Who does religion care?

[tackattack]

@Void and skipper

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Bullshit Tack.

"And if your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; it is better for you to enter life crippled or lame, than having two hands or two feet, to be cast into the eternal fire," (Matt. 18:8)

"And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life" (Matt. 25:46)

"And these will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power," (2 Thess. 1:9).

"Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example, in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire" (Jude 7).

These men are those who are hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted; 13 wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam; wandering stars, for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever," (Jude12-13).

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Do you even read what you're quoting? I'll give you Matthew 25:46 is a little difficult to understand. It's very clearly contrasting the finality of destruction and the promise of ressurection. Whatever the punishment is is eternal but it doesn't specify WHAT that punishment is.But no where does it say what will happen during your punishment(in your quoted scriptures). Yes, your punishment is eternal/forever. When you sentence someone to the death penalty it is a permenant solution. When God sentences someone to go to Hell, where your destruction is clearly stated, and the punishment lasts forever you're confounding the how with the where.
Matthew 10:28

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"28Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell."

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If you chery pick the ones that support your claim instead of looking at all of them I can see where you think you get tortured forever. I implore you to objectively reread your selections though because they're incomplete and you're assuming the outcome.

"cast into the eternal fire" - the fire is eternal
"penalty of eternal destruction" - having your soul destroyed is final not forever
"punishment of eternal fire" - the fire is eternal
"destroy both soul and body in hell" - in hell it's destroyed as in not forever (unless you mean nothingness forever, I just never fathomed how to have nothingness)
"black darkness has been reserved forever" - if that doesn't conjure up imagery of nothingness as opposed to lakes of fire I don't know how to help you.

I don't know how to restate on a simple and plain read you're being misguided. I don't fault you, lots of others are as well. This isn't apologetics 101 though this is english 101. I'll gladly discuss it further, but I don't know how can restate the points so that you'll take off your blinders. If I missing something please let me know.

[Welsh cake]

I realize that talking about religion is like a different bandwidth of thinking from science, philosophy, and other types of rational thinking. That's one of the reasons why some atheists will never understand how people can believe in a God without any evidence.

Belief in anything supernatural without evidence is irrational. That's one of the reasons why some theists will never understand how people cannot believe in a god without any evidence.

I'm not too much of a practicing Muslim because I don't pray 5 times a day like we're supposed to.

I'm confident your all-powerful Allah will survive with just 4 prayers a day.

More importantly, we have to study a particular religion's origin and it's history in greater details before we say that this is all fake and non-sense.

There's hope for you yet Rayaan.

[Rayaan]

Belief in anything supernatural without evidence is irrational.

The world itself is an evidence of God.
Maybe these are too obvious to notice and some people are looking for the less obvious ones (which they never find).

I'm confident your all-powerful Allah will survive with just 4 prayers a day.

Allah doesn't need our prayers to survive. It is only we who need His guidance and mercy and that's why we have to pray to Him. He gave us a beautiful planet to live in. He gave us food, money, intelligence, technology, and everything we need to survive. There's a small tax for all this stuff that we're getting for free. So, it's like a debt we owe to God if we don't pray to Him or thank Him for all this free stuff we're getting.

It's also a matter of building a relationship with Him.

[Anomalocaris]

The world itself is an evidence of God.
Maybe these are too obvious to notice and.....

Don't overreach here. The world is evidence of cosmology. Your god, coequal with all other deities of other religions despite your inevitable protestations, is but an artifact of the first shabby attempts at cosmology. To embody a concept of "wrong" worthwhile to a pursuit of the truth implies a certain standard of intellectual honesty that none of these first attempts has aspired to meet. These infantile first attempts are so self important and so lacking in intellectual integrity that they on purpose demand faith so as to make it difficult for their believers learn from their mistake. As a result, for real insight into cosmology, religion is not even wrong, it is simply worthless. In this age infinitely more robust cosmologies exists to let men frame his own existence in solid understanding of the world. These as they stand now may be mostly on the right track, may be only partly right, and may yet be mostly wrong. But they are honest enough to offer collateral with their claims, so as to let you find out if they are right, and learn something even if they be wrong. When such real effort at cosmology is available, dredging up god and religion again to interfere with men's understanding of the world is contemptible.

