Questions for theists.

[tackattack]

Last I checked Catholics are the largest subgroup of christians. So if you're going to appeal to some sort of majority, the majority says you're dead wrong. Of course what the majority of people believe has absolutely no effect on reality, so at least your answer is safe on that count, eh? If someone offers up a catholic response as a "majority viewpoint" they're absolutely correct in doing so. Whether or not you agree has no effect on the veracity of the statement. Similarly, whether or not the people you personally know agree has no effect on the veracity of the statement.

Most practicing Catholics I've met consider the average Christian apostate, and most denominational Christians I've met don't even consider Catholics a denomination of Christianity, predominantly for their worship of the saints and Mary as opposed to strictly Jesus. I personally consider Catholics on the fringes of Biblical Christianity, along the lines of the Jehovas witness and Mormons, as do many of my contemporaries. I'm not attempting a no true scotsman, just that while catholics are obviously Abrahamic theists, doctrinaly they add the apocrypha. While I'm sure you'd love to debate that, my point was what I refer to as Christians are any branch of Christianity that uses the 66 books of the standard protestant Bible, with no extra Biblical additions.
While Roman Catholicism does have numerically more adherents statistically than the sum of the denominations (I havne' seen teh statistics, but I'm fairly certain) I've yet to meet a Catholic who attends Mass regularly or considers themselves practicing (including my God sister and mother), so I wouldn't consider the majority of catholics active, making their larger numbers far less adherents, and far more general theist population. You can see it how you like though, but I've asked tons of people what they believe and almost every single Catholic answers with "I'm Catholic" and almost every single one of the denomination or non denom. people I've met have said "I'm Christian".

I didn't say "I don't think people will go to hell", I said "I don't think anyone will burn forever in Hell." I think a lot of people will end up in hell, just not that they'll be tortured for all eternity..

Thanks for the clarification. Will Fr0d0 have the bollocks to admit he was being a little cunt and twisting things in a sad attempt to discredit me? Time will tell.

That said, sounds like more 'interpretation' to suit what YOU, as a fairly secular, moral and liberal person want to believe. Let me ask you this: If you're wrong, and the punishment is eternal, is that moral, or would God be wrong to condemn people to that?

I can't speak for Fr0ds. The consequence is eternal (everlasting or final) in that there is no coming back from being destroyed forever. The few people on the Christian forum that believe in the doctrine of eternal torment I go to, have yet to support their view Scriptually in the original language of whatever version they read. The backlash from them expressing that view takes up quite a few pages. I am a strong proponent against "hell fire and damnnation" preaching to answer your question as it is, even by human standards, morally deplorable and I also find it unsupported by scripture. The afterlife generally though is not a primary focus for me, as I believe Jesus' teachings were predominantly for living within this one lifetime. You can call it "my interpretation" but if you some of the atheists on here, including yourself, could join a Christian forum without getting kicked off shortly after, you'd find it's a majority view. I can appreciate that many of the atheists here have been done with religion for a while or were never into religion at all, so your sampling pool may have been limited to your regional flavors. I've been in everything from a Catholic Mass, to a evangelistic revival and tons of shades in between. From my view eternal torment is a minority view and Catholics are considered more of idoalters and only slightly closer to Christianity than Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses.