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What I don’t understand is this: If your child disobeyed you but refused to admit they were wrong, would you condemn them to eternal fiery damnation? If your answer is no, because of your imperfect human morals, how could God, a perfect being with perfect morals, ever do something so disproportionate?
Does the Bible actually say it’s forever? I thought I’ve read a discussion before where it’s implied that one can still repent and be redeemed in the afterlife. I’m not a theologian or an expert in the least bit, so I may be misremembering or it could’ve just been someone from one of the various more modern, progressive religious sects.
The Greek Bible uses the word αιών, which (confusingly) refers to either a duration of time with a beginning and end, or eternity. When the Bible was translated into Latin, αιών was translated as aeternam exclusively. However, that sense may not have been the right one to use. The earliest writings of the church, before the 5th century or so, described Hell as an ultimately temporary place of purification, rather than an eternal destination.
There were many bad translations, and many purposefully bad ones.
Is it easier to exert control over a population with eternal damnation or proportional punishment?
Yes, it says it’s forever. The Catholic church does have a doctrine of purgatory, but it’s for the flawed faithful.
But it also treats it akin to a spouse that has been continuously cheated on; all his gifts twisted, broken, and trashed; finally leaving the house.
Or self-inflicted by humanity, God going: “do you really, really want to stay apart from the source of life and all good? Then have it your way… ☹️”
King James version has lines like “your soul shall surely perish” which doesn’t sound like eternal damnation to me. It does say Lucifer was cast into the lake of fire, but to my knowledge doesn’t suggest this is a place human souls would end up.
Honestly I believe that hell was mostly an invention of religious leaders to gain more worshippers, and therefore more power. I don’t believe in any of it though.
Hell as we picture it is basically just fan fiction.
All of it is fan fiction. Even the Christians who know anything about history admit that most of the books of the bible were written circa 300CE. Jesus likely never existed, and if he did he was one among many self-styled prophets wandering the holy land.
Agreed. And I’m not religious, either. I’m not rigidly atheist, but I am highly skeptical of some omniscient, omnipotent being playing some divine version of RimWorld.
Damnit, now I feel like playing some RimWorld…
Dammit!
*reinstalling Rimworld
My understanding is that it’s a temporary period of “purification” or redemption, not eternal, but that has been lost in translation. I’m not a theologian though.
I feel like this is the same thing that happened with animal sacrifice. As a society, we realized how fucked up it really is and then the apologists try their hardest to reinterpret the Bible so it’s more in line with our new understanding of morality. Then it happened again with slavery. Society figured out owning and selling people as property is immoral, and the apologists come up with more ways to explain how we’ve been reading the Bible wrong up until now. Like, the Bible can’t simultaneously be perfectly clear and misinterpreted for thousands of years.
In the lore they say god is good and make it clear that the god exists within history itself. The unraveling of events is god executing El Plan. So anything that happens is god, and god is goodness itself, so everything must actually be good in the end.
And since the god explicitly gave the humans a mandate on their morality, they can’t just emulate the god literally. They have to act in their prescribed way, and trust in El Plan.
It’s not eternal and it’s not fiery damnation those are both fanfiction novels you’re referring to.
You also have to consider that God is a nth dementional elderich being that exists outside of time.
From my understanding and reading of early Christian texts and judeo texts. If you do end up in hell or some other place, you don’t experience the time as linear time. More like everybody shows up at once and then leaves at once to the next place.
The F’d up part is really the principle that you can do all the good things and not be a bad person yet still go to hell because you refuse god’s existence - or maybe think god is a POS for all the awful things it (allows to happen or actively makes happen, depending on one’s rationalizations) to innocent people.
Needs more jpeg
I was waiting for you, today. At first you used to irk me, but now I almost look forward to it.
I’m just here to have fun and make jokes. Or sometimes share the higher quality copies of memes that I found for when I want to share them with my friends.
I would argue that as god’s creation, sentences like that made by mortals are the true test of faith: what you know to be true versus what some angry person tells you. I’d like to think if this mythos is real, that those that stayed openly gay, for example, and didn’t hurt anyone were given the gold star upon arrival to heaven like, “You passed! You passed the test of faith! I knew you could do it, I believed in you!” And those that hid their gayness or condemned others, “Aw… sorry buddy. better luck next time, okay?”
Also, I keep seeing people quoting stuff outside of the bible like biblical truth, like The Rapture, and stuff from Dante’s Inferno which is, at best, Bible fan-fic.
Also, I keep seeing people quoting stuff outside of the bible like biblical truth, like The Rapture, and stuff from Dante’s Inferno which is, at best, Bible fan-fic.
So much of the average person’s understanding of Christianity comes from sources other than the Bible. That is true for Christians and non-Christians alike. It is a really interesting phenomenon. So many arguments over things that are essentially unrelated to the actual debate people think they are having.
I often wonder if all Christians spent the time to read their holy book, how many would still believe by the end? Reading it was a big part of my acknowledging I was an atheist, right up there with witnessing the hypocrisy of the church in real time. And reading the passages the preacher tells you too doesn’t count, it’s straight up cherry picking.
the whole bible is fan fic. also, why all the tests? why not just create heaven and call it there?
You people take stories so seriously. The good stories that all the good people believe. The bad stories that only bad people believe.
You realize that they’re just stories, right?
Experience is real.
I don’t follow, what good stories or bad stories?
I always refer to my professor of philosophy : George Carlin
I worship the sun; but I pray to Joe Pesci.
