(August 30, 2010 at 9:53 pm)Ashendant Wrote: hell serves a purpose in religion to scare believers out of doing bad acts, because churches and believers believe without the threat of eternal damnation everyone will be a bastard to everyone.
If you believe religion exists the fear of hell will continue to persist in you, if you move from religion the fear of hell will slowly move itself out.
I also know that the fear of hell is the 3rd hardest thing a atheist must suffer to free itself from religion so meh, social stygma is the second and threats of death the first
OK, good points, but what about the arguments that if there is no heaven or hell, people like Stalin and Hitler have essentially won, and that there's no point in being moral. Or, in other words, if Mother Teresa and Hitler both had the same destiny then what's the point?? I've heard that argument before.
Along with that, comes the argument that, if we simply came out of some primordial soup and then are annihilated at death, (to quote the theologian R.C. Sproul) we "live our lives between two poles of absolute meaninglessness. We are pealed zeroes, stripped naked of dignity and worth".
