Does the thought of Hell ever scare an atheist?

[Drag]

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Not in the slightest bit. Even if God existed, he should be more clever than intellegent humans. For intellegent humans bible and christanity is such a non-sense, so it should be the same for him/her.

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tame_deuces : Heaven is an appealing idea. As long as it is different than those green meadows and uncanny smiling people all over the place as often depicted in christian pamphlets.


I've got to wonder if you guys have totally missed the point. When I compare these 2 statements to the purpose of the bible I really suspect you two missed something. If God's purpose is to transcend time he still has to first frame the language of the bible in terms that are relevant to the people of the day in which it is introduced, but at the same time be able to carry over for thousands of years through a huge diversity of cultures and people.

The lives and concerns of the very first Christians were similar to ours in the general sense but extremely different in the particulars of their work and lifestyles.

So God has to put everything in some form that transmits over generations, but at the same time our intellects being human and fallible have trouble in correcting for every difference between those earlier lifestyles and our current modern one.

Thats why people work to understand religious texts today. It has relevance to our lives but we have to pick out the passage and understand the whole context of the passage. We can't take passages out of context as alot of people do when arguing against Christians.

So much has been obscured by time and our current culture is so less receptive to religion that there are several passages in the New Testament that say that later generations who can get the bible are more blessed than earlier ones. God had already anticipated that we would have more challenges to our understanding and more temptations then earlier people did.

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You basically saying that god couldn't write his message better. I am being infinitely less intlegent than him can think of a dozen ways to do it, and he couldn't. That's strange...

For example, write a version for each time. Like after the year 1500, humans will be able to understand more of my word and should take a new version of the bible. After the year 1854 the dinosaurus bones should be considered differently, etc. And that's just one way of making such a job.

He could send new prophets with the new versions after each majour change in human culture, or even better before it.

Why such a cryptic way?

May be because, people who heard voices in their head just simply heard their own voices and wrote their own thoughts. This way the story becomes much more logical and consistent.

[Splendour]

Drag: You basically saying that god couldn't write his message better. I am being infinitely less intlegent than him can think of a dozen ways to do it, and he couldn't. That's strange...

For example, write a version for each time. Like after the year 1500, humans will be able to understand more of my word and should take a new version of the bible. After the year 1854 the dinosaurus bones should be considered differently, etc. And that's just one way of making such a job.

He could send new prophets with the new versions after each majour change in human culture, or even better before it.

Why such a cryptic way?

May be because, people who heard voices in their head just simply heard their own voices and wrote their own thoughts. This way the story becomes much more logical and consistent.


Well you're trying to make God fit or do what you want him to do.

Quote: "I am being infinitely less intlegent than him can think of a dozen ways to do it, and he couldn't. That's strange..."

Who are we to question God's ways? He has a deeper insight and higher purposes than we do. We exist inside his realm of control. He doesn't exist inside our realm of control. God gives free will to make us free beings. Its funny that people turn out to be the control freaks.

[kurto]

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Well you're trying to make God fit or do what you want him to do.


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He's trying to make God fit remotely with the way he's described. Only true believers have no problem with the fact that the infinitely intelligent God they believe in is grossly incompetent. It doesn't take make for anyone with a lick of sense to conceive of a God smarter and more competent then the Biblical one.

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Who are we to question God's ways?

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If there was a God, and he granted people with brains, he would want people to use them. Its only rational. Its really hard to consider a God so incompetent that he would design humans to be intelligent and questioning but NOT want them to question the fact that he makes no sense.

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He has a deeper insight and higher purposes than we do.

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If he had deeper insight then he would be more competent. You have too make up ridiculous excuses for him to justify the fact that he's not that deep at all.

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Its funny that people turn out to be the control freaks.

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I wonder if this even makes sense to you? Or if you just type random things and don't concern yourself with sense.