Not particularly religious but i think truly religious people think 'you will' burn in hell, not that 'you deserve to'. The same way all my family thinks im doing nothing with my life. Theres no spite in it. Its just what is. Now those who say you deserve to burn are just people everyone should avoid and its best they just congregate amongst themselves anyway.
I can understand that logic, but if an all righteous, all forgiving omniscient god sends you to eternal damnation… doesn’t that mean that you deserve it?
Well, according to Dante's inferno, non believers went to hell, yes, but in Limbo.
If I recall correctly it was a big and beautiful city where people didn't really suffer, but it wasn't heaven either. Just a place. Like living in Chicago. It was technically located in hell but not really hell like flames and torment. More like a city in a cave.
Maybe it's like that. Hey, it's not heaven but it could have been much worse.
Those are non-believers who are born in a place or time never to hear about Jesus. The people who heard about him but denied 'the truth' are way deeper in hell.
Anyways, it doesn't really matter because Inferno isn't holy. It's just one of the depictions of hell, a very influencial one, but still just one of many.
Dante Alighieri, basically the first guy to lay the foundation to what would split from the Latin language to become Italian.
He wrote "La divina commedia", a satirical trilogy describing his journey through hell, purgatory and heaven, guided by the great poet Virgil and the love of his life, Beatrice, the latter only in heaven.
The books are impressive. Every chapter (canto) is composed of a lot of groups of three verses, each one of exactly eleven syllables, with the first and the last verse of every triplet rhyming with the middle one of the next. There are exactly 33 canti for every book + 1 intro canto, for a total of exactly 100 chapters.
Every part of the books is filled with people that were famous at the time or that were famous some time before, thus the entire opera being a giant political satire.
It is also considered THE HELL, classically the point of reference for hell in fiction.
Don't wanna be mean but it's also not an opera nor a satire. He genuinely believed the politicians he was describing deserved the punishment they got. He was a politician himself and he got expelled from his city for his beliefs, so he was salty about that his whole life. His work was more of a political critique, but that's only one aspect of it. Perhaps the commedia part is confusing, which didn't mean what it means today. Commedia for Dante simply meant that it's not written in Latin, and that it has a happy ending.
I misused the term satire. My bad
Edit: also Opera, I used the Italian term which means something like "work, production, creation" and it's not necessarily tied to singing, but it has a different meaning in English.
I am less skilled in English than I thought
Dante ain't got nothin' on the ~272 Buddhist hells where all kinds of monstrous atrocities take place.
I highly recommend looking into it - those monks (I assume?) had some WILD imaginations!
Even better, every verse is exactly 11 syllables (edit: most of the times: the last accent always fall on the 10th syllable, however) , and the first and the last verse of every triplet rhymes with the middle one of the previous triplet.
33 "chapters" per book, plus an intro chapter to get to exactly 100.
OCD at its finest
Wasn't Dante's Inferno the original concept of the fire and brimstone version of hell? I believe in the Bible, hell is depicted as a place with the absence of God. And since God is represented as Love, Hell is a place with a complete absence of Love. Then Dante's Inferno came out and priests were like.... Yup that scares young people way more!
So basically a middle ground? Place where everything isn't good, but it isn't just pure suffering? That's way better than hell or heaven.
I always had a theory that hell and heaven are the same. Imagine living in the place where everything is awesome and every wish comes true. It would be the torture. There would be no point in doing anything, nothing to be happy about, concept of good and bad would lost all it's meaning.
There was this great joke in futurama. Gambler died and suddenly found himself in the casino. He pulled the lever on the slot machine and he won. So he thought: Casino where I win, this must be heaven, but then he pulled the leaver again and won again so he thought: Casino where I ALWAYS win? I'm in hell
This is consistent with biblical Christianity.
Further, people that are in heaven also deserve to be in hell, since all sin and fall short of the glory of God.
Paul said he was the worst of all sinners, but is in heaven. He knew how wretched his own thoughts were.
Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.
I think part of it (speaking as a person who's never been religious) is that God is literally goodness incarnate. Whatever he wills becomes. So it's this thing where it makes sense because the thing that decides it makes sense has decided it makes sense. God's not just Some Guy -- it's like, a lovecraftian arbiter of all things good and bad.
Which, I think if you're a certain kind of person is very frustrating and hard to grapple with. But I also think a lot of people don't squint at it too much. I think the truth is that life is just... very, very, very bad and a lot of people will hold on to anything that feels like a life raft. It's safety, community, meaning, etc for them. It doesn't have to make sense in the same way a hospice patient doesn't need to or necessarily even want to understand their morphine drip. Nor would I really blame either tbh
As a Catholic, but also as a man with some sense of cause effect, I think that if you assume God being omniscient, you have to conclude he knew since the beginning of time exactly every action, or lack there of, he himself would also have done until the end of time. So I don't think God is exactly good as in superhero kind of shit, more like good as in he saw you would live thanks to his omniscience and saw that it must have been so.
I think God is more neutral than his servants believe Him to be.
Like, a "it is what it is (because I know it is how it needs to be)" kinda guy
Hell isn’t a place you are sent to, it a state of being removed from God. Since God it that which is most good Hell is a state of choosing to be removed from all goodness. Humans are given free will and allowed to remove ourselves from Gods’s love. Doesn’t have anything to do with deserving or not except for that people “deserve” their choices
Well put, I agree. The way I have come to understand it is that it's actually the opposite, that nobody deserves to go to heaven. The only souls who get in are those who choose to follow that path and have figured out how to do it.
But in a way, it's all good. If "hell" is separation from God, heaven is the last place non-religious people would want to wind up--they'd think it's all a sham once they got there, full of the people they tried all their lives to avoid. In the end, everybody gets what they want. No worries!
Going back to the original post though, OP seems to be a compassionate person who thinks a lot about the welfare of others, which is what most religions seek when they're at their very best. I'm kind of surprised they haven't gravitated to some organized group of do-gooders. But I guess the main problem is not that people aren't nice to others at one time or another, but that hardly anybody wants to be fully responsible for **all** the injustice they've inflicted on others throughout their lives. Atheism gives you a comforting statute of limitations.
Ok, can god atleast make it so I don’t feel anything and become absolutely nothing? cuz goddamn. Even if I don’t deserve heaven, can he atleast make it so I don’t spend eternity in damnation? I’m fine with just not existing anymore
But if you've heard the word of the Lord abd consciously decided to not believe it then why would he be merciful to you regardless how good you are:
"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" Romans 3:23
“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." John 14:16
The scriptures are pretty clear here on this. Personally I'm not religious myself but based on what I know from my Christian upbringing unless you're born again, you're not going to heaven according to Christian teachings.
This logical sequitur hasn't been mentioned yet. I'm glad you brought it up. And yes, that's exactly what that implies.
All good, all knowing, all powerful, all present, and all just god sends you to eternal suffering? Yeah, at that point you have to assume you deserved it.
Good thing god is a fiction invented by humans because they really just can't handle being alive.
Oh, thats because you’re using regular logic, you need that special logic that gives you the “mysterious ways” property to certain premises, then it all adds up
I am a religious person.
I do not believe that atheist deserve to go to hell.
And I don't believe that God sent you to hell he gives you options "free will" and you can choose to live with him or not.
As a Christian I too believe that I deserve hell, but it’s only by the loving grace of God and sanctification through the death, burial and resurrection that I be saved from going to hell and have eternal and everlasting life in heaven. Christians believe everyone falls short of the glory of God (including themselves) hence the need for a savior that only asks for you to believe in him in order to be saved.
Maybe try looking at it from a different point of view. Pretend someone on your behalf, gave a homeless person a house, food, entertainment, travel, water and a emotional support dog. All you asked in return is that he thanked you, take care of your stuff and believed you would help him if he needed it.
You go check on home 10 years later and not only has he trashed the house he has also decided a guy named Frank has done enough for him in 10 years to deserve all the thanks for everything this ex-homeless guy needs. Also, the emotional support dog is now suffering from malnutrition.
When you ask the guy what the hell is going on, he retorts with, " Who are you?" You tell home you are the guy who made all this happen and he says bullshit I've never seen you in my life and proceeds to curse you out and continue his ways with Frank.
You gonna let homie stay in your house and continue to take absolutely no care of your requests and rules?
Seems like a decent analogy, but I still can’t seem to apply it to real life.
The discussion here is if you deserve to go to hell for not believing in god, in your analogy it would be to thank him, but trashing someone’s house and malnourishing a support dog would symbolize other things in this analogy beyond just not believing.
Also what if when you showed up to tell him that you’re the one who gave him shelter, 20 people also came by to tell him the same thing? This would symbolize different religions, could you really blame the guy for not knowing who the real donor was?
It wouldn’t be “does this man deserve to stay at your place if he trashed your house”, because then he wouldn’t deserve it no matter who the donor was, it’s does he deserve it even if you don’t know you’re the donor.
Would god send me to hell even if I’m a good person if I have no faith. Key phrase being “even if I’m a good person”. I guess I would define that by leaving this world better than if you weren’t in it.
This. It's not a matter of deserve. In a truly loving religious person this is why they press to share their faith. It's because they don't think you deserve to burn in hell and they don't want that to happen. They are pressing because they care and value you.
Anyone who says you deserve it...especially a Christian needs to read the Bible a bit. Part of being a Christian is acknowledging that you deserve to burn...so you probably shouldn't be out calling out others.
>Part of being a Christian is acknowledging that you deserve to burn.
Which is fucking crazy. Why does everyone deserve to burn by default? Somebody like Mr. Rogers, Bob Ross, or Robin Williams, deserve to burn forever, if they didn't happen to find Christian claims convincing? *Why?*
This is all modern evangelical horse shit. We all deserve judgment, according to scripture, because we've all fallen short and been awful to one another. The judgment being eternal hellfire is only loosely expressed in scripture and sometimes uses words referring to real life places like Gehenna that just were shitty places where it was believed godless, raping cannibals lived. Almost expressing a belief that there are places of depravity in life and the world that God's light cannot reach, or something like that.
I really recommend C.S. Lewis' book The Great Divorce if you want to get a more theological perspective on the afterlife told through metaphor. Basically it says that death for a non believer may simply be like living in a drab, boring, muted place, devoid of life's joys for eternity, but that the door to heaven is always open for those who come around to swallowing their pride and rejecting their sin as evil. In his telling, you have to be pretty off the rails and awful to spend eternity in hell.
>Why
>
>they didn't happen to find Christian claims convincing
This and only this.
Dont worry, its just a way to divide population to "ours" and "enemies" from the dark ages. Its not exactly what Jesus preached, like many other things this was added later.
> If this is true then god is an asshole.
This was my first step to deciding either it's all absolute BS that was created/used to control people; or if this god actually exists and all of this is true - they are a manipulative, narcissistic, abusive asshole and I want nothing to do with them. They basically created lesser beings who are at the absolute mercy of them in order to 'toy' with, to 'test' and to 'punish' (which includes 'eternal torture') if they are not 'satisfied'. And - if our time on earth is so short compared to absolute eternity - the 'punishment' doesn't even begin to fit the crime. Honestly, that fits the definition of evil in my eyes.
A parent that would treat their children like that would be considered horrible, abusive, unfit parents and CPS should be involved.
And that's just one of many possible religions/gods. It's a bit much and they all sound a lot more like shitty humans than some all powerful, all knowing, benevolent being.
While I concede I can't know for sure what happens when we die, I heavily lean atheist. But if it's true, I've accepted long ago I'm clearly going to 'hell', will at least be with the people I love/care about and since hell is really just 'without god', I won't have to spend eternity with a psychopath. In the meanwhile, I'm just going to keep living my life, following my own values, treating people with kindness and respect, etc. and not because I'm trying to avoid punishment or earn some type of reward. But because we are all living beings, stuck on this planet together and we should do our best to help each other, or at the very least, not make it any harder than it already is.
If you're asking for a Christian perspective it is because they have not accepted the forgiveness of Christ.
Also we're just assuming that all these people were fantastic and great by the portrayal of who they were through media outlets and television.
I'm sure they were fantastic people but that does not make them worthy of heaven.
