Do I believe Atheists are going to hell?

[KevinM1]

I still posit that if god simply wanted to hang around with other, yet lesser, holy beings for eternity, he could simply create them. This whole song and dance about creating inherently sinful mortals, and then testing their belief in a creator entity that feels that faith is somehow superior to knowledge, is idiotic. It's also incredibly immoral.

So, when Christians start throwing around terms like 'perfect justice' or 'perfect good', I simply must laugh. Because it's obvious they never actually thought about the nonsense terms they wield so easily.

[WinterHold]

@Atlas 

Pot meet kettle.  Neither of you are satisfied with the strictures of either of your respective religions.  I note that neither of you particularly likes being told that you're casual pick-and-choose believers, regardless of how true that is or how well it can be demonstrated.  Perhaps, and I'm just spitballing here, both of you are right about each others faiths and atheists are right about both of yours.  See...errybody can be right about this one thing, lol.

-and then there will be that much more peace in the world.

From an outsiders point of view..both of you are saying "I don;t believe the shit those guys say, now let me tell you what those guys told me".  It's perplexing, to put it mildly.

Actually I do believe in previous Christian doctrines; also Jewish doctrines. Moses and Jesus -peace be upon them- are prophets to me as a Muslim.
My problem is with the Church. Just like my problem is with the Sunni/Shiite Islamic sects.

Early Christian martyrs who died at the Roman arenas are a row model to me; so as early Jews who followed Moses.
The holy books got mixed with the none-sense of the Church. Without the Church; Christians will be different people.

Makes you wonder; as an a Muslim, I think an atheist is fighting what the Church -and the Muslim sects- did from forging to twisting of faiths; thinking that this is the real religion; though it's not; so actually it's a battle against windmills.

[The Grand Nudger]

The "holy books" -are- the nonsense of the church you despise.  Had some other scam won out the holy books would reflect the needs of that instead. For all the shit that catholics have been dished by other judeochristian cults (such as your own and every single form of protestantism) they never really get the credit they're due for making the mold around which all of your faiths are formed. They literally wrote your book, the rest of you are imitators..and frankly, none of you show an ounce of the aptitude and competence of the RCC on that count.

[Astreja]

But if a place had to be created that was separate from God as a result of our sins in light of God's essential (as in could not have been any other way) perfect holiness/justice, then who is responsible for such a place existing?

Well, *I* didn't create such a place.

And what good is "holiness/justice" if it requires existing in isolation from anything that might sully it?

[Succubus]

...So, God does not sentence you to hell. It is an automatic consequence for not freely choosing the option provided.

That seems pretty unequivocal but how does it square with Catholic-Lady's opinion that non believers who follow the rules of civilised society are believers but don't realise it.

If you accept love and goodness, if you strive to live by the values of honesty, truth, generosity, humility, kindness, etc, to the best of your understanding of those things, you are unknowingly accepting God into your heart, and He is present there, imho.

My highlight.

[Catholic_Lady]

I never said atheists are believers but don't realize it. Obviously I know yall don't believe.

I also never said that following the rules of civilized society was enough.

Misrepresentations! Misrepresentations everywhere!

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Edited^^

[KevinM1]

But if a place had to be created that was separate from God as a result of our sins in light of God's essential (as in could not have been any other way) perfect holiness/justice, then who is responsible for such a place existing?

Well, *I* didn't create such a place.

And what good is "holiness/justice" if it requires existing in isolation from anything that might sully it?

Also: how can the sin of flawed, temporary, lesser creatures actually sully something that's inherently perfect in the first place?

We're living in a universe that's ~13.8 billion years old, with countless galaxies in it. Inside those galaxies are even more stars, and orbiting those stars (not all of them, but still a shit ton) are even more planets and moons. In almost every respect, we are insignificant. We are small, fragile, flawed creatures living on a tiny ball of water and mud in the boonies of our own galaxy, in the midst of utter vastness. And we're supposed to believe that the creature that purportedly built all of it has a vested interest in what we do and how we do it. That our actions - whatever they may be - have the potential to so negatively impact this magnificent creator being that it created a place/state of being for us to go that is eternally torturous out of necessity.

It's batshit insane. And pretty obviously the cosmology of an ancient people whose ideas of justice and morality were as savage as the times in which they lived.

Now, I'm sure at least one person will claim "argument from incredulity fallacy!" However, I believe my incredulity is justified here. We have ample evidence of the universe, it's sheer size, and we're getting a clearer idea of just how many rocky bodies there are (there's a NASA press conference every few months detailing new planets we've found in our own interstellar backyard). There's absolutely no evidence of hell, nor of souls, or sin as an actual force.

[Succubus]

To clarify here, Catholicism certainly does not teach that people of other faiths are damned, and that only people who died Christian go to Purgatory. We make no such judgements on the state of souls that way.

I'd like to further add to this in case I haven't been clear enough on my earlier posts. I do believe that Christ is the way to salvation. But as Catholics we do leave an open door at least to the possibility of a person following Christ without the explicit knowledge of doing so. Some of us are more optimistic/charitable than others about this. I'm in the former category.

Where might I find an intelligent discussion on this with reference to Catholic doctrine on said issue?

[SteveII]

But if a place had to be created that was separate from God as a result of our sins in light of God's essential (as in could not have been any other way) perfect holiness/justice, then who is responsible for such a place existing?

Well, *I* didn't create such a place.

And what good is "holiness/justice" if it requires existing in isolation from anything that might sully it?

I would say that God is the perfection of each of his attributes. Arguments can be made that holiness is better than wicked. Justice is better than injustice. Concepts of perfectly holy and perfectly just separately and together carry entailments such as can't abide the presence of sin nor the can allow it to go unaddressed. 

Please remember that the main doctrines of Christianity have been discussed and written about by learned people for 2 millennium. Billions of hours of thought have gone into these concepts. Christianity's main problem today is the inability of the typical believer to defend doctrine against a more organized and sophisticated objector. However, that does not mean the there are not very good answers to the objections.

[The Grand Nudger]

I guess the existence of those explanations is just another thing we're supposed to take on faith. Meanwehile, in the real world, after all that time you mentioned above..christianity still hasn't managed to resolved objections that predate christianity.

It seems like there may be a bit of a backlog.