Endless Punishment, Fundie style

[tsig]

Dear Giordano,

There's no point in getting bent out of shape about sinning in one's heart. It happens, one prays and moves on.

Yes, I can imagine that we're sinful from the moment we're first given a mind, we have that tendency toward depravity and it quickly forms part of our identity. I imagine further that such babies enter either a very brief Purgatory, a very low-simmering Hell, or a very weakly-lit Heaven.

Cpl Ferro

Adam must have been depraved because he sinned so god made us with the depravity built in.

Not only that but when Adam does what he's designed to do god throws a hissy fit and kicks him out.

When I design something and it doesn't work like I want, I redesign it not curse it but then, I'm only human.

 

[tsig]

I can relate to that fear, as I have number of colleagues approaching retirement age (optional at 65, mandatory at 66). Since some of these colleagues are beyond bewildered and openly frightened at the thought of a future where mid-month will come around without a schedule to tell them where they'll need to be at 11.00 AM on the first of the following month, this gives me an idea of just how threatening and frankly scary it must be to contemplate a Universe without a caring deity to moniter look over us.

The idea that the creator of the known universe could possibly have an interest in what the humans on a given planet do or think surprises me beyond words. I can understand that primitive peoples could imagine such a thing, that they could believe our planet is the beginning and the end of creation.
However, our knowledge has expanded since then, hasn't it?
Why pretend it hasn't?

Small minds live in small universes.

 

[Resume]

My view on human origins, ehcks, is 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Monolith appeared before proto-man and they "fell" into self-consciousness. This created a dynamic in them between order and chaos, between God-like power and progress, and Satanic destruction and animalism. So, I'm not sure we can take the story literally, any more than we can take Noah's Ark literally. The essence is, man has sinful tendencies generally related to below the eyes and ears, below the belt, and man is made in the image of God, able to understand truthful principles of nature and thereby reorder nature to his own advantage.

Cpl Ferro

So he designs a ****** toy, and when that toys acts as designed, he condemns it for eternity. You worship this?

 

[bruto]

I'm saying, dear bruto, that the Church doesn't know, and I don't know, but, that it is conceivable that it might be that way.



No, I would hold that human depravity exists intrinsically, as a function of free will, though not identical to free will itself. Think of it in terms of order versus chaos. The individual has these two tendencies from the beginning, and the moral mission is to purge chaos and retain order. We choose chaos from our earliest mental times, defining us as "sinners".

I don't think we can say with absolute thoroughness a baby understands nothing and can choose nothing. Our science is not sophisticated enough to see past the veil of forgetting that all of us have covering those times in our histories.

As to babies born in coma, brain-damaged, etc, I don't know.

Cpl Ferro

I'm glad to see that you don't know. It does not appear that the Church shares your doubt.

Of course if you want to believe something you will, but I still think it utterly preposterous to suggest that a newborn baby chooses anything, especially choosing to sin. The dodge of suggesting that babies choose sin and chaos and then forget it is (sorry, but it really is) just crazy. If, as the doctrine says, sin is intrinsic, which is to say that sin is a built-in feature of being human, you simply cannot escape the fact that sin is thereby, by definition, independent of what you do. It is something you are. You can bend it and twist it and redefine words all you want, but if, as the doctrine I quoted to start this thread is adhered to, it means that responsibility is paid for without being understood, sin condemned without being committed, and universal damnation the default position imposed by a loving god.

According to the Bible, God created two people and those very first two people sinned. Now we're all damned by default for being people too. Things got really bad, so God flooded the whole world and killed everyone but the holiest, and that did not work either. Back we go to sinning. So then God sent down his own son and got him brutally killed, all supposedly to bear our sins away in the process, and guess what? No dice. We're still damned by default. The God of the Bible is great, and occasionally eloquent, but by god he sure is inefficient.

 

[Frozenwolf150]

If you'd like to go beyond logic into the realm of Intellect and help me understand Nicolaus of Cusa's work better, I'm all eyes.

That doesn't address my objection at all.

If you are invulnerable to understanding the possibility of transcendent Being, [shrug], I'm not a miracle-worker.

There is always something better than us, bigger than us, or more powerful than us. That's no reason to assume it's a god, or specifically your God, or that it wants to receive your prayers and sacrifices like a god. Were we to one day encounter a super powerful being in the flesh somewhere in the vastness of the universe, I think it would make more sense to learn as much from and about it as possible, not get on your knees and start worshiping it.

Yes, I think that if one does not worship God, one worships something else, even if it's something as apparently innocuous as one's wife, or logic and scepticism, or being an Internet wit, or perceiving football. And I think such idolatry has long-term social consequences, especially as it mutates toward more and more un-Biblical forms like witchcraft, heathenism, and the like.