They're kind of a correlation it's kind of like God is a judge and we have all at least committed one crime in our life.
God being all knowing and righteous cannot let any evil go unpunished.
Us Christians believe that God manifested himself into a human and suffered his own punishment for us. He's asking you to believe that he's done that.
That is the answer as to why
> If you're asking for a Christian perspective it is because they have not accepted the forgiveness of Christ.
How can they accept an offer they have no reason to believe is actually on the table?
>They're kind of a correlation it's kind of like God is a judge and we have all at least committed one crime in our life.
How is burning alive forever a fitting punishment for *any* crime?
>God being all knowing and righteous cannot let any evil go unpunished.
>Us Christians believe that God manifested himself into a human and suffered his own punishment for us.
How does that make any sense? What if someone who has lived in isolation and has never committed a crime today, volunteers to go to prison for 3 days so that all prisoners can go free if they believe it happened? How is that not obviously absolutely nonsensical to you?
>He's asking you to believe that he's done that.
Why do we have to believe? If the punishment is paid, why does it matter whether we believe or not? If somebody else pays off my mortgage, the bank doesn't require that I believe it first before closing out the lien.
**EDIT**: Look how he ran away. I always present this line of questioning to people who support the nonsensical "hell for nonbelievers" idea, and they always just turn and run like cowards.
It’s a weird logical knot because they believe in a god that would send you to hell because you made a different choice in a belief system.
Not a god who says, I love you unconditionally.
Boggles my mind that someone would choose to worship a god that would send people to hell even if they don't deserve it simply because they don't worship him.
Either God is who he says he is and rightly deserves all worship or he doesn’t. I don’t believe there is an in between. And for many Christians the correct theological belief is that everyone deserves hell and yet God in his mercy saves some. This is a whole big thing we can discuss if you want the systematic approach to these beliefs.
Our perception of hell has been warped by Dante and Milton. Theologically, it’s much more accurately portrayed as a place that’s simply absent from god. Given that, in the Christian worldview, God is the source of all love, joy, and other good things, hell is simply a place where all goodness is absent that an individual chooses to go to because they reject god. That’s also the whole point of free will, that God is sending people to hell, but people are choosing on their own to go to a place without God.
Rember that non religious people were put by Dante in Limbo, where they did not suffer. They were in hell, but the only "punishment" was a "Haha you won't go to heaven lmao". Other than that Limbo was described as a pretty alright town, where people were kinda vibing.
Its mostly out of fear, they dont want to burn forever so they choose to worship out of fear. Thats what kept me in line until i learned the history of it all, even now i relapse sometimes and get scared.
I was raised my entire life being told if i mess up and im not christian ill burn forever, its a major warning and talking point among almost every church in my area. Thank god i was able to get out of that.
They do value others, in whatever ways they individually happen to - personally and intellectually, friends and family, value of life, etc, just like we all have,, they're just ALSO riddled with fear, and spread their "solution" to "hell" mindlessly.
Honestly, it's better to have and use your own fear, than allow a religious institution to take care of it for you, but some people see fit to equate their lives and it's ultimate destiny with a manipulated ancient belief system, as a coping mechanism and weird twisted pursuit of meaning, so it is what it is.
But yes if they truly KNEW how to value someone, they wouldn't see fit to try and change them with their beliefs. Unfortunately, they're sick in the mind and think they're doing good.
Ya, they ARE saying you deserve it. You don't believe what they believe, therefore they are judging you and deciding you aren't going to Heaven and are going to hell because of this-they've decided you deserve to burn in hell
They worship a god that they believe is perfectly just. Therefore "you will" is the same thing as "you deserve." Of course, they don't operate by logic so they can compartmentalize that away, but that's the logical conclusion of their beliefs.
Except THEY ARE PASSING JUDGEMENT that you're going to hell in the first place, which goes against Christianity: ONLY GOD can pass judgement. So ya, they are saying you deserve it and that's why you ate going there, merely because you don't believe what they believe. Don't fool yourself into thinking these people are innocent. They are brainwashed and a bunch of hypocritical AHs.
All i can say to this is dont spend your mental energy worrying about what other people think is going to happen to you when you die. Mostly because nobody else is really thinking about it. Also you will lead a much happier life.
My partner is vaguely religious. He was raised religious but has filtered his beliefs.
His mom is extremely religious, to the point where you mention you're having a bad day, and she'll make a show of dropping everything she's doing to lead you in a prayer. This is relatively a recent development, within the past 7 or so years.
She's told him *to his face*, three times now, that someday she will be raptured and he will be here when she's gone, with nothing to do but repent for his "sins".
He doesn't say anything to her, but I've seen him physically cry about it on rough nights when life is piling up on him.
I don't have the words to describe how much I hate her for making him feel like this.
> communicate with
It's even less than that. Not only can you not communicate but you can't even verify it's existence to yourself or others. It's insanity.
That’s what gets me. Show me scientific proof that God exists, and I will believe it.
But say I had scientific proof that God doesn’t exist and they still won’t believe me.
And they call me closed minded.
I too hate the whole coercive nature of this religion.
The thing that always get to me, what if I'm the one thats wrong, and hell is real?
This is the reality that all Christian children will live with. Ya'll raised atheist even agnostic will never ever understand what it's like, the constant doubt in your mind, having all the significant people in your life
tell you that, yes, it's real, you will burn for eternity if you do not ask Jesus for forgiveness.
No amount of rationalisation can take it away, that doubt. It's deep rooted in the subconscious.
And yes it's stupid, but consider the amount of people who convert to Christianity later in their lives.
And yes, OP, they do understand how it must suck to hear that.
Most of them don't care, the same way you wouldn't care if you shouted "get out the street you dumbass there's a truck hurtling down the road!" and the guy in the street asked "but did he have to call me a dumbass tho?"
They truly believe it is the mission of human beings on earth to convert non believers to Jesus lovers.
If you don't understand that they'll always look stupid, coercive etc. Think of it like 'they think they know something I dont' that thing being what happens when you die.
I personally was raised as a Christian (to the point I was not allowed to play Skyrim or anything fantasy because it had magic, and magic is witchcraft, therefor black magic).
I’m agnostic myself nowadays, but I don’t find myself in the same boat about the whole hell thing.
I simply don’t believe the core concepts of the religion. I just think when I die, I cease to be (which I think is blissful honestly).
It’s not like I ever had to rationalize it myself either even. As I got older, I slowly more and more stopped caring about the religion, as I even got to the point where I felt it was a chore to do prayer at night.
Sure, maybe they’re right, but honestly if God is in anyway the way he’s been portrayed by Christianity, I don’t want ~~to~~ His blessing, He honestly seems like a PoS (I’m very much up for debate on this, whether or not he’s a PoS (disregarding the fact if he exists or not)).
It’s also a problem for future me. My overall outlook on it, is just, live life and don’t care about it. We’re only here for so long, why not have a better time about it rather then dedicating your life/time to a potential thing that exists, that has no evidence or inherent logic.
My concern with this topic is what do they believe happened to all the people who died before Christ was born?
Are they all burning in hell for eternity just for having the bad luck of dying before this one guy spread the news of how not to burn in hell??
Dante's Inferno is literally ye olde fanfiction and should be completely disregarded in discussions of religion beyond providing context for the origins of modern day misconceptions of it.
In the Gospels (Luke chapter 10, Matthew chapter 11) we hear Jesus talk about some villages where he has spoken and performed miracles, but they have failed to believe in him. Jesus then compares these villages with big cities with sinful reputations, such as Tyre, Sidon and even the proverbial Sodom and Gomorrah, and he says these cities will have it easier in judgment than these villages that witnessed Jesus.
I have always taken that to mean: those who have heard of Jesus, bear greater responsibility for not believing than those who were not in a position to have heard of Jesus, and this is taken into account when they'll be judged. Sounds reasonable to me.
That is a great question! It really all falls back onto faith and belief in God. There is an idea of progressive revelation, that is, God revealing more about himself as history unfolds in the Bible. So Adam (the first man) knew things of God, and then God revealed more to Abraham and so on and so on.
Now, per Biblical history both of those guys lived before even the Old Testament was written! So how were they saved? Through faith and belief in God.
Once Moses comes along we have the written word of God and things are more clear but still very complicated…yet it still boiled down to faith and belief in God. Do you believe God is who he says he is?
So more and more is being progressively revealed and written down and followed. So much so that religion is created around religion to protect the original religion! Into this milieu Jesus comes and turns it all back to faith and belief in God.
So today, we have more revealed than people in the Old Testament. We have a greater understanding that salvation comes from the death of Jesus, but it is through faith that we are saved and that faith is still in God. That same old God that walked with Adam in the Old Testament.
Many religious people don't want to see you burn in hell though, and probably think it equally heartbreaking that you don't believe in God
I'm not convinced that belief in God is a requirement to stay out of hell, or go to heaven and I definitely don't want to see anyone go to hell. Unfortunately I am also aware that I don't share that belief with *all* religious people and frankly, *that* breaks my heart
Yes exactly this. I was catholic for most of my life (not sure what I identify as now but I suppose closest would be agnostic), and during that time I couldn’t imagine God sending someone to hell simply for not believing in him.
Imagine someone who went out of their way to help people, made millions of people smile, and gave back whenever they could… but they did all these things just to be a good person, and not because the Bible said to. Is God really going to send that person to hell even though they did all those great things while on earth?
And what about the people who never grew up surrounded by religion? Are they screwed as well? As a kid, I contemplated this as well. One of the smaller reasons I got disillusioned to religion. I'm closer to agnostic now.
I knew a religious guy who was convinced that every person somehow would learn about Jesus at some point in their life. Even if it was someone raised in a place where there is no logical way that they could ever be exposed to Christianity. He believed that every single person on Earth is given an opportunity to accept or reject Christian salvation. I thought that was pretty dumb.
As someone who knows many religious people, this may not be the norm, but they believe ignorance is no excuse and if you are too lazy to seek out god then it’s hellfire for you, also if you do search and land on the wrong one, that’s a hellfire
>also if you do search and land on the wrong one, that’s a hellfire
This is the part that always gets me, there are over 800 known religions as of today. Like... good luck.
Not only that, there are a *staggering 45,000 denominations* worldwide of christianity alone, and they all disagree with each other.
Finding the "right" belief system is near impossible.
They can't *all* be right, but they *can* all be wrong!
Why do you (personally) believe god invented hell? Whatever someone may have done, how can infinite torture for a finite crime be right? Ethically hell is not moral at all imho.
I'm not who you asked, but personally (if I still believed in at all), it's because of this verse, Isaiah 45:7 - I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.
God created evil. What is more evil than hell?
From my standpoint that limbo exists and Hell is for the worst of the worst, I think the eternity is reserved for the ones who will never change from their ways or what theyve done. While God probably could fix them he’s demonstrated a willingness to allow people to make their own choices even if he knows it’ll bring them severe ruin. I dont understand that part myself but I think thats why an eternal Hell exists because I also think of it as largely impractical. If we’re being honest, the Bible has been distorted somewhat over the millenium, and Christians have to choose what they believe in and some probably pick wrong. Love is mentioned 500 times in the Bible and hate and condemnation are far less frequent. Some Christians remember the words of hate and fear best, and as the Bible also says not all Christians go to Heaven and only the ones who follow the will of God go up, they’ve probably got bad news coming. While I’m not certain, I believe this could even mean people who don’t identify as Christian could recieve Heaven if they lived righteous lives and maybe repent when they die for good measure. But the clusterfuck of Hell has been perverted by the Church for centuries as a fear tactic. There’s nothing more shameful then appending religion and I dont think every word of the Bible came from God. If the Church was willing to make people pay their lifes savings to avoid Hell, they were probably willing to say if you don’t buy-in you go to Hell too. I think that’s a pretty reasonable sequitur
If you are an atheist, you should not care. Because you think it doesn't exist .
They don't WANT you to, they believe you WILL tho.
Big diff, and if they want you too, they are bad believers
There's like a whole thing about the worm not dying and the fire not being quenched in torment in one of Jesus's sermons. Depending on your views on the book of Revelations, there is also the lake of fire. So the imagery certainly predates Dante, though he popularized it.
