Hell, or rather my brief experience of it.

[Gambit]

This 'proof' was for me alone.

So you keep saying and sorry, no it's not.

Maybe if we lived thousands of years ago where people thought dreams were signs from the gods, you might be excused for having such irrationally superstitious convictions. As it stands now, claiming that something so easily explained as a bad dream as evidence for anything, even personal evidence for personally held beliefs, is, at best, childish.

That this thread has gone on for 17 pages is a testament only to the patience of atheists trying to reason with you.

Funny you should mention patience in this thread, because mine ran out by page 15. I have just used the ignore function for the first time on this, or any other site.

[The Grand Nudger]

And we keep tracing spirals.
-Did you follow the map?
-Yes, and I didn't reach the destination that it said I would.
-Then you didn't follow the map.
-Of course I did, how could you know that I didn't?
-Because you didn't reach the destination it said you would.

This would be like telling a person who used a 16th century map that the reason they failed to find the US precisely where the map stated it was is because they didn't correctly follow the maps directions. Garbage. Your map is clearly insufficient. The only thing you seem to be capable of finding by following the example presented in Luke is your own asshole Drich.

[Drich]

Self preservation demands that I do not grovel. Maybe yours demands that you do, but that says more about your "self" than my "self"..now don't it? I've had opportunities, none of which involved ghosts, and I'm satisfied with the type of person I am, thanks.

Maybe you should nail your pamphlets to a door somewhere, eh?

(you won't be winning any converts amongst people who are satisfied with themselves with this sad shit Drich, refine your approach and shoot for something a little higher than the lowest common denominator?)

---

Speaking of your missionary efforts. I've noticed that you -have- become a great deal more overt with your sermons and pleas of late. Can I take this to mean that you have reached the frayed ends of the product you had to offer and this is the endgame?

(I applaud your longevity btw, little surprised you're still here, not surprised that you would stick around mind you...just astonished that you haven't been banned yet. I mean look at this thread title for ffs. Boils down to "Hey guys, lemme tell you about hell" - with which you follow - "seek the lord and be saved"...lol )

What I have noticed more and more is a very strong tendancy to not address the topics I bring up on point. The majority either appeal to preaching (in hopes that a mod wins the arguement for you on the grounds of me breaking the forum rules) Or it becomes an out and out personal attack (Spelling and grammar is brought up)

In the end, if you want to have a religious discussion with a person of a given faith, then you will have to accept that 'preaching' or something you can call preaching will occour. Why? Because the person of faith does not share your beliefs, and any place where our beliefs do not match up can be called preaching. Your only solution is to either accept that you will be preached to on occasion or create an atmosphere (atheist forums dot com) where the other side of the arguement is not completely repersented. If your 'faith in facts' is as strong as you say it is then why are you worried about alittle 'preaching?' Why not simply combat faith in God with faith in facts if it is so effective?

[Cyberman]

What I have noticed more and more is a very strong tendancy to not address the topics I bring up on point.

Yes, I've noticed that myself. I wish you'd stop doing it.

The majority either appeal to preaching (in hopes that a mod wins the arguement for you on the grounds of me breaking the forum rules)

Only a fallacious appeal if it's groundless. If you stop trying to preach at us, you'll take away that particular objection. I don't know about you but personally, I'd stop handing out free ammunition and make my 'opponents' work harder.

[The Grand Nudger]

LOL, You -can- have a conversation about your beliefs without preaching Drich. You may not wish to (your reasons for being here are pretty transparent by now, I think)....but it is possible. Nevertheless, I don't mind getting preached at, I was raised with it, and I'm never the guy that reports that kind of stuff. Personally, I think the preachiest bits are the most amusing bits.

Now that we have that hammered out, I have to ask..what argument are we having? I called bs. You don't have anything to show for this pulp sermon shit, and so no argument can proceed. What topic do you feel has not been addressed on point Drich? I've been following the thread.......and I have to admit you're going to have to be a little more specific because I'm not really seeing any grounds for this claim. Looks to me like many people took a crack at addressing your various statements (to be fair just as many if not more made light of them). What kind of conversation are you hoping to extract from "I had a dream once" - followed by a "so what, we all have dreams". Kind of ends there doesn't it?

[Faith No More]

My favorite part of the story is that the atheist Drich gets angry at god and wants to spit in his eye, because he didn't get the tail he was chasing. Yet this petty and shallow desire was enough for god to say, "Hey, I'm real!"

Oh, and I love the brazen condescension with which he simply dismisses anyone else's attempts to find god as not having done it correctly.

If Drich's god is up there, he must be infuriated at the pisspoor job his messenger is doing.

---

Why not simply combat faith in God with faith in facts if it is so effective?

Because people such as yourself are so entrenched in their delusions that facts become meaningless.

[downbeatplumb]

You are thinking Jew God. Christian God lived as one of us. What's More Christ God lives along side and guides you in the way of the Holy Spirit. That is what you are A/S/K for according to Christ.

It seems Drich is a Marcionite and not a Christian in the normal sense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcionism

[Darkstar]

---

Question: If you wanted to spit in god's eye, then why was being seperated from him painful?

Once I was in the place of my judgement, my bitterness was gone. It was replace by fear. Fear because just by being their I knew I was screwed. Then when I first looked into the eyes of Christ I felt for a split second completeness and peace, coupled with a love that i can not even hope to describe. As soon as I understood what was going to be lost the shadow of my unresolved sin emptied me, and the love that I knew only for the breifest of moments was completely gone. I wanted that back more than anything I have ever wanted prior or since...

