Time to pour some gourd water out.Ok here is a query or ponder some idea that has been bothering me for some time.
Heaven - Everyone knows that heaven is to be a wonderful beautiful place, right. Full of beauty and there is no sorrow, no weeping, no sadness, no pain just joy and love, love, love with a side dish of happy.
where everyone spends the rest of eternity* serving God.
Hell - The common picture is fire, brimstone and the lake of fire (did I mention fire) there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
There we will have eternal pain and eternal sadness knowing we are out of the favor of God.
blahblahblah
You with me so far?
Query: How is someone supposed to be full of joy and happiness in Heaven when someone they love is in Hell? This time I mean literally not just metaphorically.
According to the bible you can actually see Hell from Heaven and visa-versa which only adds to the pain a person must feel knowing that someone they love is damned for all eternity (and surrounded by clowns or worse yet politicians.)
If we are not "ourselves" up in heaven, then what is the point of Jesus telling people you will see me again in heaven or you will be in my father’s house and stuff like that. That seems to note that a person will retain some sort of self awareness once they hit the pearly gates.
If we do retain some of our earthly awareness then that would mean a father would be stuck in heaven watching his adult child burning in a lake of fire (assuming of course that this child is not a mass murderer, pedophile or something else as evil, like a clown.). The father raised the child the best he could and the child wasn’t a bad person, in fact was quite a good person. They just happen to pass on/away before they could be baptized into God's house.
I don’t want to pull anyone away from their beliefs and love of the Lord; I just want to get some of these ideas out of my head to make room for others. If anything I hope someone reads this, does their own research into the subject and in doing so pulls themselves closer to God then ever before. I am not a religious nutball by any sense of the term ( for any of you new comers) I just do not take anything at face value. I dont even trust myself to tell me the whole truth.
What is the benefit of not believing in God?
I did a chart weighing the pros and cons displaying the benefits of being an atheist and a believer.
The better odds falls in the believers favor.
So, what do you lose by believing in God compared to what you could lose. Everybody dies so wouldn’t you want to, at the very least, hedge your bets while there was a chance rather then just hope your right?
Is there some kind of a gain as an atheist? Something other then the smug satisfaction one gets with the knowing that when they die they just wink out of existence?
I apologize if I am rehashing old hash that has been hashed to death....Hash.
When Death does a flyby and snatches a loved one the whore mortality sitcom starts to play in my head. Oh and Hash.
Hash
* Definition of eternity: Picture a gigantic mountainous ball of gold. Hugely huge. Cant even see the top.
Every 100 years a dove flies by it and just ever so gently grazes this gold ball with just the tips of it's wing.
by the time the ball has been eroded away by this bird, THAT will be just the beginning of eternity.
Hash.
so i love your definition of eternity. it's humorous and it shows me how much is "too