Hell Is Real And Souls Go There

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
721

[quote]MattyG35 wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:
By the way, Pat, show me all of these contemporary accounts. Show me ten people who wrote in the time of Jesus to say what they had seen. Show me 5.[/quote]

To play Devils Advocate, you could say that about almost anything historically couldn’t you? For example, how do we know Alexander the Great even existed? Show me 5 people who witnessed his feats. show me 1.

[/quote]

Yes, absolutely.

But, then, that a conquering king existed requires less proof, being as it is rather commonplace throughout history, than that a man walked atop the sea.[/quote]

True, but it still requires a certain amount of faith though. [/quote]

Dude, totally not equivalent/comparable.
No one is claiming Alexander as the son of God, and that he did supernatural things, unlike Jesus.[/quote]

It certainly is comparable. No one alive today witnessed his feats. Therefore, a certain level of faith is required to beleive he conquered the known world by age, what, 30. You have to have faith/believe written works about his life & accomplishments.

Alexander the Great many not have existed at all. Maybe he’s a made up figure used to scare the enemies of Macedon (Sp?).

722

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:
By the way, Pat, show me all of these contemporary accounts. Show me ten people who wrote in the time of Jesus to say what they had seen. Show me 5.[/quote]

To play Devils Advocate, you could say that about almost anything historically couldn’t you? For example, how do we know Alexander the Great even existed? Show me 5 people who witnessed his feats. show me 1.

[/quote]

Yes, absolutely.

But, then, that a conquering king existed requires less proof, being as it is rather commonplace throughout history, than that a man walked atop the sea.[/quote]

True, but it still requires a certain amount of faith though. [/quote]

Indeed, everything requires a certain amount of faith.

The thing is to figure out what we are, and what we are not, justified in believing.

It takes a far more evidence than there is to put “walking on water” in the former column.[/quote]

I understand your point of view.

723

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

Good and evil is faith-based ‘superstition.’ It gives deists/theists room at the big boy table, therefore, you’ll see the concepts rejected by some atheist circles.

[/quote]

This. And the atheists who don’t admit this are simply deceiving themselves, or not following things through to their logical ends.[/quote]

The problem of course is that this atheistic position leads to stringent moral relativism, which is self-defeating and incoherent. You cannot reject the necessary existence of good and evil. Even Hitchens agrees with that much. I would view with extreme distaste and criticism any circle that would disavow the existence of the two.[/quote]

Edit: nevermind. Wrote something that I liked so much I decided to hold onto it, in case I can get paid to write it somewhereabouts.

Anyway, I agree completely.
[/quote]

Hahaha. If you can get paid, by all means get your money.

724

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:
By the way, Pat, show me all of these contemporary accounts. Show me ten people who wrote in the time of Jesus to say what they had seen. Show me 5.[/quote]

To play Devils Advocate, you could say that about almost anything historically couldn’t you? For example, how do we know Alexander the Great even existed? Show me 5 people who witnessed his feats. show me 1.

[/quote]

Yes, absolutely.

But, then, that a conquering king existed requires less proof, being as it is rather commonplace throughout history, than that a man walked atop the sea.[/quote]

True, but it still requires a certain amount of faith though. [/quote]

Indeed, everything requires a certain amount of faith.

The thing is to figure out what we are, and what we are not, justified in believing.

It takes a far more evidence than there is to put “walking on water” in the former column.[/quote]

The question is, is someone justified in believing in a personal God?

And by that I mean, is it rational? Not, do we like it or agree with that belief.

725

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

Good and evil is faith-based ‘superstition.’ It gives deists/theists room at the big boy table, therefore, you’ll see the concepts rejected by some atheist circles.

[/quote]

This. And the atheists who don’t admit this are simply deceiving themselves, or not following things through to their logical ends.[/quote]

Yeah. Kind of a hardcore scientism that seems to be part of new atheism. Can’t observe, measure, and reproduce a deity, or “good” and “evil.” Therefore, can’t maintain belief in certain actions being objectively evil, so as not to allow the deist/theists a chair at the table.

Dunno.

Another puzzling thing, “Religion is a waste.” If the way we live does not have an intelligent and objective meaning/purpose, then no choice of being is a “waste.” Or, “wrong.” That’s, like, totally your opinion, man. If a rogue celestial body wiped us out tomorrow, the universe wouldn’t care that the physicist died along with the Catholic monk. If there is no judge after death to determine if one lived life ‘wrong…’ own that belief. Being religious can not be a “waste of a life” in such a world view.

726

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

Good and evil is faith-based ‘superstition.’ It gives deists/theists room at the big boy table, therefore, you’ll see the concepts rejected by some atheist circles.