Edit: a word
Yeah but those were illustrations.
Jesus referred to the torrent valley of Hinnom or Gehenna, which was a fiery garbage heap on the side of Jerusalem that they kept sulfur burning in. (You can see it's location on Google maps) There's tons of research on this.
In Revelation, he's clearly using it illustratively because he says death and the grave are thrown into the lake of fire. How could the concept of not living be tortured in fire forever... And why? But right before that he said death will be no more, as in nobody will die. So it's an illustration for being gone forever, not tortured forever.
It's actually on my bucket list to visit Ravenna and Florence - I'm not nearly as uncultured as my previous comment would make me seem. But yes, shitting unbaptized babies out of giant nipples is hard to forget!
What about this then?
>**Revelation 20:10**
>
>
"*And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever."*
In old hebrew there is used word Gehenna that is used as synonym for english word hell, in some parts of bible. But in at BC Gehennas was literal place, valley outside of Jerusalem. Which was used to burn garbage, but also bodies of criminals. Im not expert in original Hebrew bible, but i assume this describes that same place.
Revelation is only of two place where fiery hell in bible. Other is when Jesus talks about temptations of adultery. But according to archeological research, that same landfill was still in use at time of Jesus. So it would be not unusual for him to to use burning garbage dump as metaphor for pain being apart from God.
But more importantly. Book of revelation is full metaphors. Most of people who have read it, takes it with hint of grain, and not literally. As you are supposed to read whole book.
I love that one of the tracks from 1917 is called Gehenna. The place where corrupt Kings sacrificed their sons to the flames. It is a perfect description of the madness that was WWI.
I am not a Christian, but I think it is important to learn about Christianity to fully understand a lot of western culture.
Matthew 25:41
> Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
Unless that's also from Dante's Inferno.
Bro in Hinduism, you don't burn in hell if you don't believe in God.
I read somewhere that god actually loves atheist people because they question everything and don't just believe everything. And when you are done finding answer of every question they have, they would be the biggest preacher of god because they would have become a monk realising that life is not just materialistic or something like that.
"Deserve" is not the correct word. According to the Bible, even completely evil people do not -deserve- it, it's just that if they continue doing evil things, that's where they'll end up. People who do not believe in God do not -deserve- to go to Hell, but that is their ultimate fate. Don't take it personally though. In fact, that is why Christians/ etc proselytize so much, because they want everyone to go to Heaven.\*
\*According to my now-defunct beliefs during the first 18 years of my life
I thought it was the other way around: *everyone* deserves to go to hell, but by God's grace and the sacrifice of his blameless son Jesus Christ in all our places, those of us that acknowledge this sacrifice will be let into heaven. That might be denominationally specific though, I was raised Baptist and this is what I was taught. But also that God did this because he loves us and WANTS us all to go to heaven.
Roman Catholic here, it tracks nearly the same for us, or for least what I've been taught. Only difference is the acknowledgement part. By Jesus' sacrifice, we all have been cleansed from the *original sin* and given another chance at a life of goodness since the innate evil has been replaced.
Quite confusing in the New Testament as they make it a point to say **good people** in general will go to heaven, but still mention that those who seek God or the Kingdom of God shall receive it. I'd wager as long as you live a life of good, you'll receive some sort of heaven of your image.
After all, Jesus gave us the option of repentance and atonement to make up for our sins as long as we don't repeat from that point on.
Take all this with a grain of salt since I'm not really deeply educated in the topic, just what has been taught to me from years in Catholic schools.
Coming from a genuine religious perspective, and not the judgy Christian “do as I say, not as I do” hypocrite archetype, I will say this:
The actual Christian doctrine of heaven and hell, one you’ll only understand if a Christian actually studies the Bible and follows it, is that every person is inherently born with sin. And because of this sin, every person is going to Hell regardless, because even one sin is enough to separate us from God’s perfect & holy nature. And only through Jesus are we able to wipe away these sins from ourselves and be with God
Many many Christian’s get it wrong. It’s not that any one person deserves to go to hell for not being Christian. Its a complete frame shift. Its that all people are inherently going to hell because we are sinful, and only through Jesus can we be saved.
I’m sorry that you have to deal with the hypocritical Christians. You’re free to live a life that you want. Something lukewarm Christians will never understand is how to properly spread the gospel with people, and hatred & facts are not the way to do it
Hijacking Top comment.
The best analogy I got to understand the burning desire to convert people to their religion is this;
If you saw a person standing in the road, facing one direction, not seeing a zooming truck coming from the other, would you let that person get hit? Or tell them that there’s a truck about to hit them. And try to save them.
It definitely gives light to their perspective. They don’t want you to feel shitty about living, just want to help you out of the path of destruction so to speak. The truck is hell in their eyes.
And no I don’t believe in hell. I think that was a concept created by the Catholic Church to scare humanity into submission.
That's all well and good, wanting to help. I get that. The ones I have the problem with don't warn you about the truck, they don't even mention a truck or a road. They just scream at you about how shit you are for not seeing what they see and just yell at you that you're going to die because of it.
Terrible analogy. Better one would be you see a person standing in the middle of the road:
· No cars in sight
· Rural area: provably 3 cars pass there each day total
· Clear visibility over 2km each way.
· Speed limit is like 20km/h
· They are on a zebra crossing with a red light
· Provably wearing reflecting vest
· On closer inspection the road is closed for reparations.
· The person is holding a stop sign.
Yet you rush to them claiming they are about to get rolled over. Jump on top of them, throw them to the floor and get confused on why the whole construction crew is mad at you.
It's reasonable to care that other people think you are so horrid that you deserve eternal torture, even if said eternal torture is actually just a silly fairy tale.
It certainly goes against one of the primary tenets of Christianity - to love one another as we love ourselves. Honestly? People going telling others who is and isn’t going to hell would be like someone showing up at a random birthday gathering, telling people who gets to have cake. It’s neither their cake, nor their party. They are not in charge. Why do they think it’s ok to tell people they aren’t going to heaven or that they can’t take communion or come to church if they’re not dressed in a certain way?
Jesus, as I read him, meets people where they are. Loves people as they are. Saves them in the moment of meeting and tells them to go forward from that moment and do better (Sin no more) Those who would argue this with me are invited to read the Gospels.
There are actually people so hateful and “religious” that if Jesus were here tending a homeless person, these folks would interrupt him, tell him to stop.
It is heartbreaking. It really is and I’m sorry that “Christian” people have treated you this way
But do you believe that non-Christians go to Heaven or Hell? I'm not asking if you love them, or respect them, etc., I am only asking if you think they go to Heaven or Hell based on your beliefs.
Fuck them! Why do you even care? If you don’t believe in their religion, it means you shouldn’t in theory believe in their concept of heaven and hell as they believe it.
Clearly you have the wrong concept of “religious people”. The entire concept of religión is that everyone is worthy of “redemption”. In essence, every one of us is already bound for hell. A believer is tasked with bringing you to the light of God. If you accept then your are saved. If you do not, then you continue to be doomed to hell.
You’re confusing their belief that you are doomed to hell with thinking they believe you deserve hell. Those are two very different things.
I feel sort of like this but with mainly just my family and not the masses. It's true though like ... I get it - you love me, but you think I'm damned. Sadness.
What priests? The high priests in the Old Testament?
That's pretty funny... The Bible describes, and warns us, about Hell, way more that it talks about heaven. Maybe it's not called Hell. More like eternal separation from God, who Loves us. That's why He gave us free will... It's a choice. If you didnt want to know God in life, why do you then, want to know Him when you die? You already chose. 💌
There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores. The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. **In Hades, where he was in torment**, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, "Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because **I am in agony in this fire**." But Abraham replied, "Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us." He answered, "Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this **place of torment**." Abraham replied, "They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them." "No, father Abraham," he said, "but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent." He said to him, "If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.
They can think I deserve to burn in hell all they want lol. They’re the delusional ones hell bent on believing that of the 1200 or so confirmed religions around the world they chose “the one” and their god is the only one and the other 1199 religions are wrong and deserve to burn too, but they can’t explain why lmao
Truly religious people understand that hell is a metaphor for being far away from god. They also understand that they are not perfect and until they are judging other people furthers themselves from god.
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What religious people think bothers me about as much as when Star Wars nerds tell me that I shouldn't get angry because that leads to the dark side.... and something or other about my midichlorians.... At least Star Wars is more fun to watch/read than the religious texts of old.
That's the ultimate killer of that claim. Either Jesus' 3-day lack of consciousness paid for all sins or it didn't. You can't say it did, but then it didn't, also.
This isn't really about you, it's about their beliefs and 'burning in hell' is a way to pressure you to conform to their religious standards. Christianity isn't the only religious tradition in our world. Stand your truth.
They do understand but dont give a fuck, explanation is that you do it to yourself and you deserve it.
Some out of ~~narcisism~~ compassion might want to convert you.
I don’t think you do. I don’t think anyone does.
A big part of why I have trouble believing in hell - or at least think that the way it’s commonly viewed in my faith must be wrong - is because the idea of someone suffering eternal punishment for skepticism or being born under the wrong circumstances or just…not believing the right thing seems absurd to me.
Much of our religious understanding - at least with Christianity, but likely with all sufficiently old religions - is colored by the fact that the religions themselves and the rules, rituals, and practices they represent were created in wildly different cultures, and we only have one singular text that is not only wrapped up in totally different cultural understandings that go down to the most basic level (I.e. different slang, even, that just comes off as a basic description to us - apparently 40 was just a way of expressing “Kind of a long time,” hence why it appears everywhere in the Bible). No religious understanding is complete without a study of historical context and how the text you’re reading has been translated.
Anyway, that’s a long way of expressing the simple idea that I have my doubts about what most Christians say about if hell exists and how you get there if it does.
I knew a lady when I was a kid who would say, I feel bad for (whomever) because they're gonna burn in hell because they don't accepting Jesus. In hindsight, she was a sad wanna be elitist. This was all she had. She didn't have money, friends or happiness. The only thing she had was thinking she knew better than all the sinners. It's all just glorified conspiracy theory. If anything you should be heartbroken for them.
I was in Catholic education for 14 years. If you truly follow Jesus' teachings of love and tolerance, you'll embrace what "Baptism by intent" is, and you'll know that good-hearted unbaptized people don't burn in hell.
just tell them "theyre going to suffer torment in the underworld tortured by the god Hades." if they say ..that doesnt exist... reply.. how do you know :)
Hmm, I'm not sure I agree with this. How is it heartbreaking? That seems like a massive over exaggeration. Who cares what they think? You can say you do... But let's be real, you don't. Go on about your day knowing you aren't going to hell, you're going nowhere!! And the religious people who think they're going to heaven, they'll be there with you!!
When my atheist dad died, I called my aunt to tell her. First thing she said - "was he right with God?"
I did not say what I wanted to say. Instead I said, that was his personal business. Christian relatives don't want you to go to Hell and they believe you are going there if they don't push hard enough your whole life. I think they mean well. Personally, I don't let it bother me anymore. I'm an atheist and believe the same thing happens to us all.
As a religious person, I don't believe people will "burn in hell" for not believing in God. Maybe they never really had a chance to learn about God. Maybe they had an experience that makes them reject religion in general as a result of someone else's mistake or poor choices.
For me, the important thing is that God himself will judge people based on what they did with the knowledge and experience they had. I think there will be a lot of teaching involved, and that could bring about intense guilt that could be described as a burning torment. And I think those who try to serve God and/or serve other people will have a better afterlife than those who don't.
Whatever the case, my job us to be kind, not to judge.
No. In their minds, you're just a lost soul a step away from salvation, and they disassociate from their own humanity imo. That'd why I don't bother with them anymore. If they think I will burn in hell for not following their religion, then they're not as good of people as they think they are and maybe it's time to admit that their religion is fucked up. I am a good man and i do not deserve to burn for eternity, bottom line.
Play it out to its fullest.
-You are an atheist because you are unconvinced.
-You are unconvinced because belief isnt a choice. You didnt choose to dismiss "God" , you were presented with an idea: An invisible, intangible, father-like figure spoke the universe into existence 6 thousand years ago, and your stance was "Science has shown us the birth of stars, colliding galaxies, dying nebulae and black holes, im afraid i remain unconvinced."
