I mean technically, if you really read about hell in the bible, it's only the only place god is not. I mean it's described as an awful lake of fire and so on, but that's just because the people who were reading it needed to hear that the people persecuting them were going to get theirs.
But yeah, what you said is what most people believe, I just think it's funny that the word for Hell when Jesus talks about it is actually Gahanna which is the place outside Jerusalem where they burned all their refuse.
Essentially: "If you're a trash person, you'll be thrown out and burned on the trash heap. But if you love me, that proves you're not a trash person and it's the only way to prove that."
More like if you're a non believer you go to a place that I choose to ignore, but since I'm the best, most magnificent being in all existence you would be making an awful choice. It would be akin to being in a trash heap simply because I'm not there.
Yeah, there's actually a lot about the faith that is purely metaphysical, but had to be described as something that people who lack abstract thinking could understand. Which is where we got the Lake of Fire from. Remember Dante's Inferno is a novel, it was written by an edge Lord, it is not official church doctrine even if pop culture movies about hell will draw on it for inspiration.
Jesus: "I made this checklist of what we call 'sins', and you seem to be violating a lot of them!"
Human: "your checklist sucks."
Jesus: "well that's fine, that's fine... you can keep on violating them and I'll forgive you as long as you swear that I am the best. Then I'm going to need you to give me 10% of your income, as a gift.. and I also want you to tell everybody else about this sweet deal I've made with you."
Yeah, it's hard to take rationalism seriously when it seems to be preached by those who worship at the altar of Sam Harris. When that's not how being rational works, that's literally dogma.
It is a strange irony that a creature such as man can take the concept of not having a religion, and somehow warp it into being very much resembling a religion.
I suppose this is why in Psychology they say, man is a religious animal.
I remember when this community was created. I was one of the fist to post here and suggest that it try and stray away from the angsty “Reddit atheism” rhetoric.
Its funny because memes like this actually kind of require you to believe in God to make sense. Jesus was either made up or some crazy person. He didn't die for our sins so I don't think it makes sense to be pissed off at him or a god that doesn't exist. These whole line of reasoning assumes a believe in god and Jesus and its a super weird fit for an athiest perspective.
It's also like when a guy scams a tourist by insisting something is free but then demands a tip after they accept it. Like, oh yeah, this gift of Jesus dying for your sins is totally free, no charge... But hey, here's the tithe plate on Sunday.
"Sounds like your god has everyone covered. Apparently one guy dying was all it took."
"... why would my participation matter, if your god killed that guy on everyone's behalf? Was that guy magically blocking everyone's submission? I don't get how begging for mercy and killing one dude can both be important."
"Your god killed his own kid? Like Saturn devouring his son? That's fucked up! If you have infinite power to do anything, why would you choose that?"
"Well if he came back then what's it matter that he died?"
"What do you mean he's also his own son? Your-- your god killed himself? Your god was dead for three days. Was anything different on those three days?"
The Catholic idea of being tortured in hell is completely made up and has no basis in the bible. They just copied the underworld from Greece and changed it a little bit to attract greeks to christianity
Okay I keep having to explain this, but if you are going to mock the theology you need to actually be familiar with what it says instead of trying to dunk on a pop culture over simplification.
Hell is not a place, this is a pop culture simplification, kind of like how no one actually believes that death is when a big skeleton takes you away.
It is believed that God is the source of all love and light and all the good shit in the universe, by tuning him out and severing your connection to God you become eternally damned, which is a state in which you don't feel God's love. This isn't because God decided that he was going to stop loving you, it's more that in a spiritual sense you just aren't taking his calls anymore, and allegedly this is painful.
To put it in simple terms, imagine you actually have a loving father who cares for and supports you, but for whatever reason you have decided that he is an asshole, and you'd much rather hang out with the cool kids. They keep getting you into trouble, and your dad who wants to help out keeps getting voicemail.
No I'm not saying that that's what I believe, I'm saying this is how theology typically sees the state of Eternal damnation, the Lake of Fire is just a pop culture oversimplification inspired by allegorical metaphors in the Bible.
