RE: The concept of Hell discourages belief
March 22, 2013 at 12:17 pm
(This post was last modified: March 22, 2013 at 12:38 pm by The Reality Salesman01.)
"To what end? What if the only way to change the mind of your son was to rewrite his personality, to basically lobotomize him and make him a different person? What if he love "x" more than anything you could offer him? What if 'x' was Heroin and not just a party girl? What if one lead to the other? Do you suppose 'reason and understanding' has anything to do with how a Herion addict thinks? Even when they are not chemically dependant on the drug they still crave it."
It is a bit obtuse to suggest that there are only 2 ways to get a creature endowed with logic and reasoning to accept that something is true.
The way you are describing as true goes like this:
A.
1) Create a universe/multi-verse designed for such creatures to inhabit.
2) Set an order and balance to this universe filled with amazing complexities, but make sure that no matter how complex these things may be, the order of the physical and visible constructs will always be able to be understood using numbers, reproducible consistant results, and verifiable evidence. Give them the ability to figure this out, and make those numbers absolute. Make sure that their minds work in such a way that this becomes the basis for what is accepted a knowledge and intelligence.
3) Ensure that the creatures become dependent on their persuit of knowledge and make that very thirst for information, and the ability to comprehend and reflect upon it the biggest thing that separates them from every other creature that inhabits their visible universe.
4) At some point early on in their persuit for understanding the complexities that have been put in place, and before they have truly grasped the concepts of such things, insert an individual that contradicts ALL of it.
NOTE:This is key, because if done too late, it will be too hard to convince them. It will be more effective while they are still in this early stage of intellectual development.
6) Give this individual the power to perform grand examples of things that others would percieve as impossible. (part seas, turn water into wine, make a basket of fish and a few pieces of bread enough to feed hundreds, and walk on water etc.). Do not give this power to everyone, it will take away the credibility.
7) Let him be savagely murdered, but convince everyone that he welcomed the torture and death for a reason that cannot be verified and will be forever misunderstood and misinterpreted through text, but make sure the others understand that it WAS important. It's not really important that they know why exactly. (MORE ON THIS TO FOLLOW).
8) Have the others write a book for the entire future of the species to follow. Fill it with rules and stories of things that will later go against everything you've designed the species to understand. Make it both logically and physically impossible. Provide them with nothing to verify the things written in the book. The tools and abilities you designed them to have will make it impossible for a large majority to accept as every fiber of the very being you gave them will not allow them to accept such things.
9) Make sure that everything about YOUR existance cannot be confirmed by any method you've given them to use. Instead, tell them it can only be confirmed individually through "personal experience". As an interesting distractor, fill the population with a number of different alternatives that follow the same creation guidelines, with similar explanations, but make it to where each of them think the others are crazy.
10) In order to get them to believe all of this, tell them if they don't, they will be tortured for eternity in a terrible place worse than they could possibly concieve. Make sure they are informed by people in their geographical region of this. It is absolutely paramount that you do not get involved in anyway that could be understood by the logic you designed them to use for understanding the things you have made anymore. It is crucial that the only way they are to be swayed is by their peers and by the threats contained in the book.
11) Tell them that if they read the book, it will show them how to make the decisions you wish them to make. But make sure the people tell the others that it is ultimately their choice on how they wish to live. Tell them that there are consequences to choosing wrong, but (this is the best part) make sure the original book was written so long ago, that nobody will be able to agree on exactly WHAT IT SAYS!! They won't have a clue what exactly isn't allowed or could exclude them from the torture they are trying to avoid!
12) As they start dying off, sort the ones that happened to meet the criteria as you see fit. The ones that don't make the cut will be tortured, but it's their fault because had they gone against their gut instincts you designed them to have, they would have been able to see that the supposed mythical torture was true, and it turns out to be as bad as the book described.
