Fear of hell, advice please

[GrandizerII]

Creator gods are a miniscule subset of all gods (usually the smallest set in any pantheon). That the most popular current religions (each a derivative of the same faith tradition) demand this attribute for their god is an artifact of the articles of their faith..but, just like the existence of an afterlife, the accuracy of the articles of their faith is not required for a god to exist either.  As far as we can tell, the relationship went the other way round, in any case.  People believed in afterlives long before they believed in anything we'd recogize as a god.  They didn't consider one necessary for the other in either direction....even when they began to believe in both.  

In essence, a person is considering whether or not to continue believing in gods if they happen to stop believing in one of a great many other things in the periphery of their religion.  It's always possible that the one thing under consideration is untrue whilst the other is not.  The colored stick theory of cattle breeding was wrong too..why should afterlives be the final straw?  

Consider this.  Every morning I take a shit, this causes the sun to rise.  No need to thank me, yet another service I provide.  Now, suppose in addition to believing that my morning shit causes he sun to rise I also believe that the sun will rise tommorrow (because I know I take a shit every morning).  Well...I'm wrong about one thing, but being wrong about the one thing doesn't make me wrong about the other.  My shits aren;t what make the sun rise, but it will rise.  Perhaps there is no afterlife, but there is a god...or there is no god but there is an afterlife.  This, ofc, humoring silly stories for the purposes of trying to get people who want to take them seriously to..you know, take them a little more seriously.

OK to be honest I have no idea what you are talking about. If god did not create heaven for the afterlife relgious folks and hell for the bad non believers, then who did?

Not every religion/faith posits a heaven and/or hell.

[haig]

OK to be honest I have no idea what you are talking about. If god did not create heaven for the afterlife relgious folks and hell for the bad non believers, then who did?

Not every religion/faith posits a heaven and/or hell.

The christian one (OP) does.

[Succubus]

John Milton. Mostly.

OK...It's all perfectly clear now 

Sadly many Christians [which Christian?] understanding of Christianity is heavily influenced by MGM studios, Cecil B DeMille, Charlton Heston, et al.
Others, [citation needed] those not so much interested in well fit oiled bodied blokes tearing round in chariots took to reading. Regrettably  some of them, those possessing the F. T. Barnum gene came by this:  Paradise Lost.

Its horror upon horror. Its a fucking nightmare of a read, an acid trip, nothing in the bible comes close. Anyway, many [who?] preachers latched on to it as the gift that keeps on giving with regard to keeping the flock in a constant state of terror. This is the power of priestcraft, instil the fear then sell the cure.

Btw, the above are all assertions, I can't be fucked on tracking these things down. But I'm right!

Amiright!

[orthodox-man]

Good point and I agree with you. In some past comments I admitted that: even if we can't explain it doesn't make it supernatural. I still don't get 2 things fully: consistency in hell ndes and the fact that christians tend to report seeing Jesus quite often while people from other faiths don't report seeing as many of their dieties ex: Muhammad or Krishna. However, that may have more to do with conditioning. Anyways, I want to see more studies. If more and more studies keep failing, I will have no choice but to reject my potential thought of afterlife, and I will become atheist.

We can explain NDE's. It is a false perception the person has due to the ignorance of lack of knowledge of how the brain acts under stress while shutting down. 

Your brain is packed with neurons and neurological pathways you have imprinted from life experiences. If you already buy into superstitions and seeing loved ones those beliefs are held like a filing cabinet, even if totally false beliefs. When your brain slowly dies, it is like turning over a filing cabinet and dumping out all the files. If you want to believe you were floating over your body, it isn't that you actually did, it is because someone told you that prior to having that phantom "experience". Hallucinations and the so called "bright light" "experience is due to denying oxygen to the brain. 

NEAR is still the key word, not beyond. If one were to get decapitated or blow their brains out with a shotgun, NOT RECOMMENDED, that person would not have that experience at all. NDE's are false perceptions that only happen when the brain is in tact but dying slowly. Like a dimmer switch on a wall for your light. You can also think of your memories and beliefs as  being like an old 8 millimeter film real jumping off the spool, then nothing. 

It is an "experience" in the same way if you tell a kid at Halloween, that the bowl of covered olives in the dark kitchen at the kids party, are human eyeballs. If you want to believe it badly enough, sure you felt something, but they were olives, not eyeballs.

When your brain dies, you die, that is it, near only means near. If you come out of an event and fully recover with no brain damage, that merely means there was just enough activity during a window to allow for you to come back. But, once enough brain cells are damaged beyond repair you die. 

