How do you deal with people who tell you you'll burn in hell?

[Tonus]

How do you guys handle religious people who threaten you with eternal agony in a pit of lava if you don't convert?

[robvalue]

It's weird, when I was a maths teacher, I never had to threaten anyone in order to show why one line followed logically from the next.

[One Above All]

It's weird, when I was a maths teacher, I never had to threaten anyone in order to show why one line followed logically from the next.

Then you weren't doing it right.

[FlyingSpaghettiMonster]

Already did.

(I also laugh them off and start grinning, it's really not even a threat to me)

[Anomalocaris]

I usually invite G-C, or drippy or whatever dumbfuck xtian who said it to go fuck themselves.

I thought they already masturbated by saying it.

[Mister Agenda]

No one can threaten you with hell, they haven't the authority and when most Christians tell you if you do not believe you'll go to hell, their concerned for you.

Maybe someday they'll get the memo that they have achieved near total market penetration in the West and they are unlikely to come across anyone in America or Europe not a recent immigrant from a country where Christians are a tiny minority who is unaware that the standard Christian position is that people who don't agree with them on religious matters are going to suffer in the afterlife by being subjected to an eternal torment of writhing agony.

Then maybe they'll get the memo that they're supposed to be as wise as serpents and gentle as doves and save the hell stuff for after they've snared their prey, because telling us your big Mafia Don in the sky is going to have us taken care of (wink) if we don't toe your line is just as much a threat as if it were delivered by real goombahs. This 'I'm just delivering a message for da boss' crap doesn't excuse it.

Now is it actually scary? No. The problem isn't that it's scary, the problem is that it's sincere. You really believe we're going to get ours if we don't sign on with your organization and pay our dues. It's rude, but no more rude than when it comes from a Muslim.

Would you rather them say to you screw of i'm glad you want be in heaven with me, that make you fell better.

I would rather they have enough basic compassion and understaning of interpersonal dynamics to know the hell approach is counter-productive as well as rude. I'd rather have atheists who thought their way out of theism than the flood we're getting who fundamentalists are driving into our arms. When I have an issue with Christians, it's not because they're being too compassionate, charitable, forgiving, or loving. I kind of wish being a Christian had that effect on people, America would be a better country if it did.

Truth is you do not have proof you want go to hell if you continue to disbelieve and you will not till you die.

That was a hard sentence to parse, but if you don't have proof now of what will happen when people die, why are you so comfortable delivering the threat?

Funny thing about death one never knows when it will come. Three good teenagers were killed in a car wreck in my area this weekend, just an accident nothing more, yet their dead and only one had graduated high school. Have no idea if any of them were Christians.

But if any of them weren't, you believe they are in hell or on their way, to be tortured forever, and you believe it is what they deserve.

---

Because Christians understand that this life and the next go hand in hand.

And precisely who asked you for your opinion on the matter? Or are you Christians just natural buttinski busybodies?

It's the Great Commission. Unfortunately, they seem to think Jesus was doing it wrong, not leading with the hell stuff and saving it for people who already believed the rest of it. It's like they can't compute 'first convince, then threaten'.

[dyresand]

How do you guys handle religious people who threaten you with eternal agony in a pit of lava if you don't convert?

my usually response ill 1 v 1 the devil for all the damned souls in hell and let them go if i win. (because you know what's even more scarier than hell letting the damned souls go out from heaven.)