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thistle
Guest
No need to worry if you live a life in accordance with Christ’s teachings, and if you fall, as we all do occasionally, just zoom along to Confession.
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melbourne_guy
Guest
Its not that, but I fear for the salvation of my family, could you really enjoy heaven knowing that your mum or dad or whoever you love is being burned?
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thistle
Guest
I don’t think those in Heaven experience suffering or anguish of any kind.
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solarwind23
Guest
From my conversation with another poster.
Are you kidding me? Fear of hell is the only thing that’s keeping you from becoming a murderer and a torturer? How much is your decency worth then, if you’re doing it only out of fear of the consequences?
I mean really. If I were God I would value a person who had sexual sins but was loving and kind than a person who was held back by fear from becoming an evil dictator.
Most days I don’t even believe in an afterlife and am a pretty decent person. I would NEVER harm anyone that way, even if there were 0 consequences. Why? Because I have empathy, compassion, and genuine care for fellow man. I think most of us do. That’s how we’re made. I think there are a few poeple who are sociopaths or whatever and could become evil, but not most of us.
And when I help others it’s motivated by genuine concern, not a desire to earn points with God. Similarly, when I refrain from something because I know it would harm another, it is also out of concern. Because really I doubt there is anything after death for me, I think once my brain goes I’ll be gone forever. If there is a God, I think he made us for this world the way he made other creatures for this world. But… I don’t know, and there could very well be an afterlife.
Plus, several thousand years of punishment as I think Hitler would get in a just system (because if you add up the pain endured by people he harmed would add up to that number) is hardly a slap on the wrist. Think about it: Judaism and Christianity together have been around for 5 thousand years. Can you even imagine being punished for that long? That’s hardly a slap on the wrist!
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solarwind23
Guest
I couldn’t. Not unless God deleted all my memories and knowledge of hell.
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solarwind23
Guest
No, and as I said people should be punished JUSTLY. If you remarry after having been abandoned you hardly merit ETERNAL suffering. Maybe a few years of punishment, but not forever.
Come on.
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DreadVandal
Guest
In fact, most of the Church fathers, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas all argue that the saints in heaven rejoice at the sufferings of the damned.
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DreadVandal
Guest
When you are in heaven, you will no longer see these from your own finite point of view, but from God’s point of view. The angels and saints in heaven look down upon the damned and they see the beauty in God’s justice at punishing evil and they see the beauty in God’s mercy insofar as they have been spared this fate. All things are done for God’s own glorification so that, in the end, there is nothing but God. Hell displays the beauty and glory of God just as heaven does, though in its own way. All things are beautiful and glorious.
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Nicene
Guest
Nope fear of hell doesn’t keep me from doing them at all. I don’t believe good and evil are relative. I believe that we are made intrinsically good, made in the image of God and He wants us to bring that to perfection. But if God is relative encompasing good and evil I want to be just like Him as Christ says. If good and evil mean nothing to God then they should mean nothing to me either. For example I absolutely love children and my wife doesn’t want to have any more. I see no reason, under your philosophy, not to go out and father multiple children with other women. But I do believe that that is intrinisically evil. Christ is in each person “What you did to the least of my brothers, you did it to me.” Not only do I have too much resepect for my wife to do such a thing but too much for Christ.
Decency, under your philosophy, is a relative term. In fact it says Jeffry Dahmer was decent. Who made you the judge of what is decent and what isn’t? Please don’t tell me you have never gotten angry enough at another that wanted to punch them out. Since decency is relative you should have done it.
You just stated the opposite with Hitler and heaven. Loving and kindness are relative is God is relative. And we are supposed to aspire to be like God.
Your quantifying good and evil now. Why suddenly do you believe as I believe? Isn’t the sociopath good enough for heaven now? Why would you never harm another person if it is just relative. Don’t kid yourself about how relative the world has become. We kill 2 million babies a year, bomb unknown innocent targets, pornography is rampant (displaying a severe lack of respect of other persons). It isn’t being done out of fear or not fear of going to hell or heaven, it is being done because God is relative to them, it doesn’t matter. Always without question when we rely on ourselves we go astray. When we make God relative, we make good and evil relative, setting ourselves up as Gods
That’s because you know intuitively you are made in the image of God, whether you realise it or not. Animals don’t act that way, they kill without remorse.
I find that sad (not trying to be offensive) Our consciousness is made up of more than a biological process. Just because you believe you are good doesn’t mean you should expect others to believe as you believe, after all it’s relative. It has nothing to do with heaven and hell, after all under this system there isn’t one. One could argue that what Hitler did was for the good of the german people at the expense of other peoples. Therefore he was doing something inherantly good under his version of a just society.