Like I said another problem with you mocking religion, but understand what you are mocking.
It is for this reason why Christians in online circles often say to each other "Atheists do not disbelief what God is, but what they claim God to be"
I don’t disbelieve anything that god is or claim them to be. God isn’t a thing of this world beyond the minds of the imaginative and insane, their is nothing to believe about something that’s never existed. I could just as assuredly argue that Pokémon are real if I was imaginative or insane enough.
You misunderstand the quote, it isn't saying that you're making claims about what God is (Your claim is that God isn't, which makes sense given that there's no evidence for such a thing)
The quote is saying that your attempts to describe what Christians believe about God, is inaccurate to what the Church actually teaches, and therefore makes for a poor debunking.
Luke Skywalker is a man. He's a jedi. He grew up on a farm. He's a hero to the rebellion. He's the son of Darth Vader. These are all true statements everyone can agree on. Everyone knows all these things. It doesn't matter that he isn't real.
If you told me that Luke Skywalker was a tree, I'd call you a fool. Luke Skywalker isn't real, but we can all still agree he isn't a tree.
Hopefully, this example has hammered into your overly literal mind that facts can still be true and false when they describe something that doesn't exist.
Atheists claim that Deus burns people in a lake of father, AND that he doesn't exist. You still claim a version of him, just like you claim a version of Luke Skywalker.
Christians are calling you out for claiming that a fake version of Deus doesn't exist. And they're right, you're fools for it. Deny the existence of the actual nonexistent christian god, not a fake nonexistent christian god.
Until I left home for work and college, I used to go to church thrice per week. My grandfather and uncle were preachers, my mom taught Sunday school, and my grandmother was a church organist. I have never heard anyone who didn’t preach the more literal lake of fire concept. Not saying it doesn’t happen, but if it does, as someone said above, yours is a more liberal interpretation vs what many or perhaps most christian churches espouse.
No it isn't, it's actually what the Catholic Church and most mainstream versions of Christianity support, only Biblical Literalists and Hollywood think otherwise
This isn’t because God decided that he was going to stop loving you, it’s more that in a spiritual sense you just aren’t taking his calls anymore, and allegedly this is painful.
I never got a call and I'm not in "spiritual pain". He's altogether untraceable, unless you want to play the game of ascribing good things with perfectly worldly causes to the alleged, omnipotent "good things happen because of me"-guy. It makes no sense, especially since there's plenty of gods with similar properties on the market.
the Lake of Fire is just a pop culture oversimplification inspired by allegorical metaphors in the Bible.
It being a place you're sent to is older than Christianity and plenty of Christian sects still believe that it is. Maybe try convincing them first, at least they agree on the there being a god at all.
Also what's libmbo/purgatory then? Another set of metaphors?
It is for this reason why Christians in online circles often say to each other “Atheists do not disbelief what God is, but what they claim God to be”
Atheists don't believe in any god period, that's kinda the whole concept.
Okay bro, take it up with the Christians, I'm not advocating for the gospel. I'm explaining what the faith is claimed to be by the most mainstream sects of Christianity. I am not here to convert anyone, I'm merely explaining these edgy memes fail because they require buying into popular misconceptions about Christianity, instead of mocking what those of the faith are actually claiming to be the case.
What are you doing is buying into and spreading misconceptions of what the faith is, and proving your poor grasp on reading comprehension in the process.
Btw, Wikipedia is not a credible source. Thought you learned that in Grade School.
Atheists do not disbelief what God is, but what they claim God to be
…that’s why Christians in online circles are clueless about atheists. We don’t claim a god. Christians do (among many other religionist types). The burden of proof is on them. My disbelief in a god is the same disbelief that my refrigerator will decide to wake up, sprout legs, walk out of my house and go live with another family. I make no claim of existence about either.
And since no religionist in history who does make such a claim of the existence of a god has yet to scientifically, objectively, with peer-review, proven such a deity exists, I have no reason to believe one exists.