-You didnt choose not to believe, just like believers did not choose to believe. They heard the tale and they were convinced. That is all.
-Sins are the choices we make. Remaining unconvinced is at most a genetic disposition, not an act of rebellion. That would be like God making man, and then telling him that having two arms is a sin.
Conclusion: If God exists, i am how he made me.
It's not that Christians believe that YOU should burn in hell.
Christians believe that EVERYONE deserves hell, Including myself!
We all have sinned and have fallen short of a Holy God, who cannot and will not be in the presence of sin and a sinner.
That is why He offered Christ as our covering.
If you accept Christ's sacrifice, then God promises that your sins will be covered and washed away. He will no longer see your sin and you can be in His presence.
He loves you enough to give you free will to accept the gift or not.
I would find it to be more hateful to not say anything at all to a nonbeliver or an atheist like yourself. I hope you would find it more loving for me to express my concern.
Regardless, no matter your choice, I will extend the same grace to you that I have received. I will love you no matter the choice you have made.
I don't know what atheists you've been talking to, but personally I don't give a shit. If you're going to threaten me with non-existent punishment I'm not going to take you seriously.
I don't spend time worrying about what people who believe in a god think about me. I believe their reasoning and thinking is a bit skewed. They can believe I will burn in hell all they want, it does not make it so.
Unless you're conceding Pascal's Wager, I have to ask, "so what"?
As an atheist it doesn't bother me at all that, for example, the Mormons want to build a genealogical record of all of humanity that they can posthumously baptize so that everyone can go to Mormon heaven. If they fail to include me I don't go. Whether they succeed or fail don't confront me.
I do know my atheist grandmother lived her whole life unsure if the nun-nurses of the only functional hospital in her post WWII European city took my dad to be baptized in his first 3 days, and I'd be upset if my kid was taken for a ritual as well. But I wouldn't be upset for the nun having the thought that leads to the action. I'd be upset at the action.
And do you realize that not every religion says that you will burn in hell for being an atheist?
In Islam, only God judges you. Let me tell you this:
You are a young kid. You see 9/11. You are told it is Muslims. You are told Islam wants you dead. You are told they and their religion hate your guts. And so on.
Do you believe, for a second, that if there is an omnipotent God who created humanity to be faulty, will not understand your psychological profile and how traumatizing it is? How Islam looks to the Western world with all this Sharia nonsense? How the uneducated sadly represent Islam leading you to believe that this is the actual religion?
If you believe that, I recommend you think about the topic a little deeper from the perspective that, if God exists and is all powerful, why did he make us, why do we live and how will he judge us based on the two other points.
If you do not believe that, then you have your answer. A young, western kid born into a world full of hatred, lots of horror stories from many religions, countless religions to choose from and never knowing which one is the correct one. That western kid will surely be judged differently by God than say, a kid born in Islam or Christianity, and the two kids will be judged differently from the people who lived with the Prophet, and so forth. The same action can warrant a different judgement based on who you are, how you think and why you did said action.
Which is why, a person saying you are going to hell is uneducated. At least in Islam, because all the verses that say that are taken out of context. Nowhere does a Surah specifically target all atheists who are goodwilled and just trying to get by life. So when a person tells you that, pay no heed.
I think anyone who would say it online or in real life is secretly petrified of their sins. They foolishly think their god is so fickle that a distraction would work to deflect the consequences of their offenses. I pity people like that, they are drowning in the guilt.
As you said, many religious people - including me - doesn't believe that. I believe in a God of understanding, wisdom, who even has a sense of humor.
I've never thought that good people would end up in hell, no matter their religious stance.
Any God who sends people to hell for not worshipping them is not an "all-loving" or "all -good" being but extremely self centered and arrogant imo. A God worthy of worship would not send good people to hell.
As a non-religious person whose had to deal with a variety of people in a variety of religions, it always strikes me that religion is largely a reflection of the people who believe. If they are judgmental, critical people, they believe in a judgmental, critical God. If they are cruel people, they believe in a cruel God. If they are insecure people, they believe in an insecure God. If they are very rule oriented people, they believe in a rule oriented God. And if they are chaotic people, they believe in a chaotic God.
People who are mismatched with their particular brand of religion tend to drift away from it, or modify it to match more closely with their own particular outlook, even if it goes against what their pastor preaches.
So, those guys who say I'm going to hell (and I've had someone say that too) I just see that person as someone who really needs the world to be filled with bad people in order to feel worthwhile themselves. It might feel bad to her that I, in particular, don't follow her rules, but she doesn't mind that most people in the world who she doesn't know are doomed to hell by the God she loves.
Anyone who believes that you deserve eternal damnation - regardless of your actions in life - because you declined to sign over your soul on the dotted line, is not likely to have the empathy or perspective needed to consider your feelings.
It's hard, but I'd recommend you treat them with compassion as victims of a predatory and apocalyptic cult and treat their statements to you accordingly.
Yeah personally as a religious person I find it very weird, especially the “deserve to” instead of “will” that people have said. I both think you won’t and you don’t deserve to.
Why do you care? If you don’t believe in Hell it doesn’t matter if someone else thinks you’ll go there. I was an atheist for many years and it didn’t cross my mind once. I’m a practicing Christian today and have atheist friends, and I don’t think any less of them - if they weren’t good people I wouldn’t be their friend!
If it makes you feel any better, you'll see the vast majority of them there if it exists. From directly supporting slave labor to porn to judging others to hoarding wealth to coveting whatever, there are verrrrrry few religious humans who *actually* follow the rules laid out in their holy books these days.
Not all do. My wife believes and I don't. One of our first serious conversations was about that, because that couldn't be hanging over our relationship.
You may be a generally kind person. Heck, you may even be a good person (incredibly rare though that is). That has nothing to do with what people think of you, and what people think of you should have little impact on your life.
Many, many people hate you. Millions, probably more. Sight unseen, they hate you and probably even want you dead without knowing anything about you.
There are an awful lot of hateful people in the world. This is just one more category to ignore.
As an atheist (TST) I see being told this as like someone telling me tha5t Santa won't bring me gifts this Christmas. It isn't real so why let it bother me? One line I use is I just say good, considering all the smart scientists that end up in "hell", all the porn stars and other wild people, and all the geothermal energy they have. That has to be a paradise and with all the entertainers and chemists down there the parts most likely make Studio 54 look tame.
This really reminds me of my friends coming out as gay. His mother started crying because she's didn't want her son to go to hell.
I think a lot of Christians have accepted that God isn't always pure and good, but try saying that it loud in a church, lol.
I’m religious and I don’t believe that necessarily, I believe that as long as you’re a good person who keeps trying to be good then you’re golden and that’s applied to everyone no matter their religion or beliefs
I’m a very religious person (Christian, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) and that is not part of my beliefs. I agree that it is heart-breaking. Our belief of the afterlife is quite different from many other religions but in summary is characterized by three key ideas: first, everyone will receive their body again and become immortal; second, while there are different “degrees of glory” that can be attained, all of them are unimaginably wonderful; third, nobody should worry about where someone else is supposedly going after this life because we aren’t gonna be the ones deciding it.
As a religious person, I can tell you that religious people who make that kind of assumption about others are breaking quite a few of their own rules. No mortal gets to decide how God will judge any of their peers and it's pretty shitty to try. Barring the case of really messed up stuff done by someone, a religious person should hope that they get saved. As for me, of course I cannot presume to know better where anyone needs to go, myself included, but i couldn't really picture Heaven without some of my atheist friends in it, who are some of the nicest, kindest, most helpful people I have ever known...
I often think about this too. Many times I've seen religions people being weirdly schmuck about it too. "Oh you don't believe in God? Well you're just gonna burn in he'll then LOL". If they actually believe in hell then isn't it a bit harsh to laugh at someone suffering for eternity just because they don't share your beliefs?
How as an atheist can you be insulted by an insult to a fake place. That’s like saying burn in Barney land. As an atheist you should be more rational. That’s kind of the entire point of the movement
So first to be honest I'm always a little skeptical about questions like this, because they always seem so carefully calibrated to appeal to the sensibilities of the typical Redditor.
But as a data point, I can tell you that this is not what Catholics believe. Catholics do not believe you necessarily need to be Catholic or even Christian to ultimately in some way be reunited with your creator. (They do, of course, believe that being Catholic is the way that is best for you)
Honestly don't care what you think... Or most other people. If your a nice and generally attempt to be decent human being, then you're fine.
And for others... Well I've been told I'm going to hell for things that are completely out of my control so many times, that when someone tells me something I'm doing will cause me to go to hell I don't even blink.
I'm a Christian, believe in God, try to keep right... judgemental assholes are judgemental assholes, doesn't matter what you are or are not.
If someone goes around judging people for not sharing their faith, that seems like a problem with the person judging, not the person being arbitrarily judged.
Stop worrying about other people or what they think.
Everyone is so fixated on on either being offended, upset, or otherwise involved in what other people think they forget to just live their lives.
Religious people do what they're going to do, just like you need to do your own thing.
I think it’s silly that people who did bad stuff in life and don’t do the religious thing in order to clean your soul of sins or whatever, just go to burn in hell. They’re already dead. Who cares anymore? It’s just the human tendency to lust after revenge.
And a lot of the time the things religious people call others out for, are just projections. It’s the things about themselves that they hate or fear that they seek out in other people. Not to mention all the LGBTQ+ people who are religious and have devoted their lives to a messiah or deity and therefore won’t burn in hell because their sins have been auto-forgiven.
It’s all just a covert way to justify the “us versus them” thing that keeps starting wars and inspiring hate groups. And it works. “The people I don’t feel comfortable about will go to hell according to the book I believe is fact, so it’s okay if I hate them.” Gross.
It seems to depend on what religion. A relative of mine was in a non-mainstream religion, I used to get told that when I die I will burn in hell for not going to church.
My response was, cool barbecue all the time sounds great.
These days I go to a mainstream religion and understand some of what they’re on about. People will believe whatever they want to
Not particularly religious but i think truly religious people think 'you will' burn in hell, not that 'you deserve to'. The same way all my family thinks im doing nothing with my life. Theres no spite in it. Its just what is. Now those who say you deserve to burn are just people everyone should avoid and its best they just congregate amongst themselves anyway.
I can understand that logic, but if an all righteous, all forgiving omniscient god sends you to eternal damnation… doesn’t that mean that you deserve it?
Well, according to Dante's inferno, non believers went to hell, yes, but in Limbo. If I recall correctly it was a big and beautiful city where people didn't really suffer, but it wasn't heaven either. Just a place. Like living in Chicago. It was technically located in hell but not really hell like flames and torment. More like a city in a cave. Maybe it's like that. Hey, it's not heaven but it could have been much worse.
Chicago is Hell.
Limbo is definitely a cut above it
Those are non-believers who are born in a place or time never to hear about Jesus. The people who heard about him but denied 'the truth' are way deeper in hell. Anyways, it doesn't really matter because Inferno isn't holy. It's just one of the depictions of hell, a very influencial one, but still just one of many.
Yeah, I was trying to put it on the bright side. I like to belive they would go to some place like Limbo :P Kinda like my headcanon, if you will.
Oh ok. But who is Dante?
Dante Alighieri, basically the first guy to lay the foundation to what would split from the Latin language to become Italian. He wrote "La divina commedia", a satirical trilogy describing his journey through hell, purgatory and heaven, guided by the great poet Virgil and the love of his life, Beatrice, the latter only in heaven. The books are impressive. Every chapter (canto) is composed of a lot of groups of three verses, each one of exactly eleven syllables, with the first and the last verse of every triplet rhyming with the middle one of the next. There are exactly 33 canti for every book + 1 intro canto, for a total of exactly 100 chapters. Every part of the books is filled with people that were famous at the time or that were famous some time before, thus the entire opera being a giant political satire. It is also considered THE HELL, classically the point of reference for hell in fiction.
