(July 21, 2025 at 5:18 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:(July 20, 2025 at 11:18 pm)Fake Messiah Wrote: I don't see how believing in a place of eternal punishment is not depressing. And there are many theists who constantly fear that they will be forever tortured every hour of their lives. It is even more depressing than thinking there is no afterlife.
So it seems that saying how atheism is depressing is just another religious sound bite.
(Bold mine)
It's not depressing because very few believers in eternal damnation believe that they themselves will be one of the eternally damned.
Sartre said, 'Hell is other people.' The devout tend to think 'Hell is for other people.'
Boru
I was thinking this myself. What bothers me about religions like Christianity is people think they can avoid hell by following the scriptures as opposed to being a good person. Similarly, they think that other people are condemned to hell for not following the scriptures regardless of if they're a good person.
"If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Romans 10:9"
Also the concept of penance: You're assigned to say a prayer after confession and that magically makes the sin better. But that's not actually fixing whatever problem you caused. Often times there is no fix to problems. It's a way for people to feel better about themselves without really addressing the issues.
