Heaven seems awful 2 me-"Theist laughs at loudly & with great cruelty"

[Godscreated]

First of all if you want to consider yourself intellectually sophisticated, you should study the Bible and the Christian religion before you condemn any of it. If you do not you must consider yourself intellectually handicapped.

GC

[TheRocketSurgeon]

First of all if you want to consider yourself intellectually sophisticated, you should study the Bible and the Christian religion before you condemn any of it. If you do not you must consider yourself intellectually handicapped.

GC

Done. Long ago. So much study that I consider your fundamentalist/literalist interpretations worse than laughable; they are pitiable to any serious religious scholar who has not pledged himself to fundamentalism.

What now?

[Redbeard The Pink]

First of all if you want to consider yourself intellectually sophisticated, you should study the Bible and the Christian religion before you condemn any of it. If you do not you must consider yourself intellectually handicapped.

GC

And supposing he has and just didn't find it believable? That means he just didn't understand it, right? Right?

Predictable little lying shit...

[Godscreated]

First of all if you want to consider yourself intellectually sophisticated, you should study the Bible and the Christian religion before you condemn any of it. If you do not you must consider yourself intellectually handicapped.

GC

And supposing he has and just didn't find it believable? That means he just didn't understand it, right? Right?

Predictable little lying shit...

 No he hasn't, in his post there are several mistakes, which are not in the scriptures.

GC

[Godscreated]

First of all if you want to consider yourself intellectually sophisticated, you should study the Bible and the Christian religion before you condemn any of it. If you do not you must consider yourself intellectually handicapped.

GC

Done. Long ago. So much study that I consider your fundamentalist/literalist interpretations worse than laughable; they are pitiable to any serious religious scholar who has not pledged himself to fundamentalism.

What now?

 You are wrong, I find you quite illiterate when it comes to the Bible and I do not find it laughable. Anyone who claims they were a Christian and knows so little about Christ should be ashamed.

GC

[Redbeard The Pink]

Called it.


If you've studied the Bible at all and you still believe it's true, then you obviously didn't understand it and should probably consider yourself intellectually handicapped.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Done. Long ago. So much study that I consider your fundamentalist/literalist interpretations worse than laughable; they are pitiable to any serious religious scholar who has not pledged himself to fundamentalism.

What now?

 You are wrong, I find you quite illiterate when it comes to the Bible and I do not find it laughable. Anyone who claims they were a Christian and knows so little about Christ should be ashamed.

GC

Yeah, we've noticed that pattern with you. Except I routinely have Bible discussions (friendly ones) with other Christians, including Seminary-trained pastors, and all of them remark about how well I know the Bible. 

In other words, it's you, not me.

[fruyian]

Hi, How does one tackle this response? I posted something on a funny video that mentioned heaven,
My Post:
"Going from an incredible humorous video to some critical open minded thinking, If I may. To me heaven really sounds like a crude form of servility. Acting like sheep and you have to kneel, praise and grovel this tyrannical dictator from dawn till dusk, who never lets you go and constantly asks you to thank him and praise him every minute of every day. Total surveillance around the clock every waking and sleeping minute of your life before you're born and, even worse after you're dead. It's seems like hell to me. It is as they say a fate worse than death. Who wants this to be true? Who but a slave desires such a ghastly fate?

All that not including that this so called 'afterlife' has no evidence for it's existence. None. Postulating such a place brings more questions than answers.. If it does exist, like which heaven is the right one?? I am pretty sure Islam followers have often said they want non muslims out of the promised lands and are going to hell. Same with some Christians saying about other Christians.. Protestants say Catholics are not going to heaven and vice versa and many people say if you are an unbeliever, as I am, or even a homosexual, you are not allowed to go to heaven. Too many questions before anyone has to claim certainty.

Sure the idea of seeing your loved ones again brings comfort, that is human in away, but that in no way validates such claims.. we do know that humans lie and create myths, like to provide comfort for the unknown. But to me, this life, the only life we know to exist, can be lived better and more actively when you come to the logical conclusion that there is no such place. We are older as a civilization, we evolve and grow out of outdated thinking. But we need to criticize these claims in order to advance civilization. There that is all. Cheers if anyone took the time to read this.. now i'm off "


and his post to this:
"Nope, you son have a child's view of religion that a sophisticated Philosophical Classic Theist laughs at loudly & with great cruelty. First the existence of God (& or the afterlife) is a rational conclusion of philosophical argument not empirical investigation. Classic category mistake. Like claiming you disbelieve in Natural selection because you can't prove it using a large hadron collider or disbelieving in a Higgs boson particle because you can't find one in the fossil record. It's called a category mistake. Loo it up. The tyranny of servility comes from serving the undeserving and the inferior. Conforming to reality or Ultimate Reality Itself by definition isn't servility. Ergo serving God by definition can't be servility but is in fact the ultimate freedom. Also omniscience(knowing everything) isn't the same as Total surveillance. You employ surveillance because you don't know and need to observed. God doesn't need to observe anything from all eternity He knows. your primitive views of religion are to me the Atheist version of a Young Earth Creationist type claiming evolution is wrong because of the second law of thermal dynamics or some such foolishness. Good God man if you are going to be an Atheist at least be more intellectually sophisticated."