Richard Dawkins coined the idea of a "meme", which is the cultural equivalent of a gene. It's an idea that can grow and spread through a population, and mutate along the way. The most successful memes are spread more, and so over time memes evolve to become better at spreading themselves. Anything can be a meme. A meme could be a recipe, or a style of fashion, or a joke, or a technology, or a language. Most memes are helpful.
Some memes are so successful that people worship them. Chaos magicians call these memes "egregores". Egregores rule our society. Capitalism is an egregore, and so is the USA, and so is Jesus. These are ideas so powerful they shape the course of history itself. Why did the Conquistadores try to exterminate south american religions and teach the locals about "God"? Because a meme told them to. Why did the crusades happen? A meme did it.
Egregores are powerful creatures capable of steering the course of humanity. They are arguably alive, and are capable of taking intentional actions to secure their own survival and dominance. They are worshipped by billions of people, and are capable of having a personal relationship with every one of their worshippers, because they are spread across millions of brains and have access to the computational power of all those brains at once.
Just gonna say, as a Catholic, He never sends anyone to Hell, they send themeselves to Hell. Furthermore, the whole "Hell is the worst pain you can imagine" immediately makes one think Of a torture chamber. That isn't neccessarily what Hell is. Hell is simply a separation from God. It is being alone and miserable that is thgreatest pain.
The whole idea of God sending people to infinite torture because man is a depraved, wicked thing is a very harmful calvinistic idea.
Not trying to be a troll. I just want to set the records straight.
That's just moving around minutia of details and ignoring the skeleton of the argument, then re-stating a similar enough version of what the meme ridicules.
If god alone can fill the hole in your heart, why did he leave such vague instructions in a world full of grifters, with availability limited by geographical and cultural lottery, and expect us to believe this religion of others at face value?
I gotta say, ignorance being bliss is a true thing. All you have to do is look to "spiritual" (often just non-denominational pagan) people to see the same patterns of feeding themselves simple platitudes with a supernatural basis to fill the certainty and self-esteem needs they have.
If God created everything, he created evil. He created the possibility for separation and he is the one that made us fallible. What value is free will if the price is eternal misery?
Not only that, but if he is truly all powerful, he should be able to rebuild reality in a way of which a person could have free will completely, while never be at risk of hellfire. Either he chooses not to do this which makes him not all loving, or he cannot do this which makes him not all powerful. Either way, this just makes him a giant wad of holy fuck juice in my eyes with an ego issue, undeserving of my praise.
Just gotta say, also as a person raised Catholic and who has studied it's history a lot, your understanding of the teachings of Catholicism are very modern, heavily debated even today within the Catholic Church, and would not be supported by the church's teachings even 70 years ago. Just go look at the art in a Catholic church from more than 70 years ago, and you will find people being judged and sent to torture.
Hey, you gotta understand religion if you want to effectively argue against it, so thanks! Clarification is always welcome! I don’t see any trolling here.
The clarification is fairly stupid, that being said. "He doesn't send you there, you send yourself there" is a distinction without a difference when the all powerful god not only is the only reason hell exists, but supposedly created this world and the people in it knowing ahead of time specifically which people would go to the hell he created. It's like saying I didn't stab you, you just didn't get out of the way of my knife.
Their clarification is basically just a modern white-washing of their jealous, vengeful, and petty god's holy doctrine, since the traditional "god hates you if you're not just so" is working on less and less of the population
There are so many to choose from, which one is the worst is very hard to determine. From completely insane nonsense like the ontological argument to those that just ignore that they would apply to every other religion equally like Pascal's Wager there is a lot of competition.
I guess that is bound to happen when all arguments are far from good, they have to cluster around the 'bad to worst' part of the spectrum.
Hey, thanks for those of you who responded courteously and constructive to the crazy Catholic 😊. I appreciate it. To anyone who might stumble upon this thread who is interested in learning more about the nature of Hell and Sin, here is a good article I found adressing the question. The same website also has a couple other articles on Hell. https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-is-hell
God Bless! I guess the atheist version of that would be nice talk'in 😄
Having said that i dont really agree with what it preaches because the rethoric seems awfully similar to the whole antinatalism bs and that in my opinion is bs.