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How do you feel when someone directly tells you ...
October 30, 2013 at 7:05 pm
that you're going to Hell?
It seems that a lot of people - even many atheists apparently - find it very deeply offensive when they get told by someone that they're gonna go to Hell, that they will burn there for eternity. Sometimes my mother also tells me the same thing when I disobey her, and then automatically my inside crawls and my bodily functions almost go amiss from the surge of emotions that strike me afterwards. It kind of pisses me off and yet at the same time it frightens me also (plus some other emotions that I just have no words for). I guess I can't really put into words how it feels ...
What about the rest of you? How much does it offend you when someone tells or implies to you that you're going to Hell?
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RE: How do you feel when someone directly tells you ...
October 30, 2013 at 7:10 pm
Being told that I'm going to hell affects me about as much as someone telling me that I'm going to Oz where I'll have to live out my days as a butler for the Lollipop Guild.
Boru
‘But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods or no gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.’ - Thomas Jefferson
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RE: How do you feel when someone directly tells you ...
October 30, 2013 at 7:12 pm
(This post was last modified: October 30, 2013 at 7:44 pm by freedomfromforum.)
After coming out as an atheist to my former pastor who then informed me that I was going to burn in hell, I told him that it was HIM and Christians like him who had caused me to fall away from the faith. I then told him I'd see him in hell and reminded him of this little gem in his favorite book...
Matthew 18:6 (NIV)
6 “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. (Jesus speaking regarding the day of judgment and what will happen to whom)
EDIT: To highlight the loving threats of Jesus.
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RE: How do you feel when someone directly tells you ...
October 30, 2013 at 7:14 pm
I know it's meant as an insult, but I can't take it seriously. Threaten to hit me or something if you want me to be scared. What bothers me most about it is that the person threatening it can't possibly believe it's true- TORTURE FOR ETERNITY. Nobody deserves that. It's a punishment completely disproportional to any human crime- even genocide. Even child molestation.
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RE: How do you feel when someone directly tells you ...
October 30, 2013 at 7:22 pm
I tend to take it as it's meant: whether we find it ridiculous or not- and I do- it's still clearly a threat or an insult. Childish and eye-rollingly insipid as it is, there's no way to interpret it so that the person saying it has good intentions toward us.
I know the words are silly, but the words aren't the things that are going to inform the actions of the person saying them; the sentiment behind them is. At the very least, every threat of hell is coming from a person who is currently being a dick.
"YOU take the hard look in the mirror. You are everything that is wrong with this world. The only thing important to you, is you." - ronedee
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RE: How do you feel when someone directly tells you ...
October 30, 2013 at 7:27 pm
Being told I'm going to hell tells me that I'm being addressed by a judgmental, smug, self-righteous asshole, the opinion of which matters to me not in the least.
Is it offensive? Absolutely. Does it bother me? Not in the least, though I understand why it would bother others. It also happens to border on abusive when the target is an impressionable child.
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RE: How do you feel when someone directly tells you ...
October 30, 2013 at 7:28 pm
I can't help it. I just find it amusing in a pitiful sort of way. I usually just put on my most sympathetic smile and say, "Of course I will." Apart from not being able to take it seriously in any way whatsoever, it affects me not at all.
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RE: How do you feel when someone directly tells you ...
October 30, 2013 at 7:32 pm
I want to punch people when they say that to me, because I take it as, I deserve torture because I believe differently.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
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RE: How do you feel when someone directly tells you ...
October 30, 2013 at 7:46 pm
It actually depends on how the message is delivered. You can usually tell when someone is teling you out of concern, it's the ones who proclaim it gleefully that worry me. It still doesn't offend me as such, but I'm concerned at the joy they seem to find in the idea of atheists being tortured for eternity. In fact, I'd hazard a guess that if they didn't believe in god and his wrath, some of them would be more than happy to help us along to that destination!
"No-one who decides that scientific evidence is not for him and that his own experience or the stories of others is the be all and end all of deciding what's true ever has the right to call people searching for reliable, repeatable evidence narrow-minded. That is hypocrisy of the most laughable kind." Derren Brown - Tricks of the Mind.
