My Mother Read Revelations And Wept
Over my fate outlined therein...
"But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.
- Revelation 21:8
...this took place just before I went around to her house for dinner and there found she was hysterical over the stew and dumplings about my looming eternal torment.
As I've mentioned before, I'm the only godless member of an extended fundamentalist family of about 35 spread over 3 generations. The rest all look forward to their deaths with macabre relish and at family gatherings even discuss the subjective nature of their private versions of heaven, replete with rivers of chocolate and good times just "hangin' out with the lord..." who apparently has nothing better to do than spend time with creatures whose every future thought has been known since the beginning of universal time.
So, given Mum was well informed by her own research about the ascending smokes of hell I asked her if she would light hell if god asked her to. She replied that if god asked her to light the fire of hell he would not be god but satan. She became fervently worked up over this and began to cry, which is her rather emotional nature.
So I asked her if she was setting her own morality above that of god rejecting the proposition that billions deserve incineration for their terrible sins, to which after a silent moment she would not directly reply, other than to suggest hell probably wasn't real anyway. Now, we often lambast the godly here but it's pretty obvious most of them are stuck in a cycle of terror, desperate to please the school bully. How sad to waste life trembling before these imagined horrors instead of reveling in the sense of awe that comes with the conscious realisation of your own too-brief and fragmentary existence.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
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Revelations says the lake of fire is real, but she can not accept it so it must be imaginary. But it must be real if the bible says, but she does not want her baby burning forever so it must be imaginary but ........
And all of her angst is self inflicted. Give her a hug for me, AE.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
Don't mothers have enough worries? I know my mother has these thoughts as well.
What a list of sins in Revalation 21:8. If you don't believe or are afraid you are just as bad as if you murdered someone. Got Morality?
Religion Kills !!!
Numbers 31:17-18 - Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.
http://jesus-needs-money.blogspot.com/
Looking like fools in fact means trying to convince me to believe their unsubstantiated dogma. Suffice to say, when it comes to supporting my pensioned mother materially, I give double what my siblings do combined and there are 4 of them. Actions, it seems, do not speak louder than empty words.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Scare the mothers and they'll never stop trying to get their kids back into the fold...
Hope you're doing ok, mate.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
I hope you know I was sincere about hugging your mom - I realize it is a trial for you. Being a mom, I can imagine believing sincerely that one (though in my case it is more likely two) of my sons were going to be tortured for all eternity. And if I work at it, I could imagine their skin burning and crackling and the scent of roasting meat and burning hair going on and on and on...
See, I could get worked up about it and I don't believe in it. I was a total drag for my sons and my husband. I would worry about them being in car accidents, falling off of bridges, getting in the middle of a gang/drug fight. I could get myself going and crying and almost hysterical. I was a wreck most of the time when the boys were teenagers. I'm much more kicked back about it now. The boys are all old enough to know better and take care of themselves if they do something stupid and the husband couldn't get into trouble if he worked at it anymore.
I don't know how they all put up with me during those years. But I got over it, and they still like me - or so they say. Having been there, your mom needs a hug - especially when she exasperates you the most. I don't remember if you are living close enough for physical hugs, but virtual hugs can be almost as satisfying.
And so I am sending a virtual hug your way, as well. Hang in there.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
and don't worry - I'm a regular mother hugger and I never end a disagreement with 83yo mum without us agreeing we love each other and that's the most important thing to us. As a total sap I visit her twice a week - she cooks one night and I do the other. Funnily enough, the christians very rarely visit her at all.
We watch period drama and argue about god. I've managed to get her to fall half in love with David Attenborough but while she made it through Life on Earth, she couldn't deal with Sagan's Cosmos. Too dry.
And yes - I'm sure she kneels before that little shrine to jesus she has in her bedroom and begs for my eternal soul at night. Which is a pretty sad business given I know how much she frets over the kids and grandkids and great grandkids. There's not a lot I can say to help her. I tell her the whole thing is irrational balls but she believes it anyway. Jesus is her best friend and has been since she was a teenager. Which is a bit sad.
As for your fears, there is no flesh to crackle in hell given such things as bodies will have passed away and the whole idea any sort of life can exist without the entire biochemical mechanisms of gaia is a complete farce. But one thing's sure. It's not just the ex-christians who are tormented by the hideous doctrines of monotheism.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Pho.. of course there isn't any crackling going on in an imaginary place. I think christians suffer more than any ex-christian.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
to worry about. The Writings of Rev are the time of the end, we're not there yet.
The only possible thing the world needs saving from are those running it.
https://sites.google.com/site/oldseers
Knowledge trumps faith and I'm not a Theist
Lies are nothing more then falsehoods searching for the truth
If you understood the book from our interpretation you could explain it to her.
