Why We Shouldn't Procrastinate Repentance

[Foster Zygote]

About 6 months away from that date, but sure!

I think we need to air some grievances.

 

[Foster Zygote]

Why do I need to repent to a badly drawn character in a sub-par fiction novel?

'Cause he loves you,and if you don't love him back he'll condemn you to eternal agony.

 

[Foster Zygote]

It's also a classic case of the double standard that's applied to God's actions by believers, in that he is thanked for the beneficial ones but never blamed for the harmful ones. If he was responsible for the gulls, he must also have been responsible for the crickets.

From Disenchantment -

Jerry: Did you make cancer?

God: Well, yes. But it came with cigarettes, and people like those.

 

[Norman Alexander]

I think we need to air some grievances.

Indubitably.

 

[Leumas]

There are two main commandments on which hang all the Law and the Prophets: Love the Lord with all your heart, mind, might, and strength; and Love your neighbor as yourself.

Yes... it says that... but... it also says to chop off the hand of your wife without pity and to burn or stone to death your daughter and son and to slaughter your kin and kith and your nearest and dearest if they don't love this god with all the servile obeisance they can muster while prostrating and genuflecting.

It also commands rapine and pillaging and genocide of one's neighbors if one wants to wrench off their lands and to rape their little daughters and to bash the heads of their infants on rocks and to gash open the bellies of their wives and to sell carrion to your neighbors and to make slaves of them and their children.

Even Jesus said that you must hate your kin and kith and leave your dead parents to be carrion and follow him instead... and even to hate your hand and eye and your very own testicles too... not to mention hacking to death "fig trees" that do not give fruit out of season.

I suggest you read the Buybull and the New Tall tales more carefully and without plucking a chocolate chip out of the filth infused muffin and jumping up and down that it was not in fact a lump of feces instead like the rest of the grotesque sewer muffin you picked up.

...Love is the Law.

There are much much more laws commanding hate and sordidness than love...

 

[Leumas]

Like all those children who were put to the sword by the righteous Hebrews when they took the promised land from the people who were already living there?*

*That never actually happened, but it's disturbing how many people think it's an historical account.

It did not happen, but it is happening right now...

It is not history, but it is definitely current affairs now (well, for the last 75 years)... because a brothel owner believed it and made her brigand son believe it too... and also because a brothel dancer believed it even more.... and of course because a desert camel caravans pillager believed it too.

And above all because British Christian Grifters and American Evangelical Mountebanks thought it gospel truth.

Although... tragically and ironically.... the most clinching cause was a megalomaniacal failed artist with an inferiority complex totally believed it as history.

ETA: this book is an eye opener

• Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 years

 

[Leumas]

...commandments ... Love the Lord with all your heart, mind, might, and strength; ...

That is like a deadbeat absentee worthless daddy telling his neglected children that he abandoned them because they did not kiss his feet with all their hearts and minds and strength.

Or like a despotic tyrannical dictator demanding people kiss his mephitic orifices all they can.

Love... is not COMMANDED... it is earned... one who COMMANDS love is not worthy of it.




.

 

[Leumas]

...
We need to repent now to be eligible for God's mercy....

No... that is not what Jesus said...

Jesus makes it very arrantly clear that he loves and cherishes villains who believe in him 99 times more than their victims.

According to Jesus it does not matter whatsoever if a villain had a life-long career of ravaging humanity and rapine and vileness, and left countless victims in his wake agonizing and screeching with pain and steeped in misery without Jesus ever lifting a finger to stop it.

When this villain decides to retire from his career of vitiating humanity, all he has to do is ask Jesus for forgiveness and be baptized, even in the last hour... and he will assuredly be welcomed into the bosom of Jesus with 99 times more joy than his victims... but only if those victims despite Jesus' abject failure to stop their agonies remained believers.... the ones who did not stay duped will burn for eternity.

So no... your above assertion is belied by the very tenets of your religion.






.

 

[Billy Baxter]

Oh hey Billy. I talked to the mormons like you suggested. They didn't seem to have read the bible and weren't at all familiar with it. Is that typical for missionaries?

They're teenagers.

 

[Thor 2]

Why Is It Important Not To Procrastinate Repentance?

It is important that we don't procrastinate repentance because this life is the time given to us to prepare for eternity. We are eternal beings--we will all live forever, either in misery or in happiness, according to whether our works have been good or evil. If we do not improve our time during this "mortal probation," then comes the night "wherein no labor may be performed."

And the same spirit that possesses us, whether the devil or God, will have power to possess us in the afterlife. If our works have been evil, our reward will be spiritual death and endless misery. If our works have been good, our reward will be eternal life and endless happiness.

We need to repent now to be eligible for God's mercy. Mercy is for the penitent. If we don't repent, we are exposed to the whole law of justice and it is as if there has been no redemption made.