You seem to enjoy shoving thoughts and beliefs into the minds of others, to make them easier to condemn or criticize. Is this related to how you believe that sinners sent to hell are irredeemable because you somehow know what they're thinking?

And, yes, Christians who do bad things are probably not Christians, but, as I said much earlier in this thread, there is ultimately no way to tell this side of the Judgement who is a real Christian and who is not.

You've got to take the good with the bad, otherwise you fall into the "no true Christian" fallacy. This might come as a surprise, but just as there are good and bad people, there are good and bad Christians. The same goes for members of any other faith.

 

[pakeha]

Dear pakeha,

What do the dimensions of the universe have to do with its value compared with beings made in the image of God? As I said, there may be other people in the universe, but they're not going to be any more interesting than us, for that reason of our intrinsic constitution, aforementioned.

Cpl Ferro

I can see your point of view- bigger is not necessarily better!
Still, nothing good ever comes of interpreting reality via myths and legends.
There's a thread on the subject here:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=257401

My view on human origins, ehcks, is 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Monolith appeared before proto-man and they "fell" into self-consciousness. This created a dynamic in them between order and chaos, between God-like power and progress, and Satanic destruction and animalism. So, I'm not sure we can take the story literally, any more than we can take Noah's Ark literally. The essence is, man has sinful tendencies generally related to below the eyes and ears, below the belt, and man is made in the image of God, able to understand truthful principles of nature and thereby reorder nature to his own advantage.

Cpl Ferro

I can see you've thought a lot about this, Cpl Ferro.
What I have to wonder is why anyone would believe we're created in the image of any deity, let alone the creator of the universe.

 

[turingtest]

This life's dim windows of the soul
Distorts the heavens from pole to pole
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not through, the eye
--William Blake

Cpl Ferro

Meh- needs more cowbell.

 

[Donn]

Don't fear the reaper

 

[tsig]

Don't fear the reaper

True, it's not that grim:


http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...=IFg5N1RlmVSx0hHNsNP6AQ&bvm=bv.66330100,d.b2U

 

[Donn]

If at first you don't suck seed, try drier grain. *





* Old My Word punchline.

 

[CplFerro]

So he designs a ****** toy, and when that toys acts as designed, he condemns it for eternity. You worship this?

Or, Resume, He designed a friend, and gave that friend the ability to choose good or evil, and gave that friend many chances to choose good and hang out forever in His marvellous pad, and when that friend refuses to party cool, He finally turns His back on him and locks the door.

Cpl Ferro

 

[CplFerro]

I can see your point of view- bigger is not necessarily better!
Still, nothing good ever comes of interpreting reality via myths and legends.
There's a thread on the subject here:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=257401

I can see you've thought a lot about this, Cpl Ferro.
What I have to wonder is why anyone would believe we're created in the image of any deity, let alone the creator of the universe.

Thanks for the link, pakeha,

I believe we are made in God's image, because we are capable of attaining the power of God in terms of reordering Creation. Not the full power, not right yet, but, in the course of time, that's what we can do--provided we don't blow ourselves up first.

Cpl Ferro

 

[Resume]

. . . and when that friend refuses to party cool, He finally turns His back on him and locks the door.

Cpl Ferro

Almost as if "He" doesn't/never existed. Works for me.

 

[CplFerro]

If you'd like to go beyond logic into the realm of Intellect and help me understand Nicolaus of Cusa's work better, I'm all eyes.

That doesn't address my objection at all.

Nor are you addressing my intent at all, Frozenwolf.

If you are invulnerable to understanding the possibility of transcendent Being, [shrug], I'm not a miracle-worker.

There is always something better than us, bigger than us, or more powerful than us. That's no reason to assume it's a god, or specifically your God, or that it wants to receive your prayers and sacrifices like a god. Were we to one day encounter a super powerful being in the flesh somewhere in the vastness of the universe, I think it would make more sense to learn as much from and about it as possible, not get on your knees and start worshiping it.

I agree, because such a being would still be a created entity and not the Creator.

Yes, I think that if one does not worship God, one worships something else, even if it's something as apparently innocuous as one's wife, or logic and scepticism, or being an Internet wit, or perceiving football. And I think such idolatry has long-term social consequences, especially as it mutates toward more and more un-Biblical forms like witchcraft, heathenism, and the like.

You seem to enjoy shoving thoughts and beliefs into the minds of others, to make them easier to condemn or criticize. Is this related to how you believe that sinners sent to hell are irredeemable because you somehow know what they're thinking?