13) Its going to be hard for you to be ok with this, because afterall, they had no REAL way of knowing whether or not it was true, but hey, it was still their choice. And that's what is important. If you actually made an effort to connect with them using ways they are designed to understand, they might be able to choose too easily. It has to be the most important choice and there can only be 2 outcomes. The funny part is that everything else they've made a decision from will be based on a different process of experience. But what you've just done is made an effect that has nothing to do with any cause they could ever comprehend and then used it as the ultimate punishment for not picking right!
The other way you've suggested is:
B.
1) Labotomy
Never mind that if my son was dealing with something awful I could at least attempt to personally connect with him in ways he will understand instead of having strangers tell him its bad and if he doesn't stop he's gonna die, and then once i've decided he's had enough time to think about it, kill him myself?
You're saying that God could either do the above crazy shit, or make us robots.
The other option is to appeal to us on the level of understanding for which we are designed to depend on.
You keep using extremes such as heroin addictions and attacking family, but the issue of not giving God as much attention as he thinks he deserves, is not even in the same ball park as a heroin addicted individual that needs help!
Take your heroin example, there aren't just 2 options for approaching a heroin addict.
1. TELL HIM ITS BAD AND THEY SHOULD STOP (That will not be effective as they cannot comprehend such thoughts because they are chemically addicted to a substance).
2. KILL HIM BECAUSE HE DIDN'T LISTEN (You didn't even exercise all of your abilities! Use your mind and attempt different approaches to cure him, appeal to his potential ability, and if you need to, yes...LOCK HIM UP IN A ROOM and monitor him until he recovers) It's not brainwashing, it's being empathetic. It's having the clear vision of what the right thing to do is and understanding that the person cannot think for themselves and cannot comprehend what they should do because their brain is not functioning the way you know it should. You are doing something from a clear state of mind with superior judgement for the good of someone else who cannot see your point of view. When they recover and kick the habit, they aren't going to sue you! They were sick and you healed them.
Knowing better means you should do better. But, if someone doesn't know, they cannot do.
If you have the evidence and you don't share it, but instead punish people for not just believing you and because they hurt your feelings, you're a very petty fool. If you are in a position of power and you punish them without remorse and zero empathy for not believing you when you had the ability to connect with them more effectively then you are not even qualified to be a leader on earth. Let alone a leader of all things.
It is a bit obtuse to suggest that there are only 2 ways to get a creature endowed with logic and reasoning to accept that something is true.
The way you are describing as true goes like this:
A.
1) Create a universe/multi-verse designed for such creatures to inhabit.
2) Set an order and balance to this universe filled with amazing complexities, but make sure that no matter how complex these things may be, the order of the physical and visible constructs will always be able to be understood using numbers, reproducible consistant results, and verifiable evidence. Give them the ability to figure this out, and make those numbers absolute. Make sure that their minds work in such a way that this becomes the basis for what is accepted a knowledge and intelligence.
3) Ensure that the creatures become dependent on their persuit of knowledge and make that very thirst for information, and the ability to comprehend and reflect upon it the biggest thing that separates them from every other creature that inhabits their visible universe.
4) At some point early on in their persuit for understanding the complexities that have been put in place, and before they have truly grasped the concepts of such things, insert an individual that contradicts ALL of it.
NOTE:This is key, because if done too late, it will be too hard to convince them. It will be more effective while they are still in this early stage of intellectual development.
6) Give this individual the power to perform grand examples of things that others would percieve as impossible. (part seas, turn water into wine, make a basket of fish and a few pieces of bread enough to feed hundreds, and walk on water etc.). Do not give this power to everyone, it will take away the credibility.
7) Let him be savagely murdered, but convince everyone that he welcomed the torture and death for a reason that cannot be verified and will be forever misunderstood and misinterpreted through text, but make sure the others understand that it WAS important. It's not really important that they know why exactly. (MORE ON THIS TO FOLLOW).