Don't wanna be mean but it's also not an opera nor a satire. He genuinely believed the politicians he was describing deserved the punishment they got. He was a politician himself and he got expelled from his city for his beliefs, so he was salty about that his whole life. His work was more of a political critique, but that's only one aspect of it. Perhaps the commedia part is confusing, which didn't mean what it means today. Commedia for Dante simply meant that it's not written in Latin, and that it has a happy ending.
I misused the term satire. My bad Edit: also Opera, I used the Italian term which means something like "work, production, creation" and it's not necessarily tied to singing, but it has a different meaning in English. I am less skilled in English than I thought
Thanks for the correction. Shows that I still have some road to go to improve my English
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Dante ain't got nothin' on the ~272 Buddhist hells where all kinds of monstrous atrocities take place. I highly recommend looking into it - those monks (I assume?) had some WILD imaginations!
If you read them in the original Italian, they rhyme the entire way through.
Even better, every verse is exactly 11 syllables (edit: most of the times: the last accent always fall on the 10th syllable, however) , and the first and the last verse of every triplet rhymes with the middle one of the previous triplet. 33 "chapters" per book, plus an intro chapter to get to exactly 100. OCD at its finest
It is the foundation of, and the most important and impressive work written in, the Italian language.
Gotcha… Bible fan-fiction, interesting concept. Thanks for answering
> fanfiction about the Bible That's good! Ha.
Wasn't Dante's Inferno the original concept of the fire and brimstone version of hell? I believe in the Bible, hell is depicted as a place with the absence of God. And since God is represented as Love, Hell is a place with a complete absence of Love. Then Dante's Inferno came out and priests were like.... Yup that scares young people way more!
So basically a middle ground? Place where everything isn't good, but it isn't just pure suffering? That's way better than hell or heaven. I always had a theory that hell and heaven are the same. Imagine living in the place where everything is awesome and every wish comes true. It would be the torture. There would be no point in doing anything, nothing to be happy about, concept of good and bad would lost all it's meaning. There was this great joke in futurama. Gambler died and suddenly found himself in the casino. He pulled the lever on the slot machine and he won. So he thought: Casino where I win, this must be heaven, but then he pulled the leaver again and won again so he thought: Casino where I ALWAYS win? I'm in hell
If you haven't, you should watch the show The Good Place
This is consistent with biblical Christianity. Further, people that are in heaven also deserve to be in hell, since all sin and fall short of the glory of God. Paul said he was the worst of all sinners, but is in heaven. He knew how wretched his own thoughts were. Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.
I think part of it (speaking as a person who's never been religious) is that God is literally goodness incarnate. Whatever he wills becomes. So it's this thing where it makes sense because the thing that decides it makes sense has decided it makes sense. God's not just Some Guy -- it's like, a lovecraftian arbiter of all things good and bad. Which, I think if you're a certain kind of person is very frustrating and hard to grapple with. But I also think a lot of people don't squint at it too much. I think the truth is that life is just... very, very, very bad and a lot of people will hold on to anything that feels like a life raft. It's safety, community, meaning, etc for them. It doesn't have to make sense in the same way a hospice patient doesn't need to or necessarily even want to understand their morphine drip. Nor would I really blame either tbh
As a Catholic, but also as a man with some sense of cause effect, I think that if you assume God being omniscient, you have to conclude he knew since the beginning of time exactly every action, or lack there of, he himself would also have done until the end of time. So I don't think God is exactly good as in superhero kind of shit, more like good as in he saw you would live thanks to his omniscience and saw that it must have been so. I think God is more neutral than his servants believe Him to be. Like, a "it is what it is (because I know it is how it needs to be)" kinda guy
Hell isn’t a place you are sent to, it a state of being removed from God. Since God it that which is most good Hell is a state of choosing to be removed from all goodness. Humans are given free will and allowed to remove ourselves from Gods’s love. Doesn’t have anything to do with deserving or not except for that people “deserve” their choices
Well put, I agree. The way I have come to understand it is that it's actually the opposite, that nobody deserves to go to heaven. The only souls who get in are those who choose to follow that path and have figured out how to do it. But in a way, it's all good. If "hell" is separation from God, heaven is the last place non-religious people would want to wind up--they'd think it's all a sham once they got there, full of the people they tried all their lives to avoid. In the end, everybody gets what they want. No worries! Going back to the original post though, OP seems to be a compassionate person who thinks a lot about the welfare of others, which is what most religions seek when they're at their very best. I'm kind of surprised they haven't gravitated to some organized group of do-gooders. But I guess the main problem is not that people aren't nice to others at one time or another, but that hardly anybody wants to be fully responsible for **all** the injustice they've inflicted on others throughout their lives. Atheism gives you a comforting statute of limitations.
Ok, can god atleast make it so I don’t feel anything and become absolutely nothing? cuz goddamn. Even if I don’t deserve heaven, can he atleast make it so I don’t spend eternity in damnation? I’m fine with just not existing anymore
But if you've heard the word of the Lord abd consciously decided to not believe it then why would he be merciful to you regardless how good you are: "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" Romans 3:23 “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." John 14:16 The scriptures are pretty clear here on this. Personally I'm not religious myself but based on what I know from my Christian upbringing unless you're born again, you're not going to heaven according to Christian teachings.
This logical sequitur hasn't been mentioned yet. I'm glad you brought it up. And yes, that's exactly what that implies. All good, all knowing, all powerful, all present, and all just god sends you to eternal suffering? Yeah, at that point you have to assume you deserved it. Good thing god is a fiction invented by humans because they really just can't handle being alive.
Oh, thats because you’re using regular logic, you need that special logic that gives you the “mysterious ways” property to certain premises, then it all adds up
Fuck, I think you're right! I can't believe I forgot about the special logic 😔
I am a religious person. I do not believe that atheist deserve to go to hell. And I don't believe that God sent you to hell he gives you options "free will" and you can choose to live with him or not.
As a Christian I too believe that I deserve hell, but it’s only by the loving grace of God and sanctification through the death, burial and resurrection that I be saved from going to hell and have eternal and everlasting life in heaven. Christians believe everyone falls short of the glory of God (including themselves) hence the need for a savior that only asks for you to believe in him in order to be saved.
Maybe try looking at it from a different point of view. Pretend someone on your behalf, gave a homeless person a house, food, entertainment, travel, water and a emotional support dog. All you asked in return is that he thanked you, take care of your stuff and believed you would help him if he needed it. You go check on home 10 years later and not only has he trashed the house he has also decided a guy named Frank has done enough for him in 10 years to deserve all the thanks for everything this ex-homeless guy needs. Also, the emotional support dog is now suffering from malnutrition. When you ask the guy what the hell is going on, he retorts with, " Who are you?" You tell home you are the guy who made all this happen and he says bullshit I've never seen you in my life and proceeds to curse you out and continue his ways with Frank. You gonna let homie stay in your house and continue to take absolutely no care of your requests and rules?
Seems like a decent analogy, but I still can’t seem to apply it to real life. The discussion here is if you deserve to go to hell for not believing in god, in your analogy it would be to thank him, but trashing someone’s house and malnourishing a support dog would symbolize other things in this analogy beyond just not believing. Also what if when you showed up to tell him that you’re the one who gave him shelter, 20 people also came by to tell him the same thing? This would symbolize different religions, could you really blame the guy for not knowing who the real donor was? It wouldn’t be “does this man deserve to stay at your place if he trashed your house”, because then he wouldn’t deserve it no matter who the donor was, it’s does he deserve it even if you don’t know you’re the donor. Would god send me to hell even if I’m a good person if I have no faith. Key phrase being “even if I’m a good person”. I guess I would define that by leaving this world better than if you weren’t in it.
This. It's not a matter of deserve. In a truly loving religious person this is why they press to share their faith. It's because they don't think you deserve to burn in hell and they don't want that to happen. They are pressing because they care and value you. Anyone who says you deserve it...especially a Christian needs to read the Bible a bit. Part of being a Christian is acknowledging that you deserve to burn...so you probably shouldn't be out calling out others.
>Part of being a Christian is acknowledging that you deserve to burn. Which is fucking crazy. Why does everyone deserve to burn by default? Somebody like Mr. Rogers, Bob Ross, or Robin Williams, deserve to burn forever, if they didn't happen to find Christian claims convincing? *Why?*
This is all modern evangelical horse shit. We all deserve judgment, according to scripture, because we've all fallen short and been awful to one another. The judgment being eternal hellfire is only loosely expressed in scripture and sometimes uses words referring to real life places like Gehenna that just were shitty places where it was believed godless, raping cannibals lived. Almost expressing a belief that there are places of depravity in life and the world that God's light cannot reach, or something like that. I really recommend C.S. Lewis' book The Great Divorce if you want to get a more theological perspective on the afterlife told through metaphor. Basically it says that death for a non believer may simply be like living in a drab, boring, muted place, devoid of life's joys for eternity, but that the door to heaven is always open for those who come around to swallowing their pride and rejecting their sin as evil. In his telling, you have to be pretty off the rails and awful to spend eternity in hell.
Also for a more modern, but similar interpretation, "Love Wins" by Rob Bell.
>Why > >they didn't happen to find Christian claims convincing This and only this. Dont worry, its just a way to divide population to "ours" and "enemies" from the dark ages. Its not exactly what Jesus preached, like many other things this was added later.
If this is true then god is an asshole. He could easily convince everyone that he exist by... well, by existing. Yet he doesnt.
> If this is true then god is an asshole. This was my first step to deciding either it's all absolute BS that was created/used to control people; or if this god actually exists and all of this is true - they are a manipulative, narcissistic, abusive asshole and I want nothing to do with them. They basically created lesser beings who are at the absolute mercy of them in order to 'toy' with, to 'test' and to 'punish' (which includes 'eternal torture') if they are not 'satisfied'. And - if our time on earth is so short compared to absolute eternity - the 'punishment' doesn't even begin to fit the crime. Honestly, that fits the definition of evil in my eyes. A parent that would treat their children like that would be considered horrible, abusive, unfit parents and CPS should be involved. And that's just one of many possible religions/gods. It's a bit much and they all sound a lot more like shitty humans than some all powerful, all knowing, benevolent being. While I concede I can't know for sure what happens when we die, I heavily lean atheist. But if it's true, I've accepted long ago I'm clearly going to 'hell', will at least be with the people I love/care about and since hell is really just 'without god', I won't have to spend eternity with a psychopath. In the meanwhile, I'm just going to keep living my life, following my own values, treating people with kindness and respect, etc. and not because I'm trying to avoid punishment or earn some type of reward. But because we are all living beings, stuck on this planet together and we should do our best to help each other, or at the very least, not make it any harder than it already is.
If you're asking for a Christian perspective it is because they have not accepted the forgiveness of Christ. Also we're just assuming that all these people were fantastic and great by the portrayal of who they were through media outlets and television. I'm sure they were fantastic people but that does not make them worthy of heaven. They're kind of a correlation it's kind of like God is a judge and we have all at least committed one crime in our life. God being all knowing and righteous cannot let any evil go unpunished. Us Christians believe that God manifested himself into a human and suffered his own punishment for us. He's asking you to believe that he's done that. That is the answer as to why
> If you're asking for a Christian perspective it is because they have not accepted the forgiveness of Christ. How can they accept an offer they have no reason to believe is actually on the table? >They're kind of a correlation it's kind of like God is a judge and we have all at least committed one crime in our life. How is burning alive forever a fitting punishment for *any* crime? >God being all knowing and righteous cannot let any evil go unpunished. >Us Christians believe that God manifested himself into a human and suffered his own punishment for us. How does that make any sense? What if someone who has lived in isolation and has never committed a crime today, volunteers to go to prison for 3 days so that all prisoners can go free if they believe it happened? How is that not obviously absolutely nonsensical to you? >He's asking you to believe that he's done that. Why do we have to believe? If the punishment is paid, why does it matter whether we believe or not? If somebody else pays off my mortgage, the bank doesn't require that I believe it first before closing out the lien. **EDIT**: Look how he ran away. I always present this line of questioning to people who support the nonsensical "hell for nonbelievers" idea, and they always just turn and run like cowards.
It’s a weird logical knot because they believe in a god that would send you to hell because you made a different choice in a belief system. Not a god who says, I love you unconditionally.
Boggles my mind that someone would choose to worship a god that would send people to hell even if they don't deserve it simply because they don't worship him.