They're irredeemable if God judges them to be irredeemable. And, again, you ignore my point about large-scale societal descent. Mannassa may yet live again.

And, yes, Christians who do bad things are probably not Christians, but, as I said much earlier in this thread, there is ultimately no way to tell this side of the Judgement who is a real Christian and who is not.

You've got to take the good with the bad, otherwise you fall into the "no true Christian" fallacy. This might come as a surprise, but just as there are good and bad people, there are good and bad Christians. The same goes for members of any other faith.

All Christians are sinners, but, a true Christian is one who has oriented his heart toward Christ and thus become a new man. I think it entirely possible for someone to fake this, to walk and talk as though, but aren't. Wouldn't you agree? Or is everyone who says, “I'm a Christian!” a Christian, to you?

Cpl Ferro

 

[pakeha]

Thanks for the link, pakeha,

I believe we are made in God's image, because we are capable of attaining the power of God in terms of reordering Creation. Not the full power, not right yet, but, in the course of time, that's what we can do--provided we don't blow ourselves up first.

Cpl Ferro

We're made in a specific divinity's image because we're getting close to to what a myth cycle claims that divinity can do?

I wish the greatest threat to our species was the possibility of blowing ourselves up.

 

[CplFerro]

I'm glad to see that you don't know. It does not appear that the Church shares your doubt.

Of course if you want to believe something you will, but I still think it utterly preposterous to suggest that a newborn baby chooses anything, especially choosing to sin. The dodge of suggesting that babies choose sin and chaos and then forget it is (sorry, but it really is) just crazy. If, as the doctrine says, sin is intrinsic, which is to say that sin is a built-in feature of being human, you simply cannot escape the fact that sin is thereby, by definition, independent of what you do. It is something you are. You can bend it and twist it and redefine words all you want, but if, as the doctrine I quoted to start this thread is adhered to, it means that responsibility is paid for without being understood, sin condemned without being committed, and universal damnation the default position imposed by a loving god.

According to the Bible, God created two people and those very first two people sinned. Now we're all damned by default for being people too. Things got really bad, so God flooded the whole world and killed everyone but the holiest, and that did not work either. Back we go to sinning. So then God sent down his own son and got him brutally killed, all supposedly to bear our sins away in the process, and guess what? No dice. We're still damned by default. The God of the Bible is great, and occasionally eloquent, but by god he sure is inefficient.

Dear bruto,

I don't understand your objection to Christ's sacrifice. He offered himself as the final sacrifice to God, which was accepted, meaning that all who align themselves with his sacrifice have their sins atoned for. Christ's death did not Hoover away all sin for all time, but, opened a door for sinners to enter the Kingdom.

Also, do you know the Church's official position on comatose babies? I don't.

Cpl Ferro

 

[abaddon]

Or, Resume, He designed a friend, and gave that friend the ability to choose good or evil, and gave that friend many chances to choose good and hang out forever in His marvellous pad, and when that friend refuses to party cool, He finally turns His back on him and locks the door.

Cpl Ferro

Nope, that is not what is described by your myth at all. According to your myth, your Adam and Eve had no knowledge at all of good or evil until they ate from the tree. You know, the one that your heartless bastage of a god put right beside them because he is just that nice a guy.

 

[abaddon]

Dear bruto,

I don't understand your objection to Christ's sacrifice. He offered himself as the final sacrifice to God, which was accepted, meaning that all who align themselves with his sacrifice have their sins atoned for. Christ's death did not Hoover away all sin for all time, but, opened a door for sinners to enter the Kingdom.

Also, do you know the Church's official position on comatose babies? I don't.

Cpl Ferro

Yup. The official position is "Duck and cover" because like all god botherers, they don't like the hard questions.

Disregard them, what is YOUR position?

 

[tsig]

Dear bruto,

I don't understand your objection to Christ's sacrifice. He offered himself as the final sacrifice to God, which was accepted, meaning that all who align themselves with his sacrifice have their sins atoned for. Christ's death did not Hoover away all sin for all time, but, opened a door for sinners to enter the Kingdom.

Also, do you know the Church's official position on comatose babies? I don't.

Cpl Ferro

If Jesus opened the door did anyone before he died get to heaven?

 

[CplFerro]

Yup. The official position is "Duck and cover" because like all god botherers, they don't like the hard questions.

Disregard them, what is YOUR position?

My position, abaddon, is that I don't know.

If I had to guess, I'd say the scheme appears to be largely no pain, no gain, so that someone who didn't exert themselves in the Christian life but had the proper desire, would be saved but left at the lower level of Heaven, as it were.

Any other hard questions to needle me with?

Cpl Ferro