As you can see I have Christopher Hitchens saying and viewpoint in my post... so would that negate his 'that is not an intellectual sophisticated philosophical view'?

This is what I have written in a short time I have at the moment
"I am an atheist, and I consider myself to be intellectually sophisticated in this area. As the saying goes, an atheist is a person more likely to see all religions the same and usually with experience of actually being religious before one becomes an atheist. That to me is a good standpoint to be at when one is figuring out who has the more intellectual sophisticated view..."

EDIT rather more information on the last part:
and his post to this: 
"Nope, you son have a child's view of religion that a sophisticated Philosophical Classic Theist laughs at loudly & with great cruelty. First the existence of God (& or the afterlife) is a rational conclusion of philosophical argument not empirical investigation. Classic category mistake. Like claiming you disbelieve in Natural selection because you can't prove it using a large hadron collider or disbelieving in a Higgs boson particle because you can't find one in the fossil record. It's called a category mistake. Loo it up. The tyranny of servility comes from serving the undeserving and the inferior. Conforming to reality or Ultimate Reality Itself by definition isn't servility. Ergo serving God by definition can't be servility but is in fact the ultimate freedom. Also omniscience(knowing everything) isn't the same as Total surveillance. You employ surveillance because you don't know and need to observed. God doesn't need to observe anything from all eternity He knows. your primitive views of religion are to me the Atheist version of a Young Earth Creationist type claiming evolution is wrong because of the second law of thermal dynamics or some such foolishness. Good God man if you are going to be an Atheist at least be more intellectually sophisticated."


As you can see I have Christopher Hitchens saying and viewpoint in my post... so would that negate his 'that is not an intellectual sophisticated philosophical view'? As Hitchens is philosopher and majority of his view points are how would you say very grounded and mostly unshakable. And his point about no evidence for an afterlife as well as his view on the undesirable praise and grovelling one does.. is a very well made point especially when he compares the similarities, from the different perceptions and doctrines about this so called 'afterlife', to a real world economy, North Korea, which makes his point a bit deeper.


This is what I have written in a short time I have at the moment. 
"I am an atheist, and I consider myself to be intellectually sophisticated in this area. As the saying goes, an atheist is a person more likely to see all religions the same and usually with experience of actually being religious before one becomes an atheist. That to me is a good standpoint to be at when one is figuring out who has the more intellectual sophisticated view... Not saying that every atheist is like this but for the most part it is true that former religious reads and learns about their religion and then decides to leave it"

I would like to thank everyone who took their time to reply with some advice

---

First of all if you want to consider yourself intellectually sophisticated, you should study the Bible and the Christian religion before you condemn any of it. If you do not you must consider yourself intellectually handicapped.

GC

I believe your post may be moot as I did imply in my post that I did study the bible and the Christian religion.. I was a Christian when I was young, went to a Christian school, not only was I told bout and read parts of the bible.. all of the children's version, went to church and re-read the bible when I was older. And I can honestly say I can and have the right to condemn all of it. So I will repeat, I am intellectually sophisticated in this area.

fruyian

[KevinM1]

Don't let GC bother you. He's so desperate to believe the emperor has clothes, he may actually see them in his mind.

[Brian37]

Religion loves to reverse things. Servitude to a god equals freedom. Thinking only what he wants you to think, and doing only what he wants you to do, is somehow ultimate freedom. Heaven is a terrible existence, though I suppose people in heaven wouldn't recognize it, because they're not allowed to disagree with their god. In the christian afterlife, you're either given a lobotomy, or set on fire. Your choice.

It is not stated enough about why the religions of antiquity were written like they were, even in polytheism.

Even in Hinduism and Buddhism, in antiquity worldwide humans lived under local tribal royalty, and back then the morality rate was much higher and the mandate to be loyal to that local royalty was a demand. Humans mistook their good fortune from coming from the divine world.

Not even what we think of as the origins of western democracy were really dictatorship free. Even with the senate of Rome was a modern democracy you still had an immovable Caesar who had absolute power, even if he allowed the senate to write laws, he was still immovable and could veto anyone and anything he wanted to.

Our species is still stuck on old tribal memes far too much and we are simply still local thinkers  far too much.