Old and New testament hells
Offline Biblical reports of hell vary considerable between old and new testament.
Hell is mentioned in the bible 31 times in the old testament, and always in terms of 'sheol' the hebrew word meaning hades, or simply grave. It is not a place of suffering, just a place where the dead go. That's all dead, whether you've been good or bad.
Enter Jesus, and the new testament. Now there is a proper Hell with lakes of fire, burning sulphur, eternal torment. I mean seriously - what a bastard! I prefer the old testament version if I had to choose.
Why would Jesus and God invent something so terrible as Hell as a punishment? If Christians are supposed to favour the New testament over the Old, because Jesus died for their sins, and not we live in grace, Why did he feel like belief in Jesus wasn't enough on its own, and have to add a massive spanking stick in the form of "and if you don't believe all this, you're now going to burn in hell for all eternity".
Given that from the time of Jesus, through history, more people have not been Christian than have (including many millions who never even heard 'the word' of god before they died, so never stood a chance of salvation), god has basically decided to create a huge pit of suffering and fairly arbitrarily plunge people into it.
Seriously, do Christians actually consider this stuff? It's crazy.
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Christians typically aren't too big on details. For those who haven't heard the gospel, there is always some sort of explaining away of how someone can't be held responsible for something they had no control over (even though I don't believe there is anything in the bible offering up this exception..." I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." )
Pretty cut and dry if you ask me. Of course us atheists who have heard the gospels (with probably a higher completion rate of reading the bible than Christians...) ARE going to hell. We have heard and rejected the gospels.
As far as why god/Jesus would have done such a thing, the answer is simple. In the New Testament, the demeanor of god is much different than in the old. He's stopped ordering his followers directly to commit genocide, even stopped doing it himself. He's not killing people on the spot for pulling out any more, put a stop to flooding the world, stopped sending bears to maul large groups of children...he's really seemed to calm down. But without a heavenly psychiatrist, he's probably still the same vindictive bloodthirsty jerk he always was. He's just become a troll now. "Hey look. I'm nice now, no more world-wide floods.......juuuuuuuuuuuuust kidding, you were the wrong kind of Christian. Now let this guy torture you forever, I'm going to watch!"
Theists - If your god is omnipotent, remember the following: He (or she) has the cure for cancer, but won't tell us what it is.
In other ancient books and texts of the region. The topic of the underworld could be quite lengthy but I will only mention two things. The grave is mentioned as a place for departed souls become ghosts, residing down there. In many myths there are odd contradictions being more a projection than anything else, at times. If you are that almost undefinable ghostly spirit. Why would you need to eat? I wonder this ? And yet I cannot think of any of the many nations that surrounded Israel, that do not describe food of the underworld. Secondly, In Sumerian accounts the place of departed souls is a very miserable existence. Was Dust Their Food and Clay Their Bread? The land from which you never return from. It's cold, it's dark, it's dreary, it's dusty, a projection of a literal grave. Nevertheless, The plus side you meet up with lost loved ones who have gone on before you.
This is fun sport to attack if we were at a si fi convention arguing over Star Trek vs Star Wars. But the reality is that Jews and Christians, while they claim to be best buddies, are the si fi fans arguing over Captain Kirk vs "the force of Jesus".
I am weary of jumping into their respective comic books. I think it is much more important to point out, even before you endulge them, that they both start, even before word one, postulate a non material super hero with magical super powers as their naked assertion.
I am aware that we do need skeptics that do that, we most cerainly do. Just a reminder to never forget, even if a new religion with a new god is started tommorow, with a new book, we'd have to battle that too.
When Mel Gibson had his drunken bigoted rant about Jews causing everything, of course he was wrong and bigoted. But Jews did exist prior to Christianity. I would simply point out that there was a religion Jews got their inspiration from prior as a result of the polytheism of the Caananites. So if Mel wanted to be correct about "who started it", I say that the Jews then and the Jews now are as much victims to credulity as Chrisitanity and Islam, as is anyone buying an invisible friend claim. All violence and no evidence. The perfict manifesto for mafia bosses and street gangs.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
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The OT served as a backstory for Judean rule over the conquered Galileans Jesus being a Galilean. We do not know what the Galilean religion was like before they were conquered and forced to convert. See Wars of the Jews, Josephus, for more details of the conquest and forced conversion.
So it may have simply been the NT is the Galilean view of things.
Further one of the differences between the infamous Sadduces and Pharisees is that one of them did NOT believe there was an afterlife. So simply finding it in the OT is not definitive.
Going back to Josephus again it is clear from his writings he did not consider the OT, aka Septuagint, to have any particular interest or importance or in any factual content for that matter. As he was a priest of that religion his apparent ignorance of its very existence is contrary to the modern view of those days. (He apparently knows of some similar stories but that is about all.)
As to what Christians think, atheists who appear in forums like this probablly know tens of times more about their religion than the average Christian.
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
"This is fun sport to attack if we were at a si fi convention arguing over Star Trek vs Star Wars. But the reality is that Jews and Christians, while they claim to be best buddies, are the si fi fans arguing over Captain Kirk vs "the force of Jesus"."
