[Serious] What God's justification for eternal torment?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

It's funny how god is into all the same shit his prophets are, isn't it?  Big Mo liked to smack a bitch up in between raping and pillaging, and his buddy allah is the cause of sexual dimorphism in human beings as our designer.  He pretty much made us for smacking, and females for getting smacked.

Funny, but not terribly surprising. Most godism seems to be built up from scratch as a way to justify the frequently perfectly horrid behavior of human beings.

Boru

[Confused-by-christianity]

Agreed.  The other side to that coin is that a faith based on hope is equally misguided.  Pay me tomorrow for a burger today?  Nope.

It's an interesting question.  What is my faith based on?  
Fear ?  (of a worse tomorrow)  
Hope ? (for a better tomorrow) 
Culture ?  (that's just the way we do it around here)  
An experience ?  (Think I really had an experience from divine)  
Superiority/inferiority complex?  (Make a system that favours me and put everyone else down?) 


I can't think of any other basis for having a faith off the top of my head

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Agreed.  The other side to that coin is that a faith based on hope is equally misguided.  Pay me tomorrow for a burger today?  Nope.

It's an interesting question.  What is my faith based on?  
Fear ?  (of a worse tomorrow)  
Hope ? (for a better tomorrow) 
Culture ?  (that's just the way we do it around here)  
An experience ?  (Think I really had an experience from divine)  
Superiority/inferiority complex?  (Make a system that favours me and put everyone else down?) 


I can't think of any other basis for having a faith off the top of my head

Option #4. The vast majority of religious people are religious due to cultural inertia. While there are religious converts, they constitute a statistically insignificant minority.

Boru

[Confused-by-christianity]

Ostensibly, it would know the difference - but if coercion is an issue it's an issue no matter what lever is being pulled to coerce.  Promises of pain or reward are equivalent in this regard even if we prefer one over the other and regardless of which is more effective.  A cursory glance at theology might suggest that despite any of us having reservations about fear based coercion and love™, it's the more effective strategy for the promulgation of superstition.

Yeah you don't want people hanging out with you just for the money !!  :-) 
Fear does seem to be a powerful motivator.
Do you think we can outgrow it?  Or look past it?
I read an article recently that talked about disgust.  Pointed out that it was a useful feeling that keeps you safe, but that every culture is different with respect to what they find disgusting.  I think the article wondered if we might be missing out on good experiences if we don't understand our disgust feature and overcome it at times??  Use it properly?? 

That's where we depart from agreement.  I see that fear based theologies have had immense staying power.  Maybe we think they shouldn't...but they do.  We're creatures with an existential reality and a deep well of anxiety related to it - and because of this, betting on fear is never a particularly bad bet.

Yeah fair enough - I can see this. 

My assumptions are;  1)  There is an eternity.  2)  Anything false will eventually unravel.  3)  Anything true will survive.
From that perspective - I'd mean to say that fear based religion has a bit of a falsehood in it and so is destined to unravel eventually.  Although it's fair to consider that a fear based religion can linger around for a long time - so long as it's being fed by our nature.  ???

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Option #4. The vast majority of religious people are religious due to cultural inertia. While there are religious converts, they constitute a statistically insignificant minority.

Boru

Probably true.  Maybe a mixture of all the above to varying degrees per person?

Plus some other things I haven't thought of??

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Yeah you don't want people hanging out with you just for the money !!  :-) 
Fear does seem to be a powerful motivator.
Do you think we can outgrow it?  Or look past it?
I read an article recently that talked about disgust.  Pointed out that it was a useful feeling that keeps you safe, but that every culture is different with respect to what they find disgusting.  I think the article wondered if we might be missing out on good experiences if we don't understand our disgust feature and overcome it at times??  Use it properly?? 

Yeah fair enough - I can see this. 

My assumptions are;  1)  There is an eternity.  2)  Anything false will eventually unravel.  3)  Anything true will survive.
From that perspective - I'd mean to say that fear based religion has a bit of a falsehood in it and so is destined to unravel eventually.  Although it's fair to consider that a fear based religion can linger around for a long time - so long as it's being fed by our nature.  ???

---

Option #4. The vast majority of religious people are religious due to cultural inertia. While there are religious converts, they constitute a statistically insignificant minority.

Boru

Probably true.  Maybe a mixture of all the above to varying degrees per person?

Plus some other things I haven't thought of??