8) Have the others write a book for the entire future of the species to follow. Fill it with rules and stories of things that will later go against everything you've designed the species to understand. Make it both logically and physically impossible. Provide them with nothing to verify the things written in the book. The tools and abilities you designed them to have will make it impossible for a large majority to accept as every fiber of the very being you gave them will not allow them to accept such things.
9) Make sure that everything about YOUR existance cannot be confirmed by any method you've given them to use. Instead, tell them it can only be confirmed individually through "personal experience". As an interesting distractor, fill the population with a number of different alternatives that follow the same creation guidelines, with similar explanations, but make it to where each of them think the others are crazy.
10) In order to get them to believe all of this, tell them if they don't, they will be tortured for eternity in a terrible place worse than they could possibly concieve. Make sure they are informed by people in their geographical region of this. It is absolutely paramount that you do not get involved in anyway that could be understood by the logic you designed them to use for understanding the things you have made anymore. It is crucial that the only way they are to be swayed is by their peers and by the threats contained in the book.
11) Tell them that if they read the book, it will show them how to make the decisions you wish them to make. But make sure the people tell the others that it is ultimately their choice on how they wish to live. Tell them that there are consequences to choosing wrong, but (this is the best part) make sure the original book was written so long ago, that nobody will be able to agree on exactly WHAT IT SAYS!! They won't have a clue what exactly isn't allowed or could exclude them from the torture they are trying to avoid!
12) As they start dying off, sort the ones that happened to meet the criteria as you see fit. The ones that don't make the cut will be tortured, but it's their fault because had they gone against their gut instincts you designed them to have, they would have been able to see that the supposed mythical torture was true, and it turns out to be as bad as the book described.
13) Its going to be hard for you to be ok with this, because afterall, they had no REAL way of knowing whether or not it was true, but hey, it was still their choice. And that's what is important. If you actually made an effort to connect with them using ways they are designed to understand, they might be able to choose too easily. It has to be the most important choice and there can only be 2 outcomes. The funny part is that everything else they've made a decision from will be based on a different process of experience. But what you've just done is made an effect that has nothing to do with any cause they could ever comprehend and then used it as the ultimate punishment for not picking right!
The other way you've suggested is:
B.
1) Labotomy
Never mind that if my son was dealing with something awful I could at least attempt to personally connect with him in ways he will understand instead of having strangers tell him its bad and if he doesn't stop he's gonna die, and then once i've decided he's had enough time to think about it, kill him myself?
You're saying that God could either do the above crazy shit, or make us robots.
The other option is to appeal to us on the level of understanding for which we are designed to depend on.
You keep using extremes such as heroin addictions and attacking family, but the issue of not giving God as much attention as he thinks he deserves, is not even in the same ball park as a heroin addicted individual that needs help!
Take your heroin example, there aren't just 2 options for approaching a heroin addict.
1. TELL HIM ITS BAD AND THEY SHOULD STOP (That will not be effective as they cannot comprehend such thoughts because they are chemically addicted to a substance).
2. KILL HIM BECAUSE HE DIDN'T LISTEN (You didn't even exercise all of your abilities! Use your mind and attempt different approaches to cure him, appeal to his potential ability, and if you need to, yes...LOCK HIM UP IN A ROOM and monitor him until he recovers) It's not brainwashing, it's being empathetic. It's having the clear vision of what the right thing to do is and understanding that the person cannot think for themselves and cannot comprehend what they should do because their brain is not functioning the way you know it should. You are doing something from a clear state of mind with superior judgement for the good of someone else who cannot see your point of view. When they recover and kick the habit, they aren't going to sue you! They were sick and you healed them.
Knowing better means you should do better. But, if someone doesn't know, they cannot do.
If you have the evidence and you don't share it, but instead punish people for not just believing you and because they hurt your feelings, you're a very petty fool. If you are in a position of power and you punish them without remorse and zero empathy for not believing you when you had the ability to connect with them more effectively then you are not even qualified to be a leader on earth. Let alone a leader of all things.