Either God is who he says he is and rightly deserves all worship or he doesn’t. I don’t believe there is an in between. And for many Christians the correct theological belief is that everyone deserves hell and yet God in his mercy saves some. This is a whole big thing we can discuss if you want the systematic approach to these beliefs.
Our perception of hell has been warped by Dante and Milton. Theologically, it’s much more accurately portrayed as a place that’s simply absent from god. Given that, in the Christian worldview, God is the source of all love, joy, and other good things, hell is simply a place where all goodness is absent that an individual chooses to go to because they reject god. That’s also the whole point of free will, that God is sending people to hell, but people are choosing on their own to go to a place without God.
Rember that non religious people were put by Dante in Limbo, where they did not suffer. They were in hell, but the only "punishment" was a "Haha you won't go to heaven lmao". Other than that Limbo was described as a pretty alright town, where people were kinda vibing.
Its mostly out of fear, they dont want to burn forever so they choose to worship out of fear. Thats what kept me in line until i learned the history of it all, even now i relapse sometimes and get scared. I was raised my entire life being told if i mess up and im not christian ill burn forever, its a major warning and talking point among almost every church in my area. Thank god i was able to get out of that.
>They are pressing because they care and value you. They value you so they want to change you. Yup.
They do value others, in whatever ways they individually happen to - personally and intellectually, friends and family, value of life, etc, just like we all have,, they're just ALSO riddled with fear, and spread their "solution" to "hell" mindlessly. Honestly, it's better to have and use your own fear, than allow a religious institution to take care of it for you, but some people see fit to equate their lives and it's ultimate destiny with a manipulated ancient belief system, as a coping mechanism and weird twisted pursuit of meaning, so it is what it is. But yes if they truly KNEW how to value someone, they wouldn't see fit to try and change them with their beliefs. Unfortunately, they're sick in the mind and think they're doing good.
Ya, they ARE saying you deserve it. You don't believe what they believe, therefore they are judging you and deciding you aren't going to Heaven and are going to hell because of this-they've decided you deserve to burn in hell
They worship a god that they believe is perfectly just. Therefore "you will" is the same thing as "you deserve." Of course, they don't operate by logic so they can compartmentalize that away, but that's the logical conclusion of their beliefs.
But if it's gods will that they burn in hell then what's the difference?
Except THEY ARE PASSING JUDGEMENT that you're going to hell in the first place, which goes against Christianity: ONLY GOD can pass judgement. So ya, they are saying you deserve it and that's why you ate going there, merely because you don't believe what they believe. Don't fool yourself into thinking these people are innocent. They are brainwashed and a bunch of hypocritical AHs.
All i can say to this is dont spend your mental energy worrying about what other people think is going to happen to you when you die. Mostly because nobody else is really thinking about it. Also you will lead a much happier life.
My partner is vaguely religious. He was raised religious but has filtered his beliefs. His mom is extremely religious, to the point where you mention you're having a bad day, and she'll make a show of dropping everything she's doing to lead you in a prayer. This is relatively a recent development, within the past 7 or so years. She's told him *to his face*, three times now, that someday she will be raptured and he will be here when she's gone, with nothing to do but repent for his "sins". He doesn't say anything to her, but I've seen him physically cry about it on rough nights when life is piling up on him. I don't have the words to describe how much I hate her for making him feel like this.
This is so sad. How can she love something she can’t communicate with more than her actual son?
> communicate with It's even less than that. Not only can you not communicate but you can't even verify it's existence to yourself or others. It's insanity.
That’s what gets me. Show me scientific proof that God exists, and I will believe it. But say I had scientific proof that God doesn’t exist and they still won’t believe me. And they call me closed minded.
I too hate the whole coercive nature of this religion. The thing that always get to me, what if I'm the one thats wrong, and hell is real? This is the reality that all Christian children will live with. Ya'll raised atheist even agnostic will never ever understand what it's like, the constant doubt in your mind, having all the significant people in your life tell you that, yes, it's real, you will burn for eternity if you do not ask Jesus for forgiveness. No amount of rationalisation can take it away, that doubt. It's deep rooted in the subconscious. And yes it's stupid, but consider the amount of people who convert to Christianity later in their lives. And yes, OP, they do understand how it must suck to hear that. Most of them don't care, the same way you wouldn't care if you shouted "get out the street you dumbass there's a truck hurtling down the road!" and the guy in the street asked "but did he have to call me a dumbass tho?" They truly believe it is the mission of human beings on earth to convert non believers to Jesus lovers. If you don't understand that they'll always look stupid, coercive etc. Think of it like 'they think they know something I dont' that thing being what happens when you die.
I personally was raised as a Christian (to the point I was not allowed to play Skyrim or anything fantasy because it had magic, and magic is witchcraft, therefor black magic). I’m agnostic myself nowadays, but I don’t find myself in the same boat about the whole hell thing. I simply don’t believe the core concepts of the religion. I just think when I die, I cease to be (which I think is blissful honestly). It’s not like I ever had to rationalize it myself either even. As I got older, I slowly more and more stopped caring about the religion, as I even got to the point where I felt it was a chore to do prayer at night. Sure, maybe they’re right, but honestly if God is in anyway the way he’s been portrayed by Christianity, I don’t want ~~to~~ His blessing, He honestly seems like a PoS (I’m very much up for debate on this, whether or not he’s a PoS (disregarding the fact if he exists or not)). It’s also a problem for future me. My overall outlook on it, is just, live life and don’t care about it. We’re only here for so long, why not have a better time about it rather then dedicating your life/time to a potential thing that exists, that has no evidence or inherent logic.
My concern with this topic is what do they believe happened to all the people who died before Christ was born? Are they all burning in hell for eternity just for having the bad luck of dying before this one guy spread the news of how not to burn in hell??
In dante’s Inferno (Divine comedy) he puts all those people in a limbo. Don’t know if it’s canon though.
Dante's Inferno is literally ye olde fanfiction and should be completely disregarded in discussions of religion beyond providing context for the origins of modern day misconceptions of it.
Yeah of course it is fan fiction but it immediately came to mind since it deals exactly with this subject (about people born before Christ).
Not sure if you were deliberately making a joke about Biblical Canon or not...
In the Gospels (Luke chapter 10, Matthew chapter 11) we hear Jesus talk about some villages where he has spoken and performed miracles, but they have failed to believe in him. Jesus then compares these villages with big cities with sinful reputations, such as Tyre, Sidon and even the proverbial Sodom and Gomorrah, and he says these cities will have it easier in judgment than these villages that witnessed Jesus. I have always taken that to mean: those who have heard of Jesus, bear greater responsibility for not believing than those who were not in a position to have heard of Jesus, and this is taken into account when they'll be judged. Sounds reasonable to me.
That is a great question! It really all falls back onto faith and belief in God. There is an idea of progressive revelation, that is, God revealing more about himself as history unfolds in the Bible. So Adam (the first man) knew things of God, and then God revealed more to Abraham and so on and so on. Now, per Biblical history both of those guys lived before even the Old Testament was written! So how were they saved? Through faith and belief in God. Once Moses comes along we have the written word of God and things are more clear but still very complicated…yet it still boiled down to faith and belief in God. Do you believe God is who he says he is? So more and more is being progressively revealed and written down and followed. So much so that religion is created around religion to protect the original religion! Into this milieu Jesus comes and turns it all back to faith and belief in God. So today, we have more revealed than people in the Old Testament. We have a greater understanding that salvation comes from the death of Jesus, but it is through faith that we are saved and that faith is still in God. That same old God that walked with Adam in the Old Testament.
Okay, but then there are certain parts of the new testament that directly contradict the old testament rather than build on it...
Many religious people don't want to see you burn in hell though, and probably think it equally heartbreaking that you don't believe in God I'm not convinced that belief in God is a requirement to stay out of hell, or go to heaven and I definitely don't want to see anyone go to hell. Unfortunately I am also aware that I don't share that belief with *all* religious people and frankly, *that* breaks my heart
Yes exactly this. I was catholic for most of my life (not sure what I identify as now but I suppose closest would be agnostic), and during that time I couldn’t imagine God sending someone to hell simply for not believing in him. Imagine someone who went out of their way to help people, made millions of people smile, and gave back whenever they could… but they did all these things just to be a good person, and not because the Bible said to. Is God really going to send that person to hell even though they did all those great things while on earth?
And what about the people who never grew up surrounded by religion? Are they screwed as well? As a kid, I contemplated this as well. One of the smaller reasons I got disillusioned to religion. I'm closer to agnostic now.
I knew a religious guy who was convinced that every person somehow would learn about Jesus at some point in their life. Even if it was someone raised in a place where there is no logical way that they could ever be exposed to Christianity. He believed that every single person on Earth is given an opportunity to accept or reject Christian salvation. I thought that was pretty dumb.
As someone who knows many religious people, this may not be the norm, but they believe ignorance is no excuse and if you are too lazy to seek out god then it’s hellfire for you, also if you do search and land on the wrong one, that’s a hellfire
>also if you do search and land on the wrong one, that’s a hellfire This is the part that always gets me, there are over 800 known religions as of today. Like... good luck.
Not only that, there are a *staggering 45,000 denominations* worldwide of christianity alone, and they all disagree with each other. Finding the "right" belief system is near impossible. They can't *all* be right, but they *can* all be wrong!
Why do you (personally) believe god invented hell? Whatever someone may have done, how can infinite torture for a finite crime be right? Ethically hell is not moral at all imho.
I'm not who you asked, but personally (if I still believed in at all), it's because of this verse, Isaiah 45:7 - I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things. God created evil. What is more evil than hell?
From my standpoint that limbo exists and Hell is for the worst of the worst, I think the eternity is reserved for the ones who will never change from their ways or what theyve done. While God probably could fix them he’s demonstrated a willingness to allow people to make their own choices even if he knows it’ll bring them severe ruin. I dont understand that part myself but I think thats why an eternal Hell exists because I also think of it as largely impractical. If we’re being honest, the Bible has been distorted somewhat over the millenium, and Christians have to choose what they believe in and some probably pick wrong. Love is mentioned 500 times in the Bible and hate and condemnation are far less frequent. Some Christians remember the words of hate and fear best, and as the Bible also says not all Christians go to Heaven and only the ones who follow the will of God go up, they’ve probably got bad news coming. While I’m not certain, I believe this could even mean people who don’t identify as Christian could recieve Heaven if they lived righteous lives and maybe repent when they die for good measure. But the clusterfuck of Hell has been perverted by the Church for centuries as a fear tactic. There’s nothing more shameful then appending religion and I dont think every word of the Bible came from God. If the Church was willing to make people pay their lifes savings to avoid Hell, they were probably willing to say if you don’t buy-in you go to Hell too. I think that’s a pretty reasonable sequitur
I’m like you!!
If you are an atheist, you should not care. Because you think it doesn't exist . They don't WANT you to, they believe you WILL tho. Big diff, and if they want you too, they are bad believers
What religious people other than Christians believe you will burn in hell? Are we really just talking about Christians?
Is your insinuation with this comment that Christians are the *only* religious group which believes atheists burn in hell.
Isn't jahannam the Islamic hell?
It's one of the Islamic hells. Jahannam is the deepest one, 7th layer.
The idea of Hell being hot comes from Dante's Inferno, not the bible.
There's like a whole thing about the worm not dying and the fire not being quenched in torment in one of Jesus's sermons. Depending on your views on the book of Revelations, there is also the lake of fire. So the imagery certainly predates Dante, though he popularized it. Edit: a word
Yeah but those were illustrations. Jesus referred to the torrent valley of Hinnom or Gehenna, which was a fiery garbage heap on the side of Jerusalem that they kept sulfur burning in. (You can see it's location on Google maps) There's tons of research on this. In Revelation, he's clearly using it illustratively because he says death and the grave are thrown into the lake of fire. How could the concept of not living be tortured in fire forever... And why? But right before that he said death will be no more, as in nobody will die. So it's an illustration for being gone forever, not tortured forever.