Allah doesn't need our prayers to survive. It is only we who need His guidance and mercy and that's why we have to pray to Him. He gave us a beautiful planet to live in. He gave us food, money, intelligence, technology, and everything we need to survive. There's a small tax for all this stuff that we're getting for free. So, it's like a debt we owe to God if we don't pray to Him or thank Him for all this free stuff we're getting.

That Allah, or Jehovah, or the rather embarrassing specimens of homo sapien called Jesus, doesn't need your prayers to survive is only technically true beccause Jesus is dead and those other ineffable beings are ineffable only because they don't exist, except as an often conflated, but totally nonequivalent, survival of a particularfigment of the prayerful's imagination. Your food, money etc came from many things, none ultimately more traceable to your supernatural despot in the sky more than another's. 4.5 billion years of physical evolution of the earth, and 6 million years of hominid physiological, behavioral, cognitive and societal evolution bequeathed you these things. Those 6 million years of human behavioral and societal evolution also saddled you with Jehovah, Allah, or Buddha. But be clear about what came from what. That small "tax" you mention is your personal intellectual integrity, assuming it had ever been yours to so eagerly give up.

It's also a matter of building a relationship with Him.

Humans are somewhat embarrassingly capable of building relationships with and perceiving benefits from concepts that are patently unable to reciprocate in any way. No doubt solid relationships with the pet rock saved a few from even greater depths of intellectual poverty. If you are intellectually so poor that the concept an all powerful being so narcissistic that his pleasure profits from your praise constitutes an enrichment to you, and you are unable to come up with guidance better than what could be imagined to come from one such as that, then by all means enrich yourself in this way. But do not assume all of the rest of humanity is so poor as you.

[theVOID]

Do you even read what you're quoting? I'll give you Matthew 25:46 is a little difficult to understand. It's very clearly contrasting the finality of destruction and the promise of ressurection.

What passage are you reading, cause it's not Matthew 25:31-46, if you want greater context.

It speaks of "Jesus" returning from the heavens with a barrage of angels and taking lordship over the earth, it speaks of him dividing the sinners and the righteous into groups with some crude sheep and goat analogy.

Then he speaks of Jesus telling the righteous to take their places in the kingdom, telling them that by helping others they have helped him.

Then he says to the sinnners "'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." This is only 25:41, it continues...

Jesus blames them for not aiding their fellow man, not being pious.

and it ENDS with Matt 35:46

"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.""

So you see, Mr condescending, I know perfectly well what I'm talking about, and I know exactly what I'm reading, and your bible explicitly sentences people to eternal hellfire.

Whatever the punishment is is eternal but it doesn't specify WHAT that punishment is.But no where does it say what will happen during your punishment(in your quoted scriptures). Yes, your punishment is eternal/forever. When you sentence someone to the death penalty it is a permenant solution. When God sentences someone to go to Hell, where your destruction is clearly stated, and the punishment lasts forever you're confounding the how with the where.

What a crock Tack, Punishment that results in fatality/destruction is NOT eternal, not by the very definition of the word:

Eternal:

1. without beginning or end; lasting forever; always existing ( opposed to temporal): eternal life.
2. perpetual; ceaseless; endless: eternal quarreling; eternal chatter.
3. enduring; immutable: eternal principles.
4. Metaphysics . existing outside all relations of time; not subject to change.

Eternal punishment is punishment that goes on forever, to say it means descruction is to copletely rape the definitions of both punishment and eternal.

And you also have quite a double standard here in your use of eternal, in regards to this afterlife you think you are going to have, after all, if your use of the word was anything but nonsense it would mean your "eternal life" is of the same nature.

Matthew 10:28
"Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell."

I take it you aren't aware that you've pointed out one of the most well known contradictions?

Firstly, it's never clear who this passage is addressing, this part of Matthew is a rather disparate collection of sayings from Jesus so aside from the obvious contradiction there is no contextual aid in determining why the passage may seem to contradict the latter passages like in 35:31-46 where it is explicit that people are to be punished for eternity. This passage, because of the context that establishes clearly who is to go to hell and what is to happen to them and that Jesus was addressing these people at the end times, has far more credence that the fragmentary passages in contradiction.

