RE: I'm afraid of being agnostic, I need help
January 3, 2015 at 6:29 am
(This post was last modified: January 3, 2015 at 6:31 am by FreeTony.)
Also remember that many many Christians don't believe in hell at all as they can't believe that a loving God would send you to hell, or even create such a thing. We humans don't send our worst prisoners to places of eternal torment as we see this as barbaric. There is also no chance of redemtion in hell, something that we at least try to achieve with many prisoners. This is because we are a more tolerant society than the one that existed thousands of years ago.
Christians want to believe in hell because it gives them a meaning to the efforts they have put into their religion (both time and money): All that time spent in church and the money I've given them must be a good thing because I've spent so much of my life doing it. And all the people that don't do it must be bad because they haven't sacrificed what I have, therefore they deserve to go to hell. This doesn't just apply to Christianity, we all do it. A silly example is that my parents wouldn't allow me to swim for an hour after eating when I was a kid. The other day I mentioned that this was just an old wives tale and nothing more, backed up by what medical research says. My mother then tried to rationalise it, rather than accept that the whole thing had been a waste of time. We all do it, and the more effort/money we've spent on something, the more we will try to justify it.
Let's say that you go back to being a Christian and end up in heaven with God, watching all the billions of people who aren't Christians go to hell. Could you really sit there and watch this, without thinking that this is completely immoral and that I am supporting this?
ps If christianity really had good evidence to support it, your parents wouldn't have felt the need to hide much of the world from you.
Christians want to believe in hell because it gives them a meaning to the efforts they have put into their religion (both time and money): All that time spent in church and the money I've given them must be a good thing because I've spent so much of my life doing it. And all the people that don't do it must be bad because they haven't sacrificed what I have, therefore they deserve to go to hell. This doesn't just apply to Christianity, we all do it. A silly example is that my parents wouldn't allow me to swim for an hour after eating when I was a kid. The other day I mentioned that this was just an old wives tale and nothing more, backed up by what medical research says. My mother then tried to rationalise it, rather than accept that the whole thing had been a waste of time. We all do it, and the more effort/money we've spent on something, the more we will try to justify it.
Let's say that you go back to being a Christian and end up in heaven with God, watching all the billions of people who aren't Christians go to hell. Could you really sit there and watch this, without thinking that this is completely immoral and that I am supporting this?
ps If christianity really had good evidence to support it, your parents wouldn't have felt the need to hide much of the world from you.
