[bunny]

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God didn't design us flawed. When Eve ate the forbidden fruit, sin entered the world.

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But he made her knowing she would choose to eat the fruit and thus sin. He also knew that a consequence of creating us was that there would be some people who would live their lives failing to acknowledge his existence.

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While your optimism is admirable, most people are perfectly capable from a intelligence standpoint to understand the Word of God & make their own choices. Don't you think that some folks around here are perfectly capable but choose not to??? Those that are not capable (i.e. children, mentally disabled) get a free pass. This too is well documented in the Bible.

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What about people who attempt to form their opinions based on objective evidence alone? Who regard it as immoral to profess belief in something they dont actually agree with? (I think these would both apply to most of the atheists on this forum) In my experience, you cant force yourself to believe anything, regardless of the consequences or of how much you want to believe it.

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I would encourage you to look at Revelation as a point of reference for hell. I don't have my Bible in front of me at the moment but I will be glad to look them up for you tomorrow (about to go to bed!!!).

Also, there are several indications prior to Revelation that Hell is a real place. Jesus referred to it as a place of weeping & gnashing of teeth. Once again, I will look some of those up later.

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My recollection is that it is actually a smattering of references all over the place, welded together as a unified doctrine through interpretation (a doctrine which coincidentally strengthened the church's power in earlier times) but not explicitly set out as such. Given my experience/belief in a loving god, I think alternative explanations are more likely than eternal torment for some (even most on some interpretations of the bible).

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And I agree with your assesment that the Bible is the infallible Word of God but has been interpreted various ways by humans with political/selfish agendas. How do you think we wound up with so many variations of the same religion. [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

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This raises a problem for you, I think. How do you determine which interpretation is correct? It seems to me that catholics have the best answer to this (though I think they run into their own problems)