I watched my own mother die in front of me. It was horrifying to watch, her lips were the last motion I saw in her, and I knew in that last minute, those were the last vestiges of neurons firing only from her brain stem, the "her", the thinking part of her brain, was dead before. There was no her at that point. No soul floated out of her. I loved her very deeply and still miss her to this day. But no old mythology or superstition will cause me to ignore that reality. 

But as much as that pained me to see, and as much as loosing her hurt, I still enjoyed the time we did have while she was alive. I feel no need to buy naked assertions to value the real time we did have together. 

Point being, "NDE's" are superstitions born out of ignorance and a mental placebo due to lack of understanding the real medical reality that is going on in such an event.

It's a false perception, nothing more.

Let me add, if you talk to people of other religions they too will claim "NDE's" but someone in India if they claim to see God will talk about Brahma. If a Muslim from the middle east has one, they will claim to have met Mo or Allah. Buddhist will claim they were almost reincarnated. Japanese will claim they saw their ancestors.

But it is all, no matter where still a misunderstanding of how biologically the brain operates under extreme stress, and or while shutting down at death.

I agree with most of what you said, you made some good points. However, Muslims never report seeing Muhammad, I;ve researched a lot. They will see a light, most have positive experiences, but for some reason, the prophet never shows up

[GrandizerII]

We can explain NDE's. It is a false perception the person has due to the ignorance of lack of knowledge of how the brain acts under stress while shutting down. 

Your brain is packed with neurons and neurological pathways you have imprinted from life experiences. If you already buy into superstitions and seeing loved ones those beliefs are held like a filing cabinet, even if totally false beliefs. When your brain slowly dies, it is like turning over a filing cabinet and dumping out all the files. If you want to believe you were floating over your body, it isn't that you actually did, it is because someone told you that prior to having that phantom "experience". Hallucinations and the so called "bright light" "experience is due to denying oxygen to the brain. 

NEAR is still the key word, not beyond. If one were to get decapitated or blow their brains out with a shotgun, NOT RECOMMENDED, that person would not have that experience at all. NDE's are false perceptions that only happen when the brain is in tact but dying slowly. Like a dimmer switch on a wall for your light. You can also think of your memories and beliefs as  being like an old 8 millimeter film real jumping off the spool, then nothing. 

It is an "experience" in the same way if you tell a kid at Halloween, that the bowl of covered olives in the dark kitchen at the kids party, are human eyeballs. If you want to believe it badly enough, sure you felt something, but they were olives, not eyeballs.

When your brain dies, you die, that is it, near only means near. If you come out of an event and fully recover with no brain damage, that merely means there was just enough activity during a window to allow for you to come back. But, once enough brain cells are damaged beyond repair you die. 

I watched my own mother die in front of me. It was horrifying to watch, her lips were the last motion I saw in her, and I knew in that last minute, those were the last vestiges of neurons firing only from her brain stem, the "her", the thinking part of her brain, was dead before. There was no her at that point. No soul floated out of her. I loved her very deeply and still miss her to this day. But no old mythology or superstition will cause me to ignore that reality. 

But as much as that pained me to see, and as much as loosing her hurt, I still enjoyed the time we did have while she was alive. I feel no need to buy naked assertions to value the real time we did have together. 

Point being, "NDE's" are superstitions born out of ignorance and a mental placebo due to lack of understanding the real medical reality that is going on in such an event.

It's a false perception, nothing more.

Let me add, if you talk to people of other religions they too will claim "NDE's" but someone in India if they claim to see God will talk about Brahma. If a Muslim from the middle east has one, they will claim to have met Mo or Allah. Buddhist will claim they were almost reincarnated. Japanese will claim they saw their ancestors.

But it is all, no matter where still a misunderstanding of how biologically the brain operates under extreme stress, and or while shutting down at death.

I agree with most of what you said, you made some good points. However, Muslims never report seeing Muhammad, I;ve researched a lot. They will see a light, most have positive experiences, but for some reason, the prophet never shows up

Thats not entirely true. One Muslim girl did report seeing Muhammed in her NDE. Remember?

[orthodox-man]

I agree with most of what you said, you made some good points. However, Muslims never report seeing Muhammad, I;ve researched a lot. They will see a light, most have positive experiences, but for some reason, the prophet never shows up

Thats not entirely true. One Muslim girl did report seeing Muhammed in her NDE. Remember?