[/quote]

This. And the atheists who don’t admit this are simply deceiving themselves, or not following things through to their logical ends.[/quote]

The problem of course is that this atheistic position leads to stringent moral relativism, which is self-defeating and incoherent. You cannot reject the necessary existence of good and evil. Even Hitchens agrees with that much. I would view with extreme distaste and criticism any circle that would disavow the existence of the two.[/quote]

Edit: nevermind. Wrote something that I liked so much I decided to hold onto it, in case I can get paid to write it somewhereabouts.

Anyway, I agree completely.
[/quote]

Hahaha. If you can get paid, by all means get your money.

[/quote]

Haha, well we’ll see. I tend to use this board as a testing ground for ideas that I’d like to write about, and sometimes I write something I really, really like and then have to go in and edit it before anybody quotes it and I lose it forever.

727

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

Good and evil is faith-based ‘superstition.’ It gives deists/theists room at the big boy table, therefore, you’ll see the concepts rejected by some atheist circles.

[/quote]

This. And the atheists who don’t admit this are simply deceiving themselves, or not following things through to their logical ends.[/quote]

Yeah. Kind of a hardcore scientism that seems to be part of new atheism. Can’t observe, measure, and reproduce a deity, or “good” and “evil.” Therefore, can’t maintain belief in certain actions being objectively evil, so as not to allow the deist/theists a chair at the table.

Dunno.

Another puzzling thing, “Religion is a waste.” If the way we live does not have an intelligent and objective meaning/purpose, then no choice of being is a “waste.” Or, “wrong.” That’s, like, totally your opinion, man. If a rogue celestial body wiped us out tomorrow, the universe wouldn’t care that the physicist died along with the Catholic monk. If there is no judge after death to determine if one lived life ‘wrong…’ own that belief. Being religious can not be a “waste of a life” in such a world view.
[/quote]

Agreed, and big props for the Lebowski quote.

728

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

The question is, is someone justified in believing in a personal God?

And by that I mean, is it rational? Not, do we like it or agree with that belief.[/quote]

I do not believe in a personal God, but I don’t think it’s irrational to consider it a possibility. No more irrational, I suppose, than thinking the big bang to have been a spontaneous and inevitable consequence of the laws of gravity.

729

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

The question is, is someone justified in believing in a personal God?

And by that I mean, is it rational? Not, do we like it or agree with that belief.[/quote]

I do not believe in a personal God, but I don’t think it’s irrational to consider it a possibility. No more irrational, I suppose, than thinking the big bang to have been a spontaneous and inevitable consequence of the laws of gravity.[/quote]

That’s what I was really getting at, not your belief system. You have to be able to answer the question “is it rational for a person, any person, to believe in God” rather than just considering the possibility though lol.

730

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

The question is, is someone justified in believing in a personal God?

And by that I mean, is it rational? Not, do we like it or agree with that belief.[/quote]

I do not believe in a personal God, but I don’t think it’s irrational to consider it a possibility. No more irrational, I suppose, than thinking the big bang to have been a spontaneous and inevitable consequence of the laws of gravity.[/quote]

I do appreciate your honesty. I know you are not one, but many atheists will call me crazy, stupid, illogical for my beliefs. They are mine, and yes I will share with others if asked, and sometimes if not asked. Only if it is appropriate though.

731

[quote]dmaddox wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

The question is, is someone justified in believing in a personal God?

And by that I mean, is it rational? Not, do we like it or agree with that belief.[/quote]

I do not believe in a personal God, but I don’t think it’s irrational to consider it a possibility. No more irrational, I suppose, than thinking the big bang to have been a spontaneous and inevitable consequence of the laws of gravity.[/quote]

I do appreciate your honesty. I know you are not one, but many atheists will call me crazy, stupid, illogical for my beliefs. They are mine, and yes I will share with others if asked, and sometimes if not asked. Only if it is appropriate though.
[/quote]

I certainly don’t intend offence with anything I say here, by the way. It is, of course, kind of offensive for one person to say that another’s core beliefs are unjustified, or unreasonable. But, this is PWI, and those are pretty much sweet nothings compared to the kinds of things that are tossed around hereabouts.

732

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

The question is, is someone justified in believing in a personal God?

And by that I mean, is it rational? Not, do we like it or agree with that belief.[/quote]

I do not believe in a personal God, but I don’t think it’s irrational to consider it a possibility. No more irrational, I suppose, than thinking the big bang to have been a spontaneous and inevitable consequence of the laws of gravity.[/quote]

That’s what I was really getting at, not your belief system. You have to be able to answer the question “is it rational for a person, any person, to believe in God” rather than just considering the possibility though lol. [/quote]

Lol, well, my position on these things is that, belief and suspicion aside, the only rational ultimate conclusion is, “I cannot know.”

Unless God has talked to you in such a way that you can be sure that you were neither dreaming nor hallucinating.

733

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]dmaddox wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

The question is, is someone justified in believing in a personal God?

