(April 28, 2013 at 4:04 pm)TromboneAtheist Wrote: So do you believe in hell? Anyone can answer of course. If you do, what are the circumstances that somene would be deserving of eternal punishment? In case anyone doesn't know, I don't.
One of the few positive things about being a Jehovah's Witness was their view of Hell. To them, Hell simply represents "the common grave of mankind." Which is to say, dirt. Hell is located six feet into the ground, and by the time you get there you've stopped existing and don't feel a thing.
So along with a whole shitload of crazy-ass beliefs, I at least had the consolation that Hell wasn't a fiery pit of eternal torment, and that when people died they just died. On the other hand, maybe if I'd been told that it was an endless inferno I'd have figured out that the whole damn thing was bullshit a lot earlier...
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
