point 4 notes: Hell is a prison that is locked from the inside. 

God loves you enough to keep you in hell but not to forgive you and send you to stay in heaven with him. I don’t know what understanding of love this is, but it is the kind I am sure I don’t want. I think this is hat happens when one is committed to a position that is indefensible. You try gymnastics to make it sound reasonable but it doesn’t work.

God loves, even in hell, it just will not get you out.

on hell

I don’t know who it is who said that as long as one person languished in hell, heaven would be a sad place or something to that effect.

I like this post on heaven especially this

I searched the scriptures even more zealously for God, but that just made things worse. The God who is described in the Bible is a terrible Being, one that deserves our fear, but not one that any decent person could possibly worship. His behavior is despotic—the Flood isn’t the half of it—and I eventually concluded that he could command no moral authority by which to judge the human race. I stopped believing in Hell altogether and hoped that God was actually much better than he was portrayed in his biography.”

I think I should read the book A brief eternity. I will look for an epub copy later.

Have a heaven free day, won’t you.

Love letters from god

I thought this was hilarious

Hell is for children.

First a song

Then commentary from a man of the cloth

Morrison: What do you make of the theology which is pretty quite prominent these days in America, which is there is one guaranteed way not to go to hell; and that is to accept Jesus as your personal saviour.
Spong: Yeah, I grew up in that tradition. Every church I know claims that ‘we are the true church’ – that they have some ultimate authority, ‘We have the infallible Pope,’ ‘We have the Bible.’… The idea that the truth of God can be bound in any human system, by any human creed, by any human book, is almost beyond imagination for me.
I mean, God is not a Christian. God is not a Jew or a Muslim or a Hindi or Buddhist. All of those are human systems, which human beings have created to try to help us walk into the mystery of God. I honour my tradition. I walk through my tradition. But I don’t think my tradition defines God. It only points me to God

Comment of the week

 

There is a discussion going on somewhere on this blog. Our interlocutor has made a comment that I think deserves special treatment.

Hell does exist. Jesus spoke about Hell quite often. Why don’t you want Hell to exist?
If there is no Hell, then what is the point of judgement day? What is the point of working out your salvation with fear and trembling? What is the point of good and wrong, if there is no hell?
You are saying that he’ll doesn’t exist, because you don’t want to go there. But by your closing your eyes from the sun, will it make the sun stop shining?
Hell existed to Jesus….because he spoke of hell many times. Not just words but stories. For every word and action, you shall give account.

Romeo believes there is a judgement day. Hell has to exist. No hell, judgement is in vain. I think this is brilliant.

the blasphemers

The Paulines haven’t moved so far away from their fore fathers in wishing us damnation. They claim to worship a benevolent god who wants to be in a some kind of relationship with man but at the same time they tell us this gods has a plan to make BBQ of some people for a period of time so long I can’t conceive it properly and that my brothers is love. Below is the wishes of one Tertullian, writing in the early centuries of this religion

You are fond of spectacles, expect the greatest of all spectacles, the last and eternal judgement of the universe. How shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many proud monarchs, and fancied gods, groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness, so many magistrates, who  persecuted the name of the lord, liquefying in fiercer fires than they ever kindled against the Christians, so many sage philosophers blushing in red hot flames with their deluded scholars, so many celebrated poets trembling before the tribunal, not of Minos but of Christ, so many tragedians, more tuneful in the expression of their own sufferings , so many dancers

E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Hell again

A post written for atheistenquiry.org where I blog alongside 7 other wonderful people. When you visit say I sent you 😛 as le Ark would say, a fine gentleman the fellow is!

Enquiries on Atheism

I find these two questions that am going to attempt to answer very interesting, if not presumptuous. That said, I will attempt to do them justice.

1.  When you end up in Hell, who are you most looking forward to seeing?  Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, or Mao Zedong?

2.  If after death your soul finds itself in a place of eternal torment, who will you blame?

Re-read those questions! They are what I call loaded questions, that is, they have several hidden premises in them and we will first try to show what they are then continue to respond. They assumes among other things:-

• that there is a hell
• that there is an afterlife
• that people are resurrected in the form in which they exist now
• that there is need for eternal torment
• that we have a soul
• and that I or other atheists are going to hell

Having identified what yours…

View original post 903 more words

A god infinitel…

A god infinitely good, can neither be infinitely cruel nor grant his creatures an infinite duration, solely for the pleasure of eternal torments.

Baron d’Holdbach in good sense

Reflections on bereavement

I was recently at a funeral and the thoughts that I had written a few days ago about grieving and the subsequent discussions we had resurfaced in my mind. As I was there listening to each person who spoke to the bereaved family and to all those present, it occurred to me that for most people, or rather for those who spoke, that this life is just a preparation for another life, a future life of bliss for those who follow the right god and damnation for everyone else. While this thought alone irks me, for why would a person who thinks his particular god is loving, also hold in the same brain that this god will punish others for eternity for not bending to his whims, forget that the said god is also said to be all-powerful.

There is a particular speaker who did say they believe, or rather their religion teaches, that if a child dies, they go straight to heaven and  encouraged the parents to stay on the path of the lord and they will be sure to go to heaven. He added, even though it is sad to lose a child, the parents should have cause to be happy for their child would at the required time refuse to go to heaven?unless all those she loved are in heaven. I have a problem with this line of thought for a few reasons

1. If god cares that we go to heaven, and children head there straight away, why not ensure we all die as children?
2. If to go to heaven, all one requires is the innocence of a child, why not just populate heaven?
3. Why do people want to live after they have died? 

The other thing I no longer can reconcile myself to belief is that there is more after this life. There was a time, long ago I could have wanted it to be true but not anymore. The life we have here is temporal but it is the ONLY one we know and as far as we can tell the only one we will live. It is time imams, priests, church ministers and other fraudsters in the names of deities started to tell their followers the truth, and that truth is that life here is much more important that any other imaginary life. People must be told that death marks the end of their existence and they will go back to where they were before they were born. To accept this will go along way in making people look to this life in a different light, as a life worth living and that we need not make preparations for a future existence, especially since we did have to make preparations for this one.

If I should remember what others said, I will update this post… I promise 😛