A fun way to refute hell, heaven, and the Left Behind series

leguru wrote

I must agree with Little Earth Stamper. Also evidence: "And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened , and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Gen3:4-5 etc, etc, etc

So, did God not want the First Parents to grow up? Or was He just telling them there are consequences to our actions? And did you know that grandchildren are God's revenge for not killing our own children when they are infants? :lol:

Well, I don't see exactly how you arrived at those questions but the Adam and Eve story has been told in many different ways. Despite the active voice, I think it is fair to assume that God knew humans would eat from the "tree of knowlege." The price: Awareness. Is a tree aware when it grows? Is a star? Is a dog? They still grow... Because of awareness we can prevent disease, make art, discuss philosophy...but we also (arguably) have become too large to be sustainable to our environment. War, famine, epidemic disease, nuclear weaponry...etc. Our evolution has become active and not passive. However, we are still evolving these Darwinistic instinctual values. Ideally we would evolve principles in their rawest forms (if you've ever seen Waking Life, you might remember the guy towards the beginning talking about this theory) but I don't beleive it to be conceivable. That is why we are "broken."

A difficult part of arguing Christian theology is defining exactly which theology we are arguing about.

As a cynical man, when I talk about flaws in Christian philosophy, I am generally speaking of the judgemental, fundamentalist mindset that was started early in the catholic church's history, was embraced by the Christian empires of Europe, and still survives to this day.

This fire and brimstone philosophy seems to have been the primary force behind Christianity for much of its history, and so that's what I tend to think of.

But there are other philosophies out there, and if someone has an unorthodox reading of the bible, you can sometimes start talking past them.

Stamper,

The majority of Christians, whatever they may say off the top of their head, would point to the Catechism of the Catholic Church to explain their beliefs. Granted, a large sum of them don't know what the hell it teaches, but they are nonetheless Catholics. If you haven't yet, i'd read it. Or if it's too thick, grab a copy of Peter Kreeft's "Catholic Christianity." A nearby orthodox Priest should have several available for free.

Regardless of what individuals have practiced throughout history, the Churches teachings are loving, not hateful. And you'll find that her doctrines of faith and morals have never changed, whereas disciplines have and will (i.e. clerical celibacy, mandatory weekly eucharistic celebration.

During the middle ages, heretics were sometimes punished by being sealed in a large cauldron with some rats. As the cauldron was placed on a fire, the rats would burrow into the victim's in an attempt to escape the heat. This is one small example of the "love" Catholicism brought to the world.

While i won't take your word for it, i don't doubt your description of medieval torture. Sadly, such things were commonplace back then. It is also the product of Catholicism (not Catholics) that those expressions of hatred have started to disappear. The cauldron situation is another example of practice though. It has nothing to do with their theology. I quick read through any authoritative Catholic documents would remove any doubt that heinous tortures are always wrong.

The Catholic church approved every inquisition and every crusade. Up until the Soviet Union, it was the greatest purveyor of violence the world has ever known. The improving situation of human rights in the West is due to the decline of the Catholic church.

What you say is false. The centuries of wars in Asia surely wrought more violence than the inquisitions. I mean, we're talking no more than several thousand deaths because of these things.

While the Church authorities did approve of the individual inquisitions and crusades, it would be impossible to consider and commend the abusive actions of individual soldiers. Bad things happened, but the aspiration of the institution and campaigns were noble.

The Inquisition, which exists today under another moniker, was created to discover which non-Christians were posing as Christians to illegally receive benefits alloted to Christians in an officially Christian State. No one was killed solely because they were say, Jewish, but because they were lying about their identity and breaking the law. Perhaps it was wrong, it still has nothing to do with theology.

The Crusades were a last resort to save Europe from the violent invasion of the Muslims. Without the little success they achieved, there would be no Europe as we know it, or Christianity for that matter. Some may prefer it that way, but violence is intrinsic to orthodox Islam, whereas a Christian would do nothing but love if he were to actually follow the tenants of his religion.

Gee, I can't imagine why anyone would pretend to be a christian if the penalty for not being one was death. And I certainly can't understand why anyone forced to convert to another religion would abandon it at the first opportunity. Islam is definitely a religion of violence, but Christianity is no different. The Old Testament is full of accounts of the Hebrew wiping out entire societies. In any case, the fact that a movement has good intentions does not excuse it for its crimes. I've communists use the same argument to justify their system.

The intention of the Inquisition was to stifle dissent through use of extreme force. I don't consider that to be a noble goal.

At some level, yes, Inquisitors thought they were doing the right thing; They thought heresy truly posed a threat to people's everlasting souls.

But the Nazis on some level felt that Jews were an incredible threat to the free world.

I don't have a problem saying that both groups did horrible things based on stupid philosophies.

(The stupid philosophy in question being the idea that dissent is by nature evil. I'm not saying that Christianity is stupid)

My brother always had this interesting religious puzzle: If Hitler really believed he was doing the right thing, how could god send him to hell?

Another brick in the wall wrote

Gee, I can't imagine why anyone would pretend to be a christian if the penalty for not being one was death. And I certainly can't understand why anyone forced to convert to another religion would abandon it at the first opportunity. Islam is definitely a religion of violence, but Christianity is no different. The Old Testament is full of accounts of the Hebrew wiping out entire societies. In any case, the fact that a movement has good intentions does not excuse it for its crimes. I've communists use the same argument to justify their system.

You are right (except for the claim that Christianity is a 'religion of viloence', that's like calling a child who gets picked on a sociopath), but I think the main point is that at the conception of Christianity it was not a force of malevolence, people made it that way by ignoring intrinsic parts of the theology and therefore they were not following the theology.