One reported seeing him, yes, along with Jesus, Noah, Buddha, Mary I spoke incorrectly there. There was also a woman who reportedly saw the writing "There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is His Messenger" during hers, but it seems many Christians will report seeing Jesus, and almost no Muslims see Muhammad. I don't fully know why that is. Christian NDEs seem to be mucb deeper than the NDEs of other faiths with Jesus telling them who he is, speaking telepathically with them, etc. There are a lot on the nderf.org site. I can't put my finger on that. If NDEs are hallucinations like all you of are saying, it could be because of conditioning culturally. However, I don't fully get it. Whenever I ask Muslims they say "but NDEs are fake" or "Satan is trying to trick you away from Islam" but they never can give an answer to why that is. Maybe it's because they don't worship Muhammad like Christians worship Jesus, i have no idea. That is why I cannot fully reject Christianity. All other cultural NDEs seem,way more sketchy and less detailed

[Succubus]

... There are a lot on the nderf.org site...

Are you in any capacity affiliated with the website you quoted above?

[The Grand Nudger]

OK to be honest I have no idea what you are talking about. If god did not create heaven for the afterlife relgious folks and hell for the bad non believers, then who did?

It's not an answerable question n any general sense.  There are different narratives for how some heaven or hell..or an afterlife without either heaven or hell, if there is an afterlife i the narrative in question, came to be. There are different narratives for how the gods came to be, for that matter.

In any case, while it may be an article of some christians faith that the god they believe in created heaven and hell, the actual existence of a heaven or a hell would not need to be posited for there to be a god, or..depending on how ecumenical you're willing to be, even the christian god.

Imagine god is supposed top be a baseball hat.  Imagine this baseball hat is said to be red.  If it turned out that the baseball hat were green....then only half of that proposition was inaccurate.  There is a baseball hat, it's just not red.  Similarly, if there is a god, and he is said to have created heaven and hell..and it turns out that there is a god but no heaven and no hell then only half of that proposition was inaccurate. 

If we're approaching it rationally (lol, I know..I know) then the solitary reason to "become an atheist"..for a believer, is to lose ones beliefs in -gods-...not losing ones belief in afterlives or the factual accuracy of NDE accounts. Moving between them is a non-sequitur. If there are no afterlives or "real" NDE's..then there are no afterlives or "real" NDE's. Not, if there are no afterlives or NDE's, there are no gods. It doesn't work the other way either. If there are gods, then there are gods. Not, if there are gods, then there are afterlives and real NDE's (every human being on earth could be missing the real god™ ). There is no logical, or mythological relationship of necessity between either of these two beliefs. Because of this, ruling out one does not and cannot rule out the other in and of itself.

[orthodox-man]

... There are a lot on the nderf.org site...

Are you in any capacity affiliated with the website you quoted above?

Nope, I just read it to see what people report. I look for inconsistencies to try and see if I can stop beleiving in it. I find some inconsistencies, some interesting reports, so I am on the fence

[GrandizerII]

Thats not entirely true. One Muslim girl did report seeing Muhammed in her NDE. Remember?

One reported seeing him, yes, along with Jesus, Noah, Buddha, Mary I spoke incorrectly there. There was also a woman who reportedly saw the writing "There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is His Messenger" during hers, but it seems many Christians will report seeing Jesus, and almost no Muslims see Muhammad. I don't fully know why that is. Christian NDEs seem to be mucb deeper than the NDEs of other faiths with Jesus telling them who he is, speaking telepathically with them, etc. There are a lot on the nderf.org site. I can't put my finger on that. If NDEs are hallucinations like all you of are saying, it could be because of conditioning culturally. However, I don't fully get it. Whenever I ask Muslims they say "but NDEs are fake" or "Satan is trying to trick you away from Islam" but they never can give an answer to why that is. Maybe it's because they don't worship Muhammad like Christians worship Jesus, i have no idea. That is why I cannot fully reject Christianity. All other cultural NDEs seem,way more sketchy and less detailed

Consider that Christianity happens to be the main religion of the Western world, where perhaps most of these NDEs are situated in. And consider that individualism perhaps might lead to more vividness and less sketchiness than in countries that are more collectivist.

I also remember posting a potential explanation as to why Muslims don't report NDEs involving Muhammad in one of your other threads. Do you remember that one?

Ultimately, however, it would do you well to approach this all in a proper Bayesian manner. Check this very informative video series on Bayes' theorem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR1zovKx...2D676B2863