Sure, it could be a mix. But again, that's probably not a significant number of people. Anything other than Option #4 is really just an add-on to #4.

Boru

[Confused-by-christianity]

1.  Fear ?  (of a worse tomorrow)  
2.  Hope ? (for a better tomorrow) 
3.  Culture ?  (that's just the way we do it around here)  
4.  An experience ?  (Think I really had an experience from divine)  
5.  Superiority/inferiority complex?  (Make a system that favours me and put everyone else down?) 

So the experience of the divine is the bedrock of a persons faith?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

1.  Fear ?  (of a worse tomorrow)  
2.  Hope ? (for a better tomorrow) 
3.  Culture ?  (that's just the way we do it around here)  
4.  An experience ?  (Think I really had an experience from divine)  
5.  Superiority/inferiority complex?  (Make a system that favours me and put everyone else down?) 

So the experience of the divine is the bedrock of a persons faith?

My bad. I counted ‘What is my faith based on?’ as #1.

Oops.

Boru

[Confused-by-christianity]

You're more than welcome to share your view. Not that it would hold much water for us atheists.

I think I have a lot to learn.

I believe in God.  First I was born into religion (a very basic introduction).  

Then I was fortunate enough to be raised in a loving home (mother religious father never talked about it).  The style of religion my mother taught me about was big on the kindness, compassion, forgiveness, love aspects.  Not so focused on hell or eternal torment.

Abandoned my faith.  Life went to "hell", in part due to religious fundamentalists being very unpleasant as I saw it, but also lots of things I could have done better and other circumstances.

Came back to faith.  Had what I think are experiences of God (dreams mainly) where He communicated with me a little.

One occasion;
Jesus came to me in a dream (My take on the matter).  
He was kinder than anyone really imagines.  There was a tremendous peace and love that accompanied Him - that I felt.  He was very patient - unbelievably so.  He knew all my bad bits but didn't smack me down for them.  He just wasn't any of the things people say about Him when they talk about cruel, petty, mean etc etc  He also wasn't like the fundamentalists I spent time with - full of wrath, anger or hatred.  

If I had to describe in few words what He was like - I'd say:  Love, peace, Kindness.  Patient, understanding, calm, well spoken.  He was also strong.  Not in a material / physical sense, more like - He said something and reality knit itself around those words and subsequently became the truth. 

The above makes me wonder if people have misunderstood God and are perhaps mistaken about Him.

What about you?  What is your view?

---

---

1.  Fear ?  (of a worse tomorrow)  
2.  Hope ? (for a better tomorrow) 
3.  Culture ?  (that's just the way we do it around here)  
4.  An experience ?  (Think I really had an experience from divine)  
5.  Superiority/inferiority complex?  (Make a system that favours me and put everyone else down?) 

So the experience of the divine is the bedrock of a persons faith?

My bad. I counted ‘What is my faith based on?’ as #1.

Oops.

Boru
[/quote]

haha I was wondering if you meant 3.  Culture.  I could have made it clearer.

[The Grand Nudger]

I think that personal experience is the most compelling rationalization for why a person might believe, but it's no certification of the accuracy of the contents of that experience. That you dreamt of jesus instead of vishnu is entirely cultural. That you imagine a god would be kind or loving or patient or calm or understanding, equally so. Perhaps you've mistaken god for those things based on the expectations your culture manufactured?

Taking the terrible out of god satisfies our ethical impulses, but it erodes one of the legs of the sense of the divine - which is found in dread and tragedy, cruelty and indifference and pain and death. If there's some sacred all then these must find inclusion, else we begin to express our growing inability to believe, fully, in the notion of gods.

It's clear in this example, at least, that your faith (or the contents of your faith described) reduce to what you believe should be true, regardless of what is - and, ultimately, that's the fundamental basis of any religion that people have faith in.

We have come to believe more in our ethical statements, ourselves-in-effect, than we have in the power and being of gods, right down to the faithful. It's not particularly recent - the transition from largely descriptive (and multitudinous) pagan gods to a single declarative god like the abrahamic is the story of monotheism and of man setting out to create the truth he wishes to see instantiated in the world. The imposition of human order to and in contrast to brute facts of nature, which, by turn, fascinate and terrify us. The late pagans called the new monotheists atheists - and not for no reason.

[Silver]

I tried conveying to a theist once that her personal experience with Jesus was as relevant as mine, with having experienced the Almighty Sock Stealer, but she just wasn't buying it. I wonder why.