Eternal punishment is pointless.

[KevinM1]

Because he holds a grudge for eternity. Also he's always right by default for...reasons, and it's not like you can really do anything about it anyway. The important thing is that he loves you, and wants to save you...from himself.

It's funny. I'm actually not too familiar with the scripture. I went through the kid's version of most of the OT stories in preparation of my first communion, but never went through all of it. I didn't have my first communion until much later in the hospital, when I was recovering from surgery when I was about 13 years old. I haven't actually read through the actual bible because I never had a real reason to.

So, imagine my laughter when, while doing a little research to verify some things I knew from other sources (those kid's books, my parents, talking to followers, etc.), I saw that on the very first page it described how god created this that and the other, and that it was good because god was good.

First. Friggin'. Page.

It's hilarious. God's good simply because the bible says he is. That's it. We need to take the bible's word for it.

How do people believe such tripe? I mean, really. Putting aside everything else, the first page is literally "God is good, just because." That's your opening? That's your hook? And a couple pages later humanity is punished with suffering because Eve ate a fruit from a tree that really shouldn't have been there? And, a couple pages after that, Cain kills Abel because god was a dick and didn't react favorably to his sacrifice after fawning over Abel's?

I get that there's generations of cultural momentum behind Christianity. I get that people hear this stuff from those they trust when they're young, so it's treated like truth from the get go. But, looking at it from a somewhat outsider's POV, I'm just flabbergasted. This is why people go to war? This is why there's an active movement to make our kids dumb? This crap that, from page 1, has no validity or internal consistency?