Fan wars are boring as fuck. 99% of participants don't know what the hell they are talking about. The average Trekkie has no idea the Executor was 8km long (any Star Wars nut might chime in to debate this, so I'll cut 'em off by saying I know). The average Star Wars nut is unlikely to know that the Enterprise D was about 0.64km long. With such ignorance on something as simple as dimensions, let alone trying to compare incompatible technologies and 'powers', debates tend to turn into clusterfucks of stupidity that make theists look kinda rational.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Hope GodsUseForAMosquito to be seeing GodUseForAMosquito around.
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Misc Stock Image which I cannot place
Ever since Trekkies and Star Wars dragged SF into the dirt the issue of fans has gotten a bad name. The first WorldCon after Niven's Ringworld featured a late night Congo Line through the halls chanting, The Ringworld is unstable. And the reason was correct and Niven redirected the novels to discovering why it was not and such. I am of the old school and Stan Schmidt and I were in the same graduating class. Not that it ever mattered in the least and I barely knew him even though it was a class of six. For real bragging rights JWC published one of my letters. And Cabel W. Johnson occassionally posts on the web.
I agree today'a fans have no real concept of science much less what we called hard science fiction of the Astouding/Analog variety of the Heinlein and dozens of real SF authors wrote. Today what is called SF comes by the inch/pound and multiple sequels because they are too damned incompetent to come up with rational ideas and explore them. But the fans love them.
Myself, give me a 2D character and don't let him get in the way of the story. Before you ask, I do appreciate real science fantasy as long as magic has rules which are essential to the story and Lord of the Rings sucks because it is a story with arbitrary magic.
Taking it back to the god wars, yes it is fun because they mostly do not understand the terms they are using, rather repeating some crap they read or were told without ever thinking about what the words and terms mean. Pick a god, any god. Give me its rules. If any of them did in fact exist the rules could have been deduced from millenia of experimentation even if accidental variants later described as experiments. As with the Diodorus reading suggestion Christianity and Judaism is all dumbed down to the dumbest common denominator. See also the Einstein letter which says the same thing.
I can go back to my first posts here where I was BANNED for criticizing Judaism in the same terms as Christianity. I realize most old timers are FAKE jews claiming to be atheists and their real target is Christians only. That was my first week's experience. And in fact that was discussion partly public which was against permitting such criticism, analytics, ridicule of Judaism. AND I played the game with a "strike the root" strategy which all regulars should remember.
And, yes, I have been posting for a very long time without regard to the automatic denigrations such as yours because I ridicule Judaism and jewish "people" without hesitation or remorse and often with relish because I have the field to myself.
So, my friend, I know the rules of the game. I have been in public debate on religion and politics since 1980, 32 years. Good lord willing and stroke don't rise I will soon be able to say half my life and it will mean something. Now I have no problem dealing with newbies since most everyone is relatively. Public debate is simply debate. Playing debating games in this format means you are likely to try to use something I pioneered if not invented.
All of that is simply to encourage honest, open discussion without any games whatsoever.
This has gotten too long. Try it this way. Any time you try to contrast Jews v Christians as positive v negative I will not let you get away with it as Jews v Hindus or Jews v Muslims or Jews v animists is no different. Jews are followers of an idiot religion and those who think there is a jewish "people" are closet idiot believers.
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
Now if only you could cross the line into recognising the jews aren't special yourself, everyone will be a bit better off.
Edit:
I don't remember you ever being banned. Are you sure it was here you got banned?
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Hell is for children
OT and NT applications are the same. The Euro interpretation makes the difference in term. In the Hebrew language there is no such term as God. "God" is strictly a Euro attachment from their own ancient ideas. In Hebrew they followed "that which is". Today the Israelis do not have the same religion as in the OT. OT hell is equal to dead. In actual and proper Christianity it is understood that their will be a resurrection. "Lake of fire" is equal to no chance of resurrection, and, it doesn't only have to do with death---The ways of the world after Armageddon are also thrown into the lake of fire---that's not people particularly. The entire interpretation of the book by the Euros is faulty and inaccurate.. Alpha Smurf regards Americans also as Euros.
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
Absolutely correct. It was here. If there is a way to search on oldest posts they should be there commenting on it.
As to special, no more special than Chrisitans and deserving of no less disdain than Christians.
Of course as we say about the West Bank, were it nor for antisemitism that would be Apartheid.
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
There are some 5000 usages of the term Yahweh Elohim in the half million words of the OT. Elohim is plural for El, El is god. Elohim is Gods. Other than the idiot translation of these words as 'lord god' what do you suggest they mean which is not a mention of the gods?
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
My guess would be it likely has to do with Zoroastrianism, a religion that was quite popular six centuries earlier. There are a lot of things in that religion that are noticeably absent in early Judaism and present later in the religion and in Christianity. These include a savior (born of a virgin, no less!), heaven, and hell.