If we are like other creatures then there is nothing wrong with killing a person who tries to hit on my wife. In the animal kingdom if this occurs the fight for a mate is usually to the death, no remorse. They certainly don’t believe in a heaven or hell. In the animal world another is also killed usually to gain power. Shouldn’t we do the same sinse we are the same creatures?
Or is there something that seperates us from this behavior?
As Paul says that is our hope, and if our hope is foolishness I would rather live in that foolishness than in a world that is relative to it.
cont.
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Nicene
Guest
Sure it is, you aren’t thinking in eternal terms. To quantify for a moment we will say eternity is a billion years. A thousand years hardly qualifies as detention after school or a good scolding. It amounts to God shaking his finger and saying “That was naughty, you shouldn’t have killed 6 million Jews and countless millions of others in a power grab, now go to your room and think about it.” That’s hardly justice. Just as it would be God scolding me for wanting more children and showing so little resepct for Him and my wife and going out and doing it. The only respect in the animal kingdom, if we are indeed animals, is respect for power, usually at the cost of others.
What need have we of laws? In the animal kingdom there is no law. A tiger can and does go and kill other animals without consequence either temporal or spiritual. He is God in his kingdom. If we are like these other creatures why have we set up laws? Isn’t that inherantly evil and against our base nature? Why is man so different? To what do we attribute this cognition and quantify good and evil?
Peace and God Bless
Nicene
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solarwind23
Guest
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Can you imagine being in heaven, seeing not evil dictators, but people who remarried after their spouses left them, abused women who left their husbands and started new families, women whose lives were endangered by pregnancy and who sterilized themselves because their husbands were controlling and refused to use NFP, young men who succumbed to sexual desire etc.
Can you imagine seeing those people in utter agony for an eternity, never ending, the worst torture you can possibly imagine (in fact it’s so bad you can’t even conceive of it) and feeling proud of God for doing that?
I think if I saw that I’d ask God to go to hell voluntarily because I would not want to do anything with a being who created such an unjust system.
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solarwind23
Guest
How about the promise of faithfulness you made to your wife and family? How about the pain your affairs would cause your wife and children?
No, you won’t burn for it for an eternity under my philosophy, but you should do good because it’s good not out of fear or desire for a reward.
Decency is not relative. There is an objective standard on behavior found in biology, psychology etc. Objective things harm human beings, objective things help human beings.
Just because I don’t believe there is a supreme being dictating laws, doesn’t mean I cannot recognize what is love and what is compassion and what helps people and what harms them.
What is the value of morality based on authority? It’s almost like might makes right. When the God of the Old Testament was ordering stonings and flooding everyone, including children, was he doing good? I don’t think so. Is whatever God says good simply because he says it? Not in my opinion. Might does not make right, as they say.
Hmm, maybe we misunderstood each other. There is no guarantee that Hilter would go to heaven. Only if he truly changed and became a different man. Even within Christianity repentance gets you to heaven.
What I said was that Hitler wouldn’t go to hell forever, he would be punished according to his crimes and then if he didn’t repent, didn’t learn his lesson he would be out of heaven in a world kind of like earth in terms of the suffering he would experience.
I wouldn’t harm anyone because it would cause that person pain. That’s reason enough for me not to do something. I don’t need an afterlife or a God to tell me this.
If you don’t believe in soul-at-conception, then humanity might be equated with consciousness, with thoughts and with feelings. The unborn don’t have that, so it is understandable why people now define humanity in terms of sentience rather than soul.
There have been wars throughout history, it is actually much better now, there is the no torture for prisoners of war act, diplomacy, generally people have to justify their wars whereas in the past they could go ahead and do it for the sake of conquest.
For biological reasons sex drive is very powerful in many people, many can’t resist, pornography is very tempting. I see this whole sexual immorality thing as a lack of willpower among people. People who are into this don’t strike me as particularly evil. They can’t control themselves, and they damage their attitude toward sex. But in many ways those same people can be very kind, friendly, helpful, charitable etc. Sins of the flesh are in my opinion the most innocent ones.
But others do believe as I believe. I meet people all the time, and I find them to be kind, compassionate, hepful, friendly etc. I’ve yet to meet an evil person. The worst thing these people fall into are “sins of the flesh”, which in my opinion as I mentioned earlier a weakness and a matter of lack of will power.