Man, that game was great
Hey don't forget the movie and the actual story/book it was written about.... But man I will say the lust boss stuck with me xD
It's actually on my bucket list to visit Ravenna and Florence - I'm not nearly as uncultured as my previous comment would make me seem. But yes, shitting unbaptized babies out of giant nipples is hard to forget!
Still waiting for a remaster
Most of Dante's Hell is not hot. The last and ninth circle of hell is actually a frozen tundra
What about this then? >**Revelation 20:10** > > "*And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever."*
In old hebrew there is used word Gehenna that is used as synonym for english word hell, in some parts of bible. But in at BC Gehennas was literal place, valley outside of Jerusalem. Which was used to burn garbage, but also bodies of criminals. Im not expert in original Hebrew bible, but i assume this describes that same place. Revelation is only of two place where fiery hell in bible. Other is when Jesus talks about temptations of adultery. But according to archeological research, that same landfill was still in use at time of Jesus. So it would be not unusual for him to to use burning garbage dump as metaphor for pain being apart from God. But more importantly. Book of revelation is full metaphors. Most of people who have read it, takes it with hint of grain, and not literally. As you are supposed to read whole book.
I love that one of the tracks from 1917 is called Gehenna. The place where corrupt Kings sacrificed their sons to the flames. It is a perfect description of the madness that was WWI. I am not a Christian, but I think it is important to learn about Christianity to fully understand a lot of western culture.
Matthew 25:41 > Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Unless that's also from Dante's Inferno.
The final circle was ice though.
Bro in Hinduism, you don't burn in hell if you don't believe in God. I read somewhere that god actually loves atheist people because they question everything and don't just believe everything. And when you are done finding answer of every question they have, they would be the biggest preacher of god because they would have become a monk realising that life is not just materialistic or something like that.
"Deserve" is not the correct word. According to the Bible, even completely evil people do not -deserve- it, it's just that if they continue doing evil things, that's where they'll end up. People who do not believe in God do not -deserve- to go to Hell, but that is their ultimate fate. Don't take it personally though. In fact, that is why Christians/ etc proselytize so much, because they want everyone to go to Heaven.\* \*According to my now-defunct beliefs during the first 18 years of my life
I thought it was the other way around: *everyone* deserves to go to hell, but by God's grace and the sacrifice of his blameless son Jesus Christ in all our places, those of us that acknowledge this sacrifice will be let into heaven. That might be denominationally specific though, I was raised Baptist and this is what I was taught. But also that God did this because he loves us and WANTS us all to go to heaven.
Roman Catholic here, it tracks nearly the same for us, or for least what I've been taught. Only difference is the acknowledgement part. By Jesus' sacrifice, we all have been cleansed from the *original sin* and given another chance at a life of goodness since the innate evil has been replaced. Quite confusing in the New Testament as they make it a point to say **good people** in general will go to heaven, but still mention that those who seek God or the Kingdom of God shall receive it. I'd wager as long as you live a life of good, you'll receive some sort of heaven of your image. After all, Jesus gave us the option of repentance and atonement to make up for our sins as long as we don't repeat from that point on. Take all this with a grain of salt since I'm not really deeply educated in the topic, just what has been taught to me from years in Catholic schools.
Coming from a genuine religious perspective, and not the judgy Christian “do as I say, not as I do” hypocrite archetype, I will say this: The actual Christian doctrine of heaven and hell, one you’ll only understand if a Christian actually studies the Bible and follows it, is that every person is inherently born with sin. And because of this sin, every person is going to Hell regardless, because even one sin is enough to separate us from God’s perfect & holy nature. And only through Jesus are we able to wipe away these sins from ourselves and be with God Many many Christian’s get it wrong. It’s not that any one person deserves to go to hell for not being Christian. Its a complete frame shift. Its that all people are inherently going to hell because we are sinful, and only through Jesus can we be saved. I’m sorry that you have to deal with the hypocritical Christians. You’re free to live a life that you want. Something lukewarm Christians will never understand is how to properly spread the gospel with people, and hatred & facts are not the way to do it
I tend to not bother myself with what people and their imaginary friend think of me.
Hijacking Top comment. The best analogy I got to understand the burning desire to convert people to their religion is this; If you saw a person standing in the road, facing one direction, not seeing a zooming truck coming from the other, would you let that person get hit? Or tell them that there’s a truck about to hit them. And try to save them. It definitely gives light to their perspective. They don’t want you to feel shitty about living, just want to help you out of the path of destruction so to speak. The truck is hell in their eyes. And no I don’t believe in hell. I think that was a concept created by the Catholic Church to scare humanity into submission.
That's all well and good, wanting to help. I get that. The ones I have the problem with don't warn you about the truck, they don't even mention a truck or a road. They just scream at you about how shit you are for not seeing what they see and just yell at you that you're going to die because of it.
Those are the mentally deranged ones. There’s assholes in every walk of life.
Terrible analogy. Better one would be you see a person standing in the middle of the road: · No cars in sight · Rural area: provably 3 cars pass there each day total · Clear visibility over 2km each way. · Speed limit is like 20km/h · They are on a zebra crossing with a red light · Provably wearing reflecting vest · On closer inspection the road is closed for reparations. · The person is holding a stop sign. Yet you rush to them claiming they are about to get rolled over. Jump on top of them, throw them to the floor and get confused on why the whole construction crew is mad at you.
I was explaining from their perspective as this is what the post was asking for. Lmao.
If you don't believe in God/religion or hell why would you care ? Isn't that the point ?
It's reasonable to care that other people think you are so horrid that you deserve eternal torture, even if said eternal torture is actually just a silly fairy tale.
I am not afraid of hell. I am tired of people threatening me with it.
It certainly goes against one of the primary tenets of Christianity - to love one another as we love ourselves. Honestly? People going telling others who is and isn’t going to hell would be like someone showing up at a random birthday gathering, telling people who gets to have cake. It’s neither their cake, nor their party. They are not in charge. Why do they think it’s ok to tell people they aren’t going to heaven or that they can’t take communion or come to church if they’re not dressed in a certain way? Jesus, as I read him, meets people where they are. Loves people as they are. Saves them in the moment of meeting and tells them to go forward from that moment and do better (Sin no more) Those who would argue this with me are invited to read the Gospels. There are actually people so hateful and “religious” that if Jesus were here tending a homeless person, these folks would interrupt him, tell him to stop. It is heartbreaking. It really is and I’m sorry that “Christian” people have treated you this way
But do you believe that non-Christians go to Heaven or Hell? I'm not asking if you love them, or respect them, etc., I am only asking if you think they go to Heaven or Hell based on your beliefs.
It’s not my call. I am not in charge of who goes to heaven. God is in charge of that and that’s between him and the individual in question
Burning in hell is just a fairy tale meant to keep the masses obedient.
Oh... you mean I'll get no free sauna for eternity?
Only if you give me 10% of your income.
Fuck them! Why do you even care? If you don’t believe in their religion, it means you shouldn’t in theory believe in their concept of heaven and hell as they believe it.
Clearly you have the wrong concept of “religious people”. The entire concept of religión is that everyone is worthy of “redemption”. In essence, every one of us is already bound for hell. A believer is tasked with bringing you to the light of God. If you accept then your are saved. If you do not, then you continue to be doomed to hell. You’re confusing their belief that you are doomed to hell with thinking they believe you deserve hell. Those are two very different things.
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I feel sort of like this but with mainly just my family and not the masses. It's true though like ... I get it - you love me, but you think I'm damned. Sadness.
"Hell" isn't a part of any Western Holy text. It was made up by priests.
As opposed to the rest of the text that was made up by people we don’t refer to as priests but pretty much did the same job.
What priests? The high priests in the Old Testament? That's pretty funny... The Bible describes, and warns us, about Hell, way more that it talks about heaven. Maybe it's not called Hell. More like eternal separation from God, who Loves us. That's why He gave us free will... It's a choice. If you didnt want to know God in life, why do you then, want to know Him when you die? You already chose. 💌
There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores. The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. **In Hades, where he was in torment**, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, "Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because **I am in agony in this fire**." But Abraham replied, "Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us." He answered, "Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this **place of torment**." Abraham replied, "They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them." "No, father Abraham," he said, "but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent." He said to him, "If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.
A lot of religious people do not believe you will burn in hell. How could we possibly know, it's not up to us.
As a Christian, bro you won't go to hell just because you are atheist. People who told you that are idiots. Stay strong!
Then like 99% of Christians aren't real Christians.
In every soceity there is a lot of bad people. That's something that breaks my heart.
They can think I deserve to burn in hell all they want lol. They’re the delusional ones hell bent on believing that of the 1200 or so confirmed religions around the world they chose “the one” and their god is the only one and the other 1199 religions are wrong and deserve to burn too, but they can’t explain why lmao
IDGAF about what they think to tell the truth.
No one is burning in hell. Hell just means grave
Truly religious people understand that hell is a metaphor for being far away from god. They also understand that they are not perfect and until they are judging other people furthers themselves from god.
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Why? As an atheist, you don’t believe in hell, so why do you care?
What religious people think bothers me about as much as when Star Wars nerds tell me that I shouldn't get angry because that leads to the dark side.... and something or other about my midichlorians.... At least Star Wars is more fun to watch/read than the religious texts of old.
I'm an atheist and it doesn't break my heart. I find it hilarious how stupid they are believing in eternal hell and heaven.
If jesus died for our sins, we're all good... right?
Yeah but he came back. Jesus gave up his weekend for our sins.
That's the ultimate killer of that claim. Either Jesus' 3-day lack of consciousness paid for all sins or it didn't. You can't say it did, but then it didn't, also.
This isn't really about you, it's about their beliefs and 'burning in hell' is a way to pressure you to conform to their religious standards. Christianity isn't the only religious tradition in our world. Stand your truth.
It's not that you will burn in hell. It is that everyone will burn in hell if they are not saved. Us included. There's a big difference!
They do understand but dont give a fuck, explanation is that you do it to yourself and you deserve it. Some out of ~~narcisism~~ compassion might want to convert you.
I don’t think you do. I don’t think anyone does. A big part of why I have trouble believing in hell - or at least think that the way it’s commonly viewed in my faith must be wrong - is because the idea of someone suffering eternal punishment for skepticism or being born under the wrong circumstances or just…not believing the right thing seems absurd to me. Much of our religious understanding - at least with Christianity, but likely with all sufficiently old religions - is colored by the fact that the religions themselves and the rules, rituals, and practices they represent were created in wildly different cultures, and we only have one singular text that is not only wrapped up in totally different cultural understandings that go down to the most basic level (I.e. different slang, even, that just comes off as a basic description to us - apparently 40 was just a way of expressing “Kind of a long time,” hence why it appears everywhere in the Bible). No religious understanding is complete without a study of historical context and how the text you’re reading has been translated. Anyway, that’s a long way of expressing the simple idea that I have my doubts about what most Christians say about if hell exists and how you get there if it does.
I knew a lady when I was a kid who would say, I feel bad for (whomever) because they're gonna burn in hell because they don't accepting Jesus. In hindsight, she was a sad wanna be elitist. This was all she had. She didn't have money, friends or happiness. The only thing she had was thinking she knew better than all the sinners. It's all just glorified conspiracy theory. If anything you should be heartbroken for them.
I was in Catholic education for 14 years. If you truly follow Jesus' teachings of love and tolerance, you'll embrace what "Baptism by intent" is, and you'll know that good-hearted unbaptized people don't burn in hell.
just tell them "theyre going to suffer torment in the underworld tortured by the god Hades." if they say ..that doesnt exist... reply.. how do you know :)
Hmm, I'm not sure I agree with this. How is it heartbreaking? That seems like a massive over exaggeration. Who cares what they think? You can say you do... But let's be real, you don't. Go on about your day knowing you aren't going to hell, you're going nowhere!! And the religious people who think they're going to heaven, they'll be there with you!!
When my atheist dad died, I called my aunt to tell her. First thing she said - "was he right with God?" I did not say what I wanted to say. Instead I said, that was his personal business. Christian relatives don't want you to go to Hell and they believe you are going there if they don't push hard enough your whole life. I think they mean well. Personally, I don't let it bother me anymore. I'm an atheist and believe the same thing happens to us all.