What do you say to someone like me, who cannot bring himself to believe in Gods or Devils, or the concept of eternal life?

If your god had some part in the manufacture of my "soul", who's responsibility is it that I turned out this way?

 

[Billy Baxter]

What do you say to someone like me, who cannot bring himself to believe in Gods or Devils, or the concept of eternal life?

Read Alma 32.

 

[Thor 2]

Read Alma 32.

Lots of "It came to pass ...." but why should even start to believe this stuff?

An answer to the second point of my post would be welcome.

 

[Billy Baxter]

What do you say to someone like me, who cannot bring himself to believe in Gods or Devils, or the concept of eternal life?

Again, read Alma 32. That's your answer.

If your god had some part in the manufacture of my "soul", who's responsibility is it that I turned out this way?

You're not the finished product, regardless of who's to blame. You can take or refuse the hand of Deity. Your choice.

 

[Thor 2]

Again, read Alma 32. That's your answer.



You're not the finished product, regardless of who's to blame. You can take or refuse the hand of Deity. Your choice.

I don't have a choice, my mind ("soul" if you like) cannot give any serious consideration, to the concept of your Deity. It is the way I am made - well evolved I think.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

They're teenagers.

Then they shouldn't be out spreading the belief in a book they know very little about, should they?

They were also totally thrown when I pointed out that the trips to and from Jerusalem made by Nephi weren't even remotely possible.

Incidentally we were joined on one call by a couple of elders. They didn't seem to know the Bible either.

 

[Leumas]

Read Alma 32.

WOW... I am utterly... well... amazed by the gullibility and credulity and simplicity of the minds of Mormons... no wonder their chief mountebank could not come up with a less obvious name for his hoax than... Moron-I.

Moron-I is what every Mormon should say they are for buying this pile of bull they call their Book of Mormon

 

[Leumas]

Again, read Alma 32. That's your answer.

Nope.... you... you better read The Foundation by Asimov... it is infinitely better fiction and it is a much better answer for you than that pile of mephitic claptrap allegedly given by a being called Moron-I.

...You can take or refuse the hand of Deity. Your choice.

What deity... which hand... what hand??

At least a snake-oil-peddler has an actual physical bottle of the fakery he is peddling... in the case of deity-oil-peddling there is NOTHING.

Would you buy the snake-oil if the peddler tells you that it is the answer to every ailment but it is your choice to buy and swallow it or not???

Would that sales pitch even move you to consider even for a second to buy into his snake-oil???

 

[Roger Ramjets]

Read Alma 32.

Seems pointless. How is reading a work of fiction supposed to convince anyone that the supernatural exists?

I have read every book in the The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, which was a hard slog in places (Stephen Donaldson can spend a whole chapter describing what each character is thinking before any action takes place). He examines many religious topics including the nature of good and evil, God and Satan, the afterlife, belief and unbelief - all weaved together into a story far more coherent than any religious text.

Yet somehow it didn't convince me that The Land and its Creator exists. Why Not? Simple logic. For a start it's chock full of supernatural stuff which is essential to the narrative. Secondly it describes things that the author could not possibly know, such as what people were thinking and events with no witnesses. Just like the Book of Mormon. The only difference is Stephen Donaldson didn't try to pass it off as fact. But even if he did it wouldn't make any difference. A world that exists only in someone's head is just that. A world full of magic created by a supernatural being is a fantasy by definition - no matter how 'earnest' the story teller may be.

For an illiterate, Joseph Smith did a good job of copying the style of the Bible. It must have been hard work for him and the person who transcribed it - especially for him since he didn't actually have a 'book of golden plates' and so had to fake reading and translating it over the course of several years. We have to give him credit for creating a new religion that has grown to 17 million members in 200 years. But the Book of Mormon is still a work of fiction that is no more relevant than a fantasy novel.

 

[psionl0]

That's just semantic nonsense, because theists like to play word games.

It is very serious stuff in this forum. I have lost count of the number of posters who want me hung, drawn and quartered because I say atheists believe that there are no gods rather than atheists "lack belief" in gods.

 

[psionl0]

Roger Ramjets says that there is no afterlife

Exactly! He doesn't say that he "lacks belief" in an afterlife. He positively declares that there is no afterlife.

Your response here is strange, to suggest that a lack of belief in an afterlife isn't a "lack of belief", and that it precludes him being an atheist, since the definition of atheism is "a lack of belief in a deity", not just "a lack of belief". Even stranger since he was demonstrating "a lack of belief" both in god and an afterlife.

If "lack of belief" is synonymous with "disbelief" then why do so many posters here make so much noise about the distinction?

Which is exactly the position Roger Ramjets was taking in the first place, thus rendering your entire argument moot!

Again, Roger doesn't claim a "lack of belief" in an afterlife. He positively declares that there is NO afterlife. You claim that there is no difference between the two positions (the only way that you can fault my post) but that makes you a minority of one.