Christian teachers refer to the Bible as "progressive revelation." God revealed Himself to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Then He revealed more of His nature and His precepts to Moses, David, Isaiah, Ezra, etc. God's Word is perfect. The Bible all revolves around the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the second person of the blessed Trinity, Who took on human form. In the Old Testament Christ had not yet been born of the virgin Mary nor completed His mission. Hence the sins of the elect had not been paid for. All were sent after death to the same place in one sense, awaiting Christ's payment for sin. Christ's sacrifice of Himself on the cross was accepted by God as payment for the sins of those whom God ordained from the foundation of the world to be justified. After Christ shed His blood, the Epistle of Peter declares that "He went to preach to the spirits in prison." Assumedly at that time the elect were separated from the reprobate. My interpretation is not the only one among Christians, although I believe it is that of the majority. When you go out on a date, your girlfriend / boyfriend is not obligated to tell you everything about himself/herself on the first date. How much more is a holy, infinite God free to reveal only as much about Himself as He wishes? There is no question from the Bible that Jesus Christ believes in hellfire, for He spoke about it in the Sermon on the Mount and in other places. After Christ's resurrection and ascension, the apostles further explained, through the Holy Spirit, Christ's teaching.
So you believe in literal hellfire ?
Basically, for the first four thousand years, people didn't know their souls were in peril if they didn't do what they were supposed to, because God decided to omit that part for the first 2/3 of creation. Got it.
I like how this is compared to a series of dates. I can see doing that on dates, because those last a few hours at a time, and you can only give out so much info at any one. But you're saying that for some reason, God couldn't have told us everything over a single person's lifetime.
No, the more likely reason the religion changed so much over the course of time is because it literally changed over the course of time. The ancient Judaean people wanted a war god. The people of 70+ CE were looking for eternal rewards. People today want those eternal rewards, but with a lot less of the crazy associated with YHWH carried to his logical conclusion.
A.
2 Pet. -- ..and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. 3 And in their greed they will exploit you with false words .. and their destruction is not asleep. 4 For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; 5 if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; 6 if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; . . 10 and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority.
And that is a cop out allowing eternal truth to change. So?
One might be able to make such as case if the newer built upon the older. But they head off in different directions. There is nothing in the newest that would have been a problem for the oldest. They are not different from the "false" religions around at the same time requiring all the gods to be making similar progressive revelations.
It is a very silly idea.
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
The problem with that gibberish is the idea of death as sacrifice for sins does not appear in the early church. There are only bishops and deacons. After the sacrifice idea is invented there are priests in the church as priests are needed for sacrifice.
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
The Bible's number one subject is death as a sacrifice for sins. You begin with Cain and Abel and work through to Jesus Christ, the final and perfect sacrifice for sins. The bulls. goats. sheep, etc. in the Old Testament are imperfect types of the perfect Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. Biblically one is never saved by one's own works; one is saved by faith in the sacrifice which God provides. Curses come to those who ignore God's perfect sacrifice and try to substitute a sacrifice according to their own imagination. Yes, I believe all of the above ... and that hell is proper judgment for those who despise Jesus Christ. Thank you for letting me put my beliefs on an atheist website. Atheists generally allow more clear speaking than lots of religious people. If any religious person told you that Christianity is about being nice, or being moral, or about the continuous unbloody sacrifice of the Mass, they are wrong! Thanks again.
Yes.
There are people who read that into the bible but AS I SAID the idea is absent in early Christianity. Because it is absent and does not appear until some time after the council of Nicaea it took quite a long time for that idea to be invented and implemented. Regardless of your rather odd opinion that what some people choose to read into the bible is in fact in the bible you can read the Nicaean Creed and discover by its absence that it was not considered an essential belief at that time. You will also discover only bishops and deacons were at that council, priests (to conduct the sacrifice) had not yet been invented.
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
Submitted by danatemporary on December 4, 2012
I cannot deny the image is trivial but from a wildly popular series.. Yes, This image is; I am afraid so X
Romans 10:14-20
All the more reason to disbelieve the lies, they conflict with each other.
There is no such thing as a "christian hell" unless you are stuck in an elevator with 10 people carrying NT bibles for several hours.
{Labrat28}
I am not trying in any way to be hostile in the least. Please explain what the meaning and purpose to this is. This is far more cryptic with the Roman's quote, than something I labeled as cryptic. I reviewed the partial passage and fail to understand how it relates to the Thread in any-way at all. I dont mind you making a reference. Please At least allow it to tie in. In other words STOP! Can you at least show us how this begins to tie into the Thread? You follow up now, K? The only credible tie or tie-in would be an indication of an error in the reference within 5 verses. If so, Then it is a simple error and no biggie. Or perhaps it's just late and the hour is to blame for the lack of following
Now that's cryptic.
No bells from the image, but google images says Highlander.
So, it must mean that the Black Watch are Ladies From Hell.
Prophet Muhammad, along with Buraq and Gabriel, visit Hell, and see "shameless women" being eternally punished for exposing their hair to the sight of strangers. Persian, 15th century.
[Wikipedia]
Duncan and Connor MacCloud (sp) if I recall correctly. Duncan from the good 90's show and Connor from the movies, together in the last Highlander material on video.
Very few people here give a shit about what is written in the bible on any subject. Try writing a response instead of quoting the oldest and smelliest pile of shit ever compiled. Or be ignored as inconsequential.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.