And by that I mean, is it rational? Not, do we like it or agree with that belief.[/quote]

I do not believe in a personal God, but I don’t think it’s irrational to consider it a possibility. No more irrational, I suppose, than thinking the big bang to have been a spontaneous and inevitable consequence of the laws of gravity.[/quote]

I do appreciate your honesty. I know you are not one, but many atheists will call me crazy, stupid, illogical for my beliefs. They are mine, and yes I will share with others if asked, and sometimes if not asked. Only if it is appropriate though.
[/quote]

I certainly don’t intend offence with anything I say here, by the way. It is, of course, kind of offensive for one person to say that another’s core beliefs are unjustified, or unreasonable. But, this is PWI, and those are pretty much sweet nothings compared to the kinds of things that are tossed around hereabouts.[/quote]

My statement was not directed at you.

735

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

More simply, my claim is this: that it’s written that it happened is not sufficient proof for a reasonable person to believe that a man rose from the dead three days after his murder.

[/quote]

Is child rape evil?

Prove to me “evil” so that this thing then may indeed fall within it.
[/quote]

I cannot, and neither can anybody else.

Being what I call an agnostic theist, however, I have the possibility of an objective morality. That I cannot prove it to you or anybody else is a universal feature of life on this planet, not a deficiency in my worldview. Because you, in fact, can’t prove a single this to me about evil either.[/quote]

I can prove it’s evil. It causes grievous harm to another person such as yourself. Causing grievous harm to those who are such as yourself is evil.[/quote]

You haven’t proved anything, you’ve just reduced the proposition to a more general axiom. Prove that the axiom is correct. And when you do that, you’ll have another axiom. Prove that that one is correct. And then keep going. It won’t end.[/quote]

Well the problem is that the ‘good’ and ‘evil’ cannot be technically defined. We can only understand by examples of it. We know that symptoms of evil are the willful causing of harm to a sentient being and the victim is harmed by it. Naturally one expects a lot of scenarios where there is grey area, but child rape is not one of them. It is a wilful act of grievous harm. And because such harm was done. Harm is a necessary faction of evil and where there is grievous harm, evil is all but certain.
Now addressing the metaethical aspects of good and evil requires a jaunt down the road of a particular causal chain and it requires a litany of agreed upon definitions to even have the conversation. It’s why these types of things are dealt with over months and not minutes in a forum. It’s almost impossible to have the conversation.

As a conscious sentient being we intuitively know that performing an action that causes grievous harm to oneself or others is an act of evil. It’s the grievous nature of child rape that leaves no doubt.

The reason why relativity fails is that the consensus it requires leaves out the vote of the victim. And it naturally pits the value of the victim as lesser than that of the propagator or society at large without due cause for establishing either the heightened value of the perpetrator or the lesser value of the victim.
So long as there is a victim, moral relativity fails.

736

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

More simply, my claim is this: that it’s written that it happened is not sufficient proof for a reasonable person to believe that a man rose from the dead three days after his murder.

[/quote]

Is child rape evil?

Prove to me “evil” so that this thing then may indeed fall within it.
[/quote]

I cannot, and neither can anybody else.

Being what I call an agnostic theist, however, I have the possibility of an objective morality. That I cannot prove it to you or anybody else is a universal feature of life on this planet, not a deficiency in my worldview. Because you, in fact, can’t prove a single this to me about evil either.[/quote]

I can prove it’s evil. It causes grievous harm to another person such as yourself. Causing grievous harm to those who are such as yourself is evil.[/quote]

I’ll have to disagree, pat. Unless you base it on faith that is no less, well, faithful than believing in a deity.

Killing another human being–for any reason–is not evil. It is no more evil than the lion devouring the cubs of the male he’s run off. It’s simply risk vs reward.

If might is on your side, to fight off the lion, ok. If it’s on his, oh well.

Good and evil is faith-based ‘superstition.’ It gives deists/theists room at the big boy table, therefore, you’ll see the concepts rejected by some atheist circles.

[/quote]

Actually, if you follow the Kantian Moral Imperative, it does not rely on superstition at all, it’s pretty logical path that leads to a logical conclusion. The reason atheists tend to reject the suppositions is to cut off the logical ties right at the result rather than fail at the other end of the logical spectrum.
What it is, is a trick. They use the example of imposed societal norms as an example of a relativistic imposed morality. But such things fail as there is a distinction between a societal norm and a truly evil act. Violating a societal norm on it’s own has no real victims. If you violate a strictly societal norm that has no real basis in morality, outside prying eyes. No one is harmed. Performing an evil act, outside the view of prying eyes is still an evil act and there is still a victim of that act.