If you chery pick the ones that support your claim instead of looking at all of them I can see where you think you get tortured forever. I implore you to objectively reread your selections though because they're incomplete and you're assuming the outcome.

You are far more guilty of that that I am! You were the one not only insisting that there is no eternal punishment even when there clearly is reference to it, but then accusing me of cherry picking while failing to acknowledge your own cherry picking (which was worse, because i only intended to demonstrate that there were passages supporting the idea, not insisting upon the opposite conclusion as you were!) even though I used far more substantiated passages with more context and clearer direction as opposed to your fragmented little sound bite. And even worse, to get around the contradiction you made up a completely bogus defintion of "eternal punishment" all because you can't concede that you were wrong.

And don't patronise me with your "objectivity", I've read your bible extensively, especially the gospels, and i know the context in which these contradictions occur.

Maybe you should get off your high horse and see your silly little desert manifesto for what it is, rather than accusing everyone else of reading it wrong.

[Skipper]

I can see how you can try and play the "wrong context" or "multiple meanings" card on certain verses Tack. But with Matt 25:46 "Then they will go away to ever lasting punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."". There seems to me to be no two ways about it. Jesus condems people to EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT. Regardless this is all pointless as there is no proof of heave, hell or god, so it's an irrational conversation to be having

[tackattack]

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Do you even read what you're quoting? I'll give you Matthew 25:46 is a little difficult to understand. It's very clearly contrasting the finality of destruction and the promise of ressurection.

What passage are you reading, cause it's not Matthew 25:31-46, if you want greater context.

It speaks of "Jesus" returning from the heavens with a barrage of angels and taking lordship over the earth, it speaks of him dividing the sinners and the righteous into groups with some crude sheep and goat analogy.

Then he speaks of Jesus telling the righteous to take their places in the kingdom, telling them that by helping others they have helped him.

Then he says to the sinnners "'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." This is only 25:41, it continues...

Jesus blames them for not aiding their fellow man, not being pious.

and it ENDS with Matt 35:46

"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.""

So you see, Mr condescending, I know perfectly well what I'm talking about, and I know exactly what I'm reading, and your bible explicitly sentences people to eternal hellfire.

Whatever the punishment is is eternal but it doesn't specify WHAT that punishment is.But no where does it say what will happen during your punishment(in your quoted scriptures). Yes, your punishment is eternal/forever. When you sentence someone to the death penalty it is a permenant solution. When God sentences someone to go to Hell, where your destruction is clearly stated, and the punishment lasts forever you're confounding the how with the where.

What a crock Tack, Punishment that results in fatality/destruction is NOT eternal, not by the very definition of the word:

Eternal:

1. without beginning or end; lasting forever; always existing ( opposed to temporal): eternal life.
2. perpetual; ceaseless; endless: eternal quarreling; eternal chatter.
3. enduring; immutable: eternal principles.
4. Metaphysics . existing outside all relations of time; not subject to change.

Eternal punishment is punishment that goes on forever, to say it means descruction is to copletely rape the definitions of both punishment and eternal.

And you also have quite a double standard here in your use of eternal, in regards to this afterlife you think you are going to have, after all, if your use of the word was anything but nonsense it would mean your "eternal life" is of the same nature.

Matthew 10:28
"Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell."

I take it you aren't aware that you've pointed out one of the most well known contradictions?

Firstly, it's never clear who this passage is addressing, this part of Matthew is a rather disparate collection of sayings from Jesus so aside from the obvious contradiction there is no contextual aid in determining why the passage may seem to contradict the latter passages like in 35:31-46 where it is explicit that people are to be punished for eternity. This passage, because of the context that establishes clearly who is to go to hell and what is to happen to them and that Jesus was addressing these people at the end times, has far more credence that the fragmentary passages in contradiction.

If you chery pick the ones that support your claim instead of looking at all of them I can see where you think you get tortured forever. I implore you to objectively reread your selections though because they're incomplete and you're assuming the outcome.

