Kid dies

[Angrboda]

I was thinking about this earlier.  Heaven and hell are a manifestation of the imagination of people who recognize that the world isn't fair, and can't accept it.  They are completely unable to accept reality as it is, and so they imagine a reality in which everybody gets what they deserve.  But the people who thought it up were primitive people, with primitive ideas about justice.  To them, their enemies deserved the worst punishment imaginable, and the good people deserve the best results possible.  It's stupid and absurd.  But modern religious people are shackled to the past, and so they endorse such infantile fantasies.

That’s an interesting view.  I don’t see the teachings about heaven as being deserved at all. Quite the opposite in fact.

8 But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”—that is, the word of faith which we are preaching, 9 that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;

Romans 10:8-9, NASB

I don't give a shit about "teaching" if it's not what people believed in their hearts. The simple truth is that believers then, as now, commonly believed themselves saved, despite the finer points of theology. Your "teaching" meant diddly to the common man. Take the following sample from a random Christian website for example:

I'm Glad I'm Saved Because ...
Bill Brinkworth

Getting saved is one of the greatest experiences one can ever have. There are many good things that come along with having God’s promise of heaven. I am so glad that I am saved:

*Because I am going to heaven. All through the Bible there are many verses telling its readers how they can know for sure that when they die they will go to heaven. All they need to do is trust that Christ’s finished work on the cross is payment for all their sins.

Is there or is there not a performance criterion for salvation? Will the enemies of Christ be saved? Who do you think that leaves to be saved. Your apologetics 101 argument that salvation comes only through grace is a dodge for the obvious, Christians consider themselves likely to be saved because of their faith in the life and the resurrection. If not, then what is the point in believing? It's an us versus them polarization, plain and simple, despite your tap dancing. That's why we have ignorant shitheads like Godscreated lecturing us on this site about the proper way to live; he's convinced he's got his. Maybe if Christians actually believed the teaching and lived in doubt, you'd have a point; but they don't. The "teaching" on heaven and hell developed in the period just prior to the life of Christ. How do you know that salvation through grace is what was being taught then? I imagine then as now, what was "taught" was the promise of salvation. That's the engine which drives apocalypticism. Your complaint about later "teaching" is just so much irrelevant noise compared to that practical fact.

See for example, the following from Isaiah:

10 In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples—of him shall the nations inquire, and his resting place shall be glorious.

11 In that day the Lord will extend his hand yet a second time to recover the remnant that remains of his people, from Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Cush,[a] from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the coastlands of the sea.

12
He will raise a signal for the nations
and will assemble the banished of Israel,
and gather the dispersed of Judah
from the four corners of the earth.
13
The jealousy of Ephraim shall depart,
and those who harass Judah shall be cut off;
Ephraim shall not be jealous of Judah,
and Judah shall not harass Ephraim.
14
But they shall swoop down on the shoulder of the Philistines in the west,
and together they shall plunder the people of the east.
They shall put out their hand against Edom and Moab,
and the Ammonites shall obey them.
15
And the Lord will utterly destroy[b]
the tongue of the Sea of Egypt,
and will wave his hand over the River[c]
with his scorching breath,[d]
and strike it into seven channels,
and he will lead people across in sandals.
16
And there will be a highway from Assyria
for the remnant that remains of his people,
as there was for Israel
when they came up from the land of Egypt.

Isaiah 11:10-16, NASB

Just who do you think Isaiah is talking about here?