Again, it doesn’t work because it requires the justification of horrifically evil acts based on social acceptability, but it does not take into account the victim. The suffering of the victim is the tipper of the scales against relativism. You have to devalue the victim and it has to be an arbitrary devaluation. I.E. based on the fact that you have become the victim, your view on the matter does not count. The problem is there is no justification or logical reason by which this can be done and maintain continuity.

It boils down to this, relativism requires the relativist to justify the most evil of things purely on the basis of acceptability. It cannot legitimately be done; Not without cringe worth dishonesty.

737

[quote]smh_23 wrote:
By the way, Pat, show me all of these contemporary accounts. Show me ten people who wrote in the time of Jesus to say what they had seen. Show me 5.[/quote]

Show you all of these contemporary accounts? Of what? Besides the fact that I don’t think it’s incumbent on me to do so.

St. Peter, St. James and St. John are three that I can think off off the top of my head from biblical times. And of course St. Paul had remarkable encounters which he writes about, but of a different nature of the other three. Of modern folks who have had miraculous encounters I can think of two strong cases off the top of my head which would be Padre Pio and Mother Teresa. Of the two the former had the more outwardly visible stigmata that was seen by thousands of people. I think if you really investigated this and other phenomena and claims that each and every person was full of shit.

738

[quote]MattyG35 wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:
By the way, Pat, show me all of these contemporary accounts. Show me ten people who wrote in the time of Jesus to say what they had seen. Show me 5.[/quote]

To play Devils Advocate, you could say that about almost anything historically couldn’t you? For example, how do we know Alexander the Great even existed? Show me 5 people who witnessed his feats. show me 1.

[/quote]

Yes, absolutely.

But, then, that a conquering king existed requires less proof, being as it is rather commonplace throughout history, than that a man walked atop the sea.[/quote]

True, but it still requires a certain amount of faith though. [/quote]

Dude, totally not equivalent/comparable.
No one is claiming Alexander as the son of God, and that he did supernatural things, unlike Jesus.[/quote]

It is comparable. We only know that things in the past happened because people have told us. Are we not to be told of the things that are also ‘supernatural’ in nature? Are we only supposed to have accounts of things that fit in the little box of ‘believable’ events that square only with what we believe to be physically possible?
If you were truly curious about such things, I would imagine you would look into yourselves rather than require some people on a forum to ‘prove’ it to you.
You have several records of the event, what else do you require?

739

Where in Scripture can we find other people getting Stigmata, or the prediction
in Scripture this phenomenon would occur with other people in the future?

And what is the very best air-tight argument in your arsenal that would justify this as
being extra-Biblically legit if not Scriptural?..where is this stuff in the Bible?
Where can we find it in there?

740

[quote]pat wrote:

It is comparable. We only know that things in the past happened because people have told us. [/quote]

But we generally parse what they say for the believable stuff.

We don’t teach our children that the gods intervened at Delphi during the Persian War, despite the fact the Herodotus says as much.

The simple point, and it is very simple, is that a claim that is incredible, and I use the term literally, must be proved with incredibly solid evidence. No such evidence exists for these things you’re talking about. Your criteria–“people said so, they weren’t liars as far as I know”–are far, far, far too lax, and I sort of suspect that you know this.

  1. First of all, for almost all of those people, you have but one document by which to know them–the one in question–meaning that you have no real reason to believe them to be liars or not. You say that they were truthful elsewhere in their life, but you cannot possibly know this in any kind of comprehensive or meaningful way. Yes, if your wife came home to you and told you she’d seen a flying, singing loaf of bread, and you’ve known your wife for years and years to be an honest and serious person, then you might conclude that she is probably not lying per-se (I’d go with fever delirium or something). But a guy who lived millennia in the past and wrote a few thousands words? No, you don’t know him anything close to well enough to vouch for his trustworthiness, and, in fact, given the rate at which people were making things up about gods in those days, you have great reason to doubt him.

  2. I could bring you a thousand claims by tonight which exactly meet the criteria by which you’ve chosen to accept the resurrection of Jesus. There will be magic, and flying, and there will be mountains moving, and Hindu gods in sky-chariots. There will be Zeus and Hera and there will be Chinese river gods and there will be little anthropomorphic foxes making mischief and there will be wolves chasing the sun and moon through the sky. There will be gnosis and the demiurge and there will be Asgard and Yggdrasil and Parinirvana [b]and you will have to accept all of these things with as much faith and fervor as you hold up to Christianity.[/b]

The simple fact, Pat, is that nobody thinks the testaments constitute sufficient proof of Christianity. Of course they don’t–a bunch of words, written thousands of years ago, about miracles and gods? Such stories are a dime a dozen–a penny a score, even, in human history. Faith is required, and real faith, not “I believe that my eyes aren’t tricking me and that I’m not living in a hallucination caused by a trickster demon” faith, and not “I believe there was a man called Thomas Jefferson” faith either.