We were literally designed to be loved that way. To have it and to loose it is devistating... Now add insult to injury and be cast into a all consuming emptyness where you know you will NEVER be that complete again, and it is enough to make you say anything, even though you know you do not deserve what has been taken from you.

---

"We were literally designed to be loves that way" Does it say that in the bible?

I guess that "a lot" of study can be done in twenty minutes, because I rejected the cavernlike hell in favor of a place of pure fire (whether metaphorical for pain or not) after about that much research on the subject. (Note that said reseacrh and conclusion occurred prior to this thread)

Where the time spent comes in is that you have to reconsile the two descriptions of Hell. What the Jews were given to understand is Just as True as what Christianity was told of hell. On the surface these two contradict.

I don't think that the Christian hell has been described in cave form in the bible. Please show me the verse containing this description if I am wrong.

So...why doesn't god also use shock tactics (perhaps even more so) on the insincere?

I don't know. Maybe He knows who is worth saving and who is not. Maybe the insincere aren't worth saving for some reason.

I thought this was about who wanted to be saved, but now you are telling me that god decides some people aren't worth showing up for and lets them burn?

Sounds like some other atheist deconversion stories...but a bad dream reconverted you?

I did not know God before this dream/vision.

And you didn't know him after because god is unknowable...right?

And for those who want to believe and desperately seek god to find nothing?

Unless you fall into the catagory of Romans 9 We are promised to always find something. We may not find what we want but we will find an oppertunity. If we are faith to what we have been given we will be given more.

Were they doing it wrong?

Did they follow the model provided in Luke 11?

Oh, so sincerity isn't the deciding factor in 'finding' god. You have to follow a passage that can be interpreted in multiple ways, and if you find nothing then you must have used the wrong interpretation, even if you claim you didn't. I mean, you can't prove you did it right, so why should anyone...wait...Drich?

I suppose it makes sense. Hitler understood how easily religion [not necessarilly Christianity] could be used to manipulate people, and used it to his advantage.

???so???

I may not have made this clear enough, but my argument is not that Hitler was a faithful Christian, but that he used Christianity (among other things, such as the economy) to rally people against the Jews. Whether or not he was a traditional Christian (it is believed he could have been a deist) is not relevent. He used religion (again, not exclusively) to support his ends, and it worked.

“Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.”

[Angrboda]

Why would you be bitter at something you didn't believe existed, and why would such a being [briefly] send you to hell when you were seeking him?

I was mad or bitter at the whole christian process. I wanted to know if their was indeed a God. By then My mother found him and I was hearing stories about how he had touched other lives. I went through the motions and found nothing, so that made me mad. Mad at everyone for BSing me because at that point. I knew their could Not be a real God because i had done everything they had done and I got nothing out of it.

What made it worse is the girl i went to church for left me for some guy (who looked like me but had a new [at the time new] Corvette) I had made a "deal" with her and her 'God', that If I could live happily ever after, i would do all the church stuff get baptized the confess the whole nine yards.. Even though I did not believe God was a real thing (simply nothing to say to me He was) I knew she was and she believed so at the time it was enough for me.

It took the break up of the girl for me to truly seek out God. I sought God for a selfish reason, but an honest one. In doing so I did activly follow the promise Christ out lines in Luke 11. I earnestly Ask, Sought, and knocked or rather kicked at the 'door,' and DEMANDED to be let in. So I was. Just like the persistent neighbor was given what I wanted. I was given EXACTLY what I wanted. (an oppertunity to spit in the eye of God.) I also got to experience what my efforts merrited.

(emphasis added)

This actually squares quite well with what we know of cognitive dissonance. You're obviously a person who does not take well to feeling they have been wrong or that they don't know what they're doing. So when this girl spit in your eye and you still couldn't find god, your mind was faced with the quandary of realizing what a fool you'd been, and how much time and effort you'd wasted, side by side with your self-image which is incompatible with the idea that you do foolish things for no good reason. Tavris and Aronson detailed many examples of cognitive dissonance and the psychology of it in their recent book. Cognitive dissonance, quite literally can make us see white when we're actually seeing black. One thing Tavris and Aronson discuss is how the more confident and sure of themselves a person is, the more powerful the effect to warp the individual's view of reality. But then, we know you're the humble and tentative sort, not given to excessive confidence and surety in himself and his opinions, so that wouldn't apply to you.

Beyond that, I see the typical trappings of ordinary cognitive bias working in someone who is ignorant of their effects and his own vulnerability to such effects.

You didn't see Jesus in a dream. You saw your own mind doing what it could to shield you from a painful reality. I'd say your mind won that round.


Oh, and in the interest of fairness, I didn't examine the full record, but Drich appears to be right in asserting that all he ever claimed was that Cinjin's reasoning "resembled" Nazi propaganda; not that Cinjin behaved like a Nazi or was a Nazi. If that's all he's claiming, then fine. That's an incredibly weak and inconsequential claim, but I will grant him his correction. (Which I stipulated in my earlier responses, so if you're including me in those 3-4 times you've been misunderstood, you've miscounted.)

[Justtristo]

Given the character of Yahweh which is portrayed in the New Testament especially. I can easily conceive that Yahweh would set up such a place like Hell, which would be unimaginably awful. So if I believed such an entity existed, I would be terrified of it.

However a lot of people who consider themselves Christians, don't believe that their deity is essentially a sadist of that magnatune. Because they have preconceived ideas what such a entity like Yahweh should be, rather than what the bible states about the character of Yahweh. So they need to ask if the entity they believe would create such a place where wrongdoers were punished infinitely.