The only possible thing the world needs saving from are those running it.
https://sites.google.com/site/oldseers
Knowledge trumps faith and I'm not a Theist
Lies are nothing more then falsehoods searching for the truth
I think you are right, it would be terrible to truly believe that someone you loved was going to be tortured for eternity. If I believed that someone I loved would be subjected to such torture I would do everything I could to prevent it. Sad that some people get so upset over something that is completely imaginary.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
Damn you Beyond, I hate it when I agree with you. All you need now is to join the dark side of liberalism, get a sex change and I would sooooo marry you. Yea, and this commie wants his beer fucking now!
FUCKING COOITES MAN STOP IT! You are my enemy, damn you!
But as to the op, the concept of hell is not corrective nor is a mere act of containment. It is nothing less than revenge and revenge is not justice. And I agree Beyond, it is sad people get so upset over something completely imaginary. If she is not afraid of a Muslim's threat of hell, why the concept of even the Christian version? This is such an insidious meme as a concept, it uses fear to keep people in line.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
to keep floks in line.
So does the US Government.
The only possible thing the world needs saving from are those running it.
https://sites.google.com/site/oldseers
Knowledge trumps faith and I'm not a Theist
Lies are nothing more then falsehoods searching for the truth
Universe heat death is quite a few billion years away, I do agree. Coming from a scientific standpoint of course.
“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno
Its always 'sometime in the future' for the rapture and stuff like that.
Despite the hundreds of incorrect predictions by respected and unrespected religious people alike.
Secularist, Atheist, Skeptic, Freethinker
THEN DON'T FUCKING LET THEM BE LOST!!!! jesus motherfucking tap-dancing christ, can that prick of a god do whatever he wants or not? if i'm truly to believe the standard christian definition of god, then he could easily just snap his analogical fingers and change everything, so if that's what he wants, then he's a fucking retard. and i know they'll say, "well, it has to be our choice, blah blah blah," but then that means that's not what god actually wants. it seems to me what he wants is to be able to give a tiny minority of humans gold stars at the expense of frying the vast majority of them for all eternity.
if i were your mother (or father), AE, i would be pissed off at that cocksucker of a god for putting you in that danger to begin with, and i say that as a father myself. in fact, i would give that asswipe the finger while i was at it and tell him to go ahead and fry me too because the idea that i could enjoy "rivers of chocolate" or whatever the fuck for eternity while my little boy was roasting away is just fucking psychopathically ill.
as i said in TWD39's abortion of a thread, the god of the bible is a pretty shitty father.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
the ending of civilization.. About 20 years or less. Something like that.
The only possible thing the world needs saving from are those running it.
https://sites.google.com/site/oldseers
Knowledge trumps faith and I'm not a Theist
Lies are nothing more then falsehoods searching for the truth
Right. Whatever.
EVERY fucking generation has had their doomsdayers.
To say life will end is a DUH and a NO SHIT. But it will be of natural reasons, not some stupid Superman vs Lex Luthor. WE are destroying our planet with pollution and fossil fuel which is causing NON MAGICAL NON DEVIL, non supernatural climate change.
But the big three are the biggest fucking distraction to this global problem and people like you want to take our planet and use it for a childish game of capture the flag.
How fucking selfish of you as well. A planet of 7 billion and all you can think about is your stupid god claim as if it is the center of the universe. I live on this planet to and I'd like to be around a little longer than 20 years. But who gives a fuck about other people as long as you get what you want right?
Your death cult doomsday bullshit is sick and the world needs less of that distraction and more people willing to solve REAL problems.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
This bears repeating. Great post.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
The monotheistic god concept is too morally inconsistent to be worshiped and the followers of that concept rationalise the inherent violence of their faith away, whitewashing it with the blood of jesus. Why do you insist on only looking at the negative? they cry. You focus on the punishment not the fact god loves you so much he sent his only homoousian son to not really be a human and to not really die (my family are all nicenes) as not really a sacrifice for the sins of the world.
One of my earliest issues with the christian faith was the realisation god planned to torture all my friends. Yet theists still manage to rationalise this on the basis of the ad hominem argument of original sin. God people must really, really believe that everyday sins deserve torture and death. How odd they are. One thing I have noticed with theists is the propensity to cleave to false dichotomy. Humans are all evil and deserve to die. Look at the Dark Knight killer. He proves all humans are evil and must be killed. But god is not like him, no, he is perfect justice...
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Didn't you just tell your mom that's all garbage and a scam to suck in weak and vulnerable people?
Click here to find out why Christianity is the biggest fairy tale ever created!! www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm www.JesusNEVERexisted.com
But jesus is her 'best friend'...
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck