you send yourselves to hell

[truthBtold]

I love my family on an equal basis.

Why should I love someone who only apparently appears periodically, to selected people, more than the people in my life every day.

It's always amazing to me when people claim that people of the opposing view take their person that they continuously quote out of context, but the defenders of that person never do . . .

Maybe because....THEY ARE GOD!

Can I ask... why did jesus have to be beaten to a bloody pulp.. ?

[The Valkyrie]

Maybe because....THEY ARE GOD!

Can I ask... why did jesus have to be beaten to a bloody pulp.. ?

Because the Abrahamic blood god loves that blood.

[Mudhammam]

Can I ask... why did jesus have to be beaten to a bloody pulp.. ?

Because the Abrahamic blood god loves that blood.

The human sacrifice cult otherwise known as Christianity makes their twisted sense of morality and reason explicitly clear:

"In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness... [Christ did not] enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. Otherwise Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him."

[truthBtold]

ronedee can u answer that for me.

[Chad32]

Most people they crucified probably didn't claim to be the Jewish god in the flesh, and from what I hear he really didn't meet the criteria for being a Jewish messiah, so they took it out on him more than usual. Or maybe it's all fake, and the author of the story just wanted to make a woobie out of him. He wasn't just killed. He was tortured. He didn't just die, he went to hell for three days. He still has the scars, too, just to make sure you didn't think being resurrected to rule over everything would cheapen the sacrifice.

[Mudhammam]

Most people they crucified probably didn't claim to be the Jewish god in the flesh, and from what I hear he really didn't meet the criteria for being a Jewish messiah, so they took it out on him more than usual. Or maybe it's all fake, and the author of the story just wanted to make a woobie out of him. He wasn't just killed. He was tortured. He didn't just die, he went to hell for three days. He still has the scars, too, just to make sure you didn't think being resurrected to rule over everything would cheapen the sacrifice.

Amazing that the man with everyone's guilt on him only had to endure hell for three whole days though. Doesn't the Christian God have any principles?

[Chad32]

It really doesn't seem like a sacrifice. People talk about carrying sin's burden, but sin isn't physical. The only way I can really see it having a lasting effect is if it was mentally traumatizing. However, I've never heard anyone say they think Jesus is a raving lunatic from all the evil of the world rushing on him. Like some war veteran with PTSD up to 11,000. I'm not sure how someone in that condition could rule anything.

The whole business doesn't make sense to me. This is the primary reason why I'm not a christian anymore. I don't believe it happened, and I wouldn't approve of it if I did. If people are guilty of something, they should pay for the crime themself. The punishment should not be eternal, though. Though the "crime" in this case is just not licking Yahweh's boots enough.

[Cinjin]

I don't believe in hell in the traditional sense. It's a stretch to get to it from the bible (about which I have doubts anyway).
Even in my most insufferably rabid post conversion evangelistic phase I never liked the turn or burn school of evangelism.

So where do you stand on hell then???
Your answer is very cryptic. If you don't believe in hell "in the traditional sense," than what sort of Hell do you believe in? You seem to be saying that you still do believe in hell.
Also you didn't answer my first question:
Do you believe that the non-believers on this site are going to hell (even if it's not the traditional concept of hell)?

[Jacob(smooth)]

I don't believe in hell in the traditional sense. It's a stretch to get to it from the bible (about which I have doubts anyway).
Even in my most insufferably rabid post conversion evangelistic phase I never liked the turn or burn school of evangelism.

So where do you stand on hell then???
Your answer is very cryptic. If you don't believe in hell "in the traditional sense," than what sort of Hell do you believe in? You seem to be saying that you still do believe in hell.
Also you didn't answer my first question:
Do you believe that the non-believers on this site are going to hell (even if it's not the traditional concept of hell)?

Sorry, I'll try to be clearer.
I'm agnostic about hell. I can't rule it out because I don't claim to even begin to understand God. I think the idea of a cave full of lava where imps with pitchforks prod people for being a runner up in a game of cosmic peekaboo is silly. Moses gets to see God, and hear God and see him part an ocean and he gets to go to heaven for believing in God. M'padda of the remote bukbuk tribe of the Amazon never gets to hear about God so goes to hell? No.

Do believe non believers on this site are going to hell? See my above! I have no idea of hell exists, or if it did what the entry criteria would be. Thus I have no opinion on who's going there.

However will say that my concept if God isn't compatible with the idea of a place of eternal suffering for eternity so I don't tend to think that people are going there.

Does that answer your question? I could hypothesis about hell if you'd like but it would be pure abstraction.

[Mudhammam]

So where do you stand on hell then???
Your answer is very cryptic. If you don't believe in hell "in the traditional sense," than what sort of Hell do you believe in? You seem to be saying that you still do believe in hell.
Also you didn't answer my first question:
Do you believe that the non-believers on this site are going to hell (even if it's not the traditional concept of hell)?

Sorry, I'll try to be clearer.
I'm agnostic about hell. I can't rule it out because I don't claim to even begin to understand God. I think the idea of a cave full of lava where imps with pitchforks prod people for being a runner up in a game of cosmic peekaboo is silly. Moses gets to see God, and hear God and see him part an ocean and he gets to go to heaven for believing in God. M'padda of the remote bukbuk tribe of the Amazon never gets to hear about God so goes to hell? No.

Do believe non believers on this site are going to hell? See my above! I have no idea of hell exists, or if it did what the entry criteria would be. Thus I have no opinion on who's going there.

However will say that my concept if God isn't compatible with the idea of a place of eternal suffering for eternity so I don't tend to think that people are going there.

Does that answer your question? I could hypothesis about hell if you'd like but it would be pure abstraction.

Jacob, from reading your posts the past few days I gather that a) you believe the Bible is, if nothing else, an expression of different individuals' subjective experiences relating to forces unseen or perhaps not understood by them. And b) you don't really seem to take the Bible too literally, or seriously, or both--at least on the particular teachings of hell. It doesn't seem like your intellectual integrity allows you to embrace biblical inerrancy or the (literally) hellish idea of everlasting punishment on mere faith...so if you're going to apply some sensibility in these instances, why stop there? I must ask.. What in Christ's name causes you to identify as a Christian? And why?