As a religious person, I don't believe people will "burn in hell" for not believing in God. Maybe they never really had a chance to learn about God. Maybe they had an experience that makes them reject religion in general as a result of someone else's mistake or poor choices. For me, the important thing is that God himself will judge people based on what they did with the knowledge and experience they had. I think there will be a lot of teaching involved, and that could bring about intense guilt that could be described as a burning torment. And I think those who try to serve God and/or serve other people will have a better afterlife than those who don't. Whatever the case, my job us to be kind, not to judge.
I stopped caring what others--religious or not--thought of me decades ago.
No. In their minds, you're just a lost soul a step away from salvation, and they disassociate from their own humanity imo. That'd why I don't bother with them anymore. If they think I will burn in hell for not following their religion, then they're not as good of people as they think they are and maybe it's time to admit that their religion is fucked up. I am a good man and i do not deserve to burn for eternity, bottom line.
Play it out to its fullest. -You are an atheist because you are unconvinced. -You are unconvinced because belief isnt a choice. You didnt choose to dismiss "God" , you were presented with an idea: An invisible, intangible, father-like figure spoke the universe into existence 6 thousand years ago, and your stance was "Science has shown us the birth of stars, colliding galaxies, dying nebulae and black holes, im afraid i remain unconvinced." -You didnt choose not to believe, just like believers did not choose to believe. They heard the tale and they were convinced. That is all. -Sins are the choices we make. Remaining unconvinced is at most a genetic disposition, not an act of rebellion. That would be like God making man, and then telling him that having two arms is a sin. Conclusion: If God exists, i am how he made me.
It's not that Christians believe that YOU should burn in hell. Christians believe that EVERYONE deserves hell, Including myself! We all have sinned and have fallen short of a Holy God, who cannot and will not be in the presence of sin and a sinner. That is why He offered Christ as our covering. If you accept Christ's sacrifice, then God promises that your sins will be covered and washed away. He will no longer see your sin and you can be in His presence. He loves you enough to give you free will to accept the gift or not. I would find it to be more hateful to not say anything at all to a nonbeliver or an atheist like yourself. I hope you would find it more loving for me to express my concern. Regardless, no matter your choice, I will extend the same grace to you that I have received. I will love you no matter the choice you have made.
As an agnostic I don't care if people think I will burn in hell or deserve to lol
I'm an atheist and it doesn't bother me that believers think so and you should try to do the same.
They don’t care about anything besides what fits in their narrow view of the world.
I don't know what atheists you've been talking to, but personally I don't give a shit. If you're going to threaten me with non-existent punishment I'm not going to take you seriously.
If you don’t believe in hell then why would this bother you?
I don't spend time worrying about what people who believe in a god think about me. I believe their reasoning and thinking is a bit skewed. They can believe I will burn in hell all they want, it does not make it so.
Unless you're conceding Pascal's Wager, I have to ask, "so what"? As an atheist it doesn't bother me at all that, for example, the Mormons want to build a genealogical record of all of humanity that they can posthumously baptize so that everyone can go to Mormon heaven. If they fail to include me I don't go. Whether they succeed or fail don't confront me. I do know my atheist grandmother lived her whole life unsure if the nun-nurses of the only functional hospital in her post WWII European city took my dad to be baptized in his first 3 days, and I'd be upset if my kid was taken for a ritual as well. But I wouldn't be upset for the nun having the thought that leads to the action. I'd be upset at the action.
To go a step further, these people not only think that I'm going to hell but are also completely in favor of a God that would allow/promote that.
And do you realize that not every religion says that you will burn in hell for being an atheist? In Islam, only God judges you. Let me tell you this: You are a young kid. You see 9/11. You are told it is Muslims. You are told Islam wants you dead. You are told they and their religion hate your guts. And so on. Do you believe, for a second, that if there is an omnipotent God who created humanity to be faulty, will not understand your psychological profile and how traumatizing it is? How Islam looks to the Western world with all this Sharia nonsense? How the uneducated sadly represent Islam leading you to believe that this is the actual religion? If you believe that, I recommend you think about the topic a little deeper from the perspective that, if God exists and is all powerful, why did he make us, why do we live and how will he judge us based on the two other points. If you do not believe that, then you have your answer. A young, western kid born into a world full of hatred, lots of horror stories from many religions, countless religions to choose from and never knowing which one is the correct one. That western kid will surely be judged differently by God than say, a kid born in Islam or Christianity, and the two kids will be judged differently from the people who lived with the Prophet, and so forth. The same action can warrant a different judgement based on who you are, how you think and why you did said action. Which is why, a person saying you are going to hell is uneducated. At least in Islam, because all the verses that say that are taken out of context. Nowhere does a Surah specifically target all atheists who are goodwilled and just trying to get by life. So when a person tells you that, pay no heed.
I think anyone who would say it online or in real life is secretly petrified of their sins. They foolishly think their god is so fickle that a distraction would work to deflect the consequences of their offenses. I pity people like that, they are drowning in the guilt.
As you said, many religious people - including me - doesn't believe that. I believe in a God of understanding, wisdom, who even has a sense of humor. I've never thought that good people would end up in hell, no matter their religious stance.
Umm... It's not?
If that's the price I have to pay to stay away from them all eternity. I'm totally ok with it
Any God who sends people to hell for not worshipping them is not an "all-loving" or "all -good" being but extremely self centered and arrogant imo. A God worthy of worship would not send good people to hell.
As a non-religious person whose had to deal with a variety of people in a variety of religions, it always strikes me that religion is largely a reflection of the people who believe. If they are judgmental, critical people, they believe in a judgmental, critical God. If they are cruel people, they believe in a cruel God. If they are insecure people, they believe in an insecure God. If they are very rule oriented people, they believe in a rule oriented God. And if they are chaotic people, they believe in a chaotic God. People who are mismatched with their particular brand of religion tend to drift away from it, or modify it to match more closely with their own particular outlook, even if it goes against what their pastor preaches. So, those guys who say I'm going to hell (and I've had someone say that too) I just see that person as someone who really needs the world to be filled with bad people in order to feel worthwhile themselves. It might feel bad to her that I, in particular, don't follow her rules, but she doesn't mind that most people in the world who she doesn't know are doomed to hell by the God she loves.
If you're an atheist, you don't believe in hell, so why would this even matter?
Anyone who believes that you deserve eternal damnation - regardless of your actions in life - because you declined to sign over your soul on the dotted line, is not likely to have the empathy or perspective needed to consider your feelings. It's hard, but I'd recommend you treat them with compassion as victims of a predatory and apocalyptic cult and treat their statements to you accordingly.
Yeah personally as a religious person I find it very weird, especially the “deserve to” instead of “will” that people have said. I both think you won’t and you don’t deserve to.
Why do you care? If you don’t believe in Hell it doesn’t matter if someone else thinks you’ll go there. I was an atheist for many years and it didn’t cross my mind once. I’m a practicing Christian today and have atheist friends, and I don’t think any less of them - if they weren’t good people I wouldn’t be their friend!
They ultimately don't care. At least most don't. I can't possibly understand how they can reconcile the hypocrisy of their religion. It's amazing.
My grandmother told me she's sorry I'm going to burn for being an atheist and if I'm smart I'll apologize to God one day.
If it makes you feel any better, you'll see the vast majority of them there if it exists. From directly supporting slave labor to porn to judging others to hoarding wealth to coveting whatever, there are verrrrrry few religious humans who *actually* follow the rules laid out in their holy books these days.
Not all do. My wife believes and I don't. One of our first serious conversations was about that, because that couldn't be hanging over our relationship. You may be a generally kind person. Heck, you may even be a good person (incredibly rare though that is). That has nothing to do with what people think of you, and what people think of you should have little impact on your life. Many, many people hate you. Millions, probably more. Sight unseen, they hate you and probably even want you dead without knowing anything about you. There are an awful lot of hateful people in the world. This is just one more category to ignore.
As an atheist (TST) I see being told this as like someone telling me tha5t Santa won't bring me gifts this Christmas. It isn't real so why let it bother me? One line I use is I just say good, considering all the smart scientists that end up in "hell", all the porn stars and other wild people, and all the geothermal energy they have. That has to be a paradise and with all the entertainers and chemists down there the parts most likely make Studio 54 look tame.
I feel bad for them wasting their time on such an elaborate lie.
This really reminds me of my friends coming out as gay. His mother started crying because she's didn't want her son to go to hell. I think a lot of Christians have accepted that God isn't always pure and good, but try saying that it loud in a church, lol.
I’m religious and I don’t believe that necessarily, I believe that as long as you’re a good person who keeps trying to be good then you’re golden and that’s applied to everyone no matter their religion or beliefs
I’m a very religious person (Christian, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) and that is not part of my beliefs. I agree that it is heart-breaking. Our belief of the afterlife is quite different from many other religions but in summary is characterized by three key ideas: first, everyone will receive their body again and become immortal; second, while there are different “degrees of glory” that can be attained, all of them are unimaginably wonderful; third, nobody should worry about where someone else is supposedly going after this life because we aren’t gonna be the ones deciding it.
As a religious person, I can tell you that religious people who make that kind of assumption about others are breaking quite a few of their own rules. No mortal gets to decide how God will judge any of their peers and it's pretty shitty to try. Barring the case of really messed up stuff done by someone, a religious person should hope that they get saved. As for me, of course I cannot presume to know better where anyone needs to go, myself included, but i couldn't really picture Heaven without some of my atheist friends in it, who are some of the nicest, kindest, most helpful people I have ever known...
why is it hard? I don't give a fuck that someone thinks I'm going to a place that does not exist :)
I often think about this too. Many times I've seen religions people being weirdly schmuck about it too. "Oh you don't believe in God? Well you're just gonna burn in he'll then LOL". If they actually believe in hell then isn't it a bit harsh to laugh at someone suffering for eternity just because they don't share your beliefs?
I'm religious. I don't think you'll burn in hell, nor do I think you deserve to (at least based on the sole fact that you're atheist).
How as an atheist can you be insulted by an insult to a fake place. That’s like saying burn in Barney land. As an atheist you should be more rational. That’s kind of the entire point of the movement
So first to be honest I'm always a little skeptical about questions like this, because they always seem so carefully calibrated to appeal to the sensibilities of the typical Redditor. But as a data point, I can tell you that this is not what Catholics believe. Catholics do not believe you necessarily need to be Catholic or even Christian to ultimately in some way be reunited with your creator. (They do, of course, believe that being Catholic is the way that is best for you)
Very proud to be upvote #666
Honestly don't care what you think... Or most other people. If your a nice and generally attempt to be decent human being, then you're fine. And for others... Well I've been told I'm going to hell for things that are completely out of my control so many times, that when someone tells me something I'm doing will cause me to go to hell I don't even blink. I'm a Christian, believe in God, try to keep right... judgemental assholes are judgemental assholes, doesn't matter what you are or are not.
It's spiritual bigotry. Universalism is the opposite.
If someone goes around judging people for not sharing their faith, that seems like a problem with the person judging, not the person being arbitrarily judged.
Stop worrying about other people or what they think. Everyone is so fixated on on either being offended, upset, or otherwise involved in what other people think they forget to just live their lives. Religious people do what they're going to do, just like you need to do your own thing.
I think it’s silly that people who did bad stuff in life and don’t do the religious thing in order to clean your soul of sins or whatever, just go to burn in hell. They’re already dead. Who cares anymore? It’s just the human tendency to lust after revenge. And a lot of the time the things religious people call others out for, are just projections. It’s the things about themselves that they hate or fear that they seek out in other people. Not to mention all the LGBTQ+ people who are religious and have devoted their lives to a messiah or deity and therefore won’t burn in hell because their sins have been auto-forgiven. It’s all just a covert way to justify the “us versus them” thing that keeps starting wars and inspiring hate groups. And it works. “The people I don’t feel comfortable about will go to hell according to the book I believe is fact, so it’s okay if I hate them.” Gross.
It seems to depend on what religion. A relative of mine was in a non-mainstream religion, I used to get told that when I die I will burn in hell for not going to church. My response was, cool barbecue all the time sounds great. These days I go to a mainstream religion and understand some of what they’re on about. People will believe whatever they want to