In all genuine honesty...and I just came up with this today, and someone making a threat about hell in one of the threads convinced me it has to be asked. Please, don't hate me, this is not done out of malice or perversion, and is simply a ghastly version of a reductio ad absurdum.
To any person who will tell a child that they are a miserable sinner and deserving of an eternity of fiery torment - regardless of how easy they claim it will be to avoid this (and remember, you still deserve it, you've just been given undeserved mercy via salvation, right? You're still scum but they let you into the country club) - what is stopping you from saying that child deserves to be, say, raped? Surely flesh-searing torment without end is a worse fate, and surely some lava-skinned demon down there is going to get their hands on you at some point, right? So why would you say one and not the other, if one is far, far worse and yet can't be experienced on earth?
I expect the answers will disregard the fact that we are disregarding salvation, and be flimsy excuses at best rather than actual answers. If this does not prove once and for all anyone who ever introduces the concept of hell to a child is no different from a predator, nothing will.
If this was a step too far, just delete it. I'm so disgusted with religious people right now, I can't even separate them from their faith.
To any person who will tell a child that they are a miserable sinner and deserving of an eternity of fiery torment - regardless of how easy they claim it will be to avoid this (and remember, you still deserve it, you've just been given undeserved mercy via salvation, right? You're still scum but they let you into the country club) - what is stopping you from saying that child deserves to be, say, raped? Surely flesh-searing torment without end is a worse fate, and surely some lava-skinned demon down there is going to get their hands on you at some point, right? So why would you say one and not the other, if one is far, far worse and yet can't be experienced on earth?
I expect the answers will disregard the fact that we are disregarding salvation, and be flimsy excuses at best rather than actual answers. If this does not prove once and for all anyone who ever introduces the concept of hell to a child is no different from a predator, nothing will.
If this was a step too far, just delete it. I'm so disgusted with religious people right now, I can't even separate them from their faith.
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.