The true measure of goodness in my opinion is what a very powerful person does to powerless people when he knows he can pretty much do as he pleases without consequences.
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Nicene
Guest
Who said I am doing it out of fear or desire for reward. You are projecting onto me your preconcieved idea. Read the rest of what I said about our objective to act as God would act, imitating Him.
You may not think you will burn in hell for deliberately disobeying God and harming another person without remorse but I would beg to differ. As you harm another you harm God.
Peace and God Bless
Nicene
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solarwind23
Guest
Well, you did say this:
But okay, if you don’t believe this I stand corrected.
Why is disobedience a sin? Why is so much of Christianity based on obedience? Obedience to God, obedience to the Church, obedience to the parents, for women obedience to their husbands, obedience to local authorities.
What’s so holy about this? I see nothing worthy in obeying, especially obeying simply for the sake of obeying. If anything it seems to stifle individuality, and it seems that creativity and progress flourish where there is freedom and less obedience.
You know, where there is obedience there is also power. The Church in power over us, in monasteries superiors in power over the regular guys, husbands in power over wives etc.
That kind of thing seems like a dirty power-grab to me.
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Nicene
Guest
Sure it is. You have described us as no different from animals. A lion doesn’t make a moral objective decision to not kill an antelope, he doesn’t because he isn’t hungry.
There is no such thing in the animal kingdom. It’s the eqivelant of the antelope trying to give the lion a reaosn not to kill him when the lion can care less.
I would suggest you don’t understand eternity then nor the testament. What is the primary concern for God in man, his eternal soul or his physical well being, and which is secondary? If God, knowing that those who were righteous in the OT would spend eternity with him (and under Christian belief raise those physical bodies at a later date to live in harmony without evil) even among the non believers in Him, (which Christ would later preach to when he decended offering them eternity) behoove to allow the evil to occur for the later greater good?
Again we are both making suppositions here. Do you really believe Hitler repented? While neither of us can say for sure it is a fairly good bet he didn’t.
God doesn’t, according to the bible, make a new earth with Hitleresque suffering where all the evil people will continually destroy each other. Call it hell and remove the earth aspect and you have eternal damnation. You just described a world of unending suffering.
In the animal world the antelope trying to justify his existance to the lion, when to the lion he is just food.
Quantify your belief imperically, show the evidence.
You’re kidding yourself, pick up a newspaper.
So they don’t do damage to God who is in you or to your soul?
cont.
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Nicene
Guest
The depravity of pornography deprives the human person of their personhood and treats them as an object, especially men towards woman. In essense treating God as no less than an object due no respect.
Sounds like someone who has God in them. Throughout history the athiest (whether false believer or just those few I mentioned earlier) when given power has acted the opposite of what you proclaim.
Peace and God Bless
Nicene
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solarwind23
Guest
A lion doesn’t have the intellect and self awareness to be moral. we do. That’s what sets us apart.
If other animals were equally self aware/intelligent, then I’d put them on the same level, expect them to recognize right and wrong and behave accordingly.
Well, before the brain develops in a fetus there can be no question of throught, self awareness, emotion. I dont’ see what I need to justify.
If they do it’s minimal. I think hatred of others for instance would do infinitely more damage than a lack of control over powerful sexual instincts.
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solarwind23
Guest
Oh, come on. Religious people have been committing atrocities through the beginning of time. Including some high Church officials during the time of the Inquisition.
stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/quotes_hitler.html About Hitler’s beliefs:
I know many atheists and agnostics, all of them good people. They really live no differently from the average Christian folk I know. The most moral person I know is an agnostic with no belief in any kind of religion.
The Soviet system which is generally said to be atheistic isn’t really. Communism as it was in the Soviet Union is itself a kind of a religion. I should know because my own parents grew up in there and were indoctrinated into it from childhood (though they rejected it). It required faith, obedience, and self-sacrifice. There was no supernatural in it, but so what. I think they wiped out religion to have all the power for themsleves.
The Catholic Inquisition wiped out opposing views as well. Censored, burned books, punished people for heresy (i…e thought crimes). So what’s really the difference?
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Nicene
Guest
And there you have the gist of it. What or who made you self aware? What or who gave you the ability to distinquish right from wrong?
Peace and God Bless
Nicene
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Nicene
Guest
Sure it does, it shows contempt for the other person as a self aware person, It also shows contempt for God who is in them.
Show imperically the existance or non existance of a soul. That part of us which tells us something is intrinisically good or evil.
Peace and God Bless
Nicene
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