(November 23, 2014 at 8:32 pm)ChadWooters Wrote:(November 23, 2014 at 8:12 pm)Esquilax Wrote: So, when I die my spirit goes to hell and becomes a convenient straw-unbeliever cartoon character that sounds exactly like the bluntest, most simplistic dishonest caricature a fundamentalist religious whackjob could come up with?Its not dishonest. It's an honest warning.
As has been pointed out, you're not denying the simplistic, offensive notions at play here, but more importantly, what's going to happen to make me that way? Because to be honest, that quote doesn't read as an accurate description of anything real, but of someone writing Snidely Whiplash. Leaving aside evidence and justification, it just seems like something you want to be true, some little passive aggressive shot at the unbelievers to shore up the theists and bolster their own imagined superiority. It reads like a rhetorical tactic, not a warning.
But, let it never be said that I'm uncharitable in my interpretations, so! What's going to make me that way? What's going to turn me from a well rounded human being who doesn't actually commit that many sins barring the standard disbelief in god, into a two dimensional prop for your mystic's demagoguery? As I am now, I have a moral code that isn't subjective or up for opinion, and that aligns with the health and happiness of my fellows; I don't actually "delight" in committing adultery, theft, lies and so on. So if I pass into hell as I was in life, that stuff will all remain. So obviously, either I'm going to be brainwashed somehow upon entering hell, in which case I'm not really me and your "warning" is inaccurate, or Swedenborg was wrong.
I know you compared the whole enterprise to addiction earlier, but I don't buy that in the context of real people and not children's characters. I may not believe in god and hence be destined for hell, but the nearest I get to addiction is a predilection for peanut butter M&Ms and an honest, moral but voracious sexual appetite. There's nothing in me, in most normal people, atheist or not, that could intensify to that level. Without something being changed, that is... thus bringing us back to the dilemma.
"YOU take the hard look in the mirror. You are everything that is wrong with this world. The only thing important to you, is you." - ronedee
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Want to see more of my writing? Check out my (safe for work!) site, Unprotected Sects!