You are far more guilty of that that I am! You were the one not only insisting that there is no eternal punishment even when there clearly is reference to it, but then accusing me of cherry picking while failing to acknowledge your own cherry picking (which was worse, because i only intended to demonstrate that there were passages supporting the idea, not insisting upon the opposite conclusion as you were!) even though I used far more substantiated passages with more context and clearer direction as opposed to your fragmented little sound bite. And even worse, to get around the contradiction you made up a completely bogus defintion of "eternal punishment" all because you can't concede that you were wrong.

And don't patronise me with your "objectivity", I've read your bible extensively, especially the gospels, and i know the context in which these contradictions occur.

Maybe you should get off your high horse and see your silly little desert manifesto for what it is, rather than accusing everyone else of reading it wrong.

---

I'm sorry if I came accros as condescending, it was not my intent, and it might have been a little snarky so I apologize. Anyways back to buisness. What if I told you this:
1-I will punish you for a crime you commited
2-When I punish you it will be final, unchangeable, immutable
3- That punishment is 5 days in jail
Would it make sense? Yes, I hope so. All the verses together, which you're stating is some kind of major contradiction, lay out similarly like that for me.
1-God will judge you
2-His verdict is final
3-Your soul will be destroyed in Hell
I know you're going to scream it's a bad analogy but only because it deals with the metaphyical. The logial processes are the same. And you are dismissing the verse I quoted because it doesn't fit in with your preconceived notion of Christian damnation. As clearly stated by the metaphysical definition YOU quoted it clearly deliniates the properties of the authority not of the punishment. The first definition is exactly why I said the bit aboout contrasting eternal life with endless nothingness. There is no contradiction or play on words, nor am I mutalating any definitions. If I'm wrong, you should know me well enough, that I'd admit to it. If you could better present the logic behind the excluding of a verse or why my above example is illogical I'd be happy to entertain your idea. Eternal punishment is a punishment that will not change. It will not change because of the singular authority. That punishment is a fixed value of destruction in Ghenna. Therefore, Eternal punishment would be being permenantly and immutably destroyed in Ghenna. I fear we might have to agree to disagree, but I think I conveyed my points very succinctly and accurately, and hope we can reach a mutual agreement.

[Skipper]

Eternal punishment is a punishment that will not change.

Only coming from a religious apologist. Final punishment would mean what you are saying or unchangeable punishment. Eternal means forever, never ending "continuing forever or indefinitely". How can an act of destruction as you claim it is continue forever or indefinitely? It would just end as the soul is destroyed.

[tackattack]

You're assuming that the eternalness of the soul is a Christian teaching, when it's a Plutonic one. The only Christian teachingabout anything lasting forever are God's Love and Ressurection through Christ. You may shirk off the arguement because I'm an apologist, but this is a metaphysical subject and according to the dictionary definition quoted me "4. Metaphysics . existing outside all relations of time; not subject to change." How can anything go on forever outside the bounds of time? Forever is a length of time, for now and ever more. Eternal is unchanging and will not change. If your soul is destroyed it won't change. If you believe in eternal suffering that's typically (Like the salvation through works believers) because people hope that through sufferring you will change or because they enjoy the thought of you suffering forever. That's a hope for change and would not be eternal eternal. That's not a Christian doctrine in either sense, it's not one my denomination prescribes to, it's not one I teach my kids at home, it's not one I teach at Church to adults or kids. I think I can see why you would believe that way, but that mindset is only valid if you exclude certain verses. All of them together in context seem to point towards what I am attempting to explain.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

Jesus is quoted as saying (approximately) "no one comes to the father except through me " and" go forth and teach ye all nations-----"

In my experience, most devout Christians believe those claims implicitly. 'Giving witness' in the hope of converting the unbeliever is taken very seriously by many, often with compassion and personal sacrifice

There is a great dichotomy within Christianity, between the Salvationists and the Resurrectionists,sometimes within the same denomination. One group emphpasises penance and fear of damnation.The other the unconditional love and forgiveness of God. One type gives witness by bible thumping and threats,the other gives witness quietly and gently by the way they live.

I do not doubt the sincerity of most individuals we get here,and have some respect the quiet ones who have also mastered abstract and independent thinking. (such as Tacky,mostly) The others,not so much. Usually I just feel like punching them.