(January 1, 2017 at 9:34 pm)Redoubtable Wrote:That's the most thoughtful, coherent thing about religion I've ever heard a non-atheist say.(January 1, 2017 at 7:14 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: If that one action was done with a fully deliberate intent on turning away from God with no remorse for doing so, then I don't see why it matters if it happens once or a million times. "Hell" is the state of being of a person who separated themselves from God (or from goodness and love) by their own accord. If a person does not want to be with God, if that person rejects goodness and love, then they don't have to be with God if they don't want to be. That is Hell. It's the ultimate free will.
Also, the way you are talking about God, you don't sound like someone who genuinely doesn't believe he exists. You sound like someone who got so caught up in ocd/scruples, that you feel your only escape is to shut the whole thing off. Sorry if I'm wrong, and correct me if I am. But that's just what it is coming off as to me. It seems very emotional.
Well, one: I'm not an atheist, in my OP I said as much. At this point I guess people could call me something of a deist or non-religious theist, but I'm open-minded about it now, I don't feel compelled to believe under threat of damnation. What I don't believe in is the conception of God in Catholicism or in the Bible who is basically a collage of different jigsaw puzzles of religion put together. You have pieces mixed with the warrior God of the OT, the God of the Gospels, the God of the Medieval Church, and kumbaya God of post Vatican II Catholicism, among other conceptions. Apologists argue that the differences we see are due to our understanding of God developing over time, well isn't it convenient that our understanding of God just happens to align with what societies at particular times are comfortable with?
So according to you, they don't have to be with God if they don't want to be, but God will still keep them in existence solely to suffer? This sounds sadistic to me. Hitler was a genocidal maniac, but at least he put his victims out of their misery; I can't say the same about the God of Catholicism. If humans really had a free choice they would be able to will themselves out of an existence they didn't ask for to begin with once faced with their judgement.
More to the point, I dispute that people choosing Hell is a fair choice to begin with. Catholics believe that God is the essence of love; adding onto to this I would say they believe God is the essence of reason and rationality, if God is truth as he claims to be in Catholicism. Now if God is the essence of truth and rationality then every act contrary to his will is contrary to rationality, just as every sin is contrary to a true spirit of love. If this is the case, then those who persist in sin and disbelief are acting irrationally and demonstrate by their mindset and actions that they are, in practice, incapable of acting or thinking rationally (or in accordance with truth). In humane society we do not damn and torment the irrational, we treat them; yet God sees fit to threaten to burn the irrational for eternity, many of those people being individuals of good conscience who cannot perceive the falseness of their own beliefs and the immorality of their actions despite their honest search for truth. Moreover, the choice we are presented with may be free in some sense, but it is neither fair nor informed. We are left to do the guesswork of faith-based belief and not truly know for certain what the truth is until we're dead, at which point we are judged and it is too late to change our mind or conduct. We are told of course that coming to belief in the truth of Catholicism requires a relationship with God based on faith and trust rather than simply acknowledging logical, provable, or self-evident truths. And to this I argue that if Catholicism was false, a con, the same exact explanation would be used to legitimize the religion, because it is the only explanation left once one has retreated from the realm of backing extraordinary belief with extraordinary evidence. Now then, is Catholicism true or false? If the argument for its truth is indistinguishable from the reasoning used by so many other false religions and cults, then I see no compelling reason to believe, balance of probability tips against Holy Mother Church.
Religions were invented to impress and dupe illiterate, superstitious stone-age peasants. So in this modern, enlightened age of information, what's your excuse? Or are you saying with all your advantages, you were still tricked as easily as those early humans?
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There is no better way to convey the least amount of information in the greatest amount of words than to try explaining your religious views.
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There is no better way to convey the least amount of information in the greatest amount of words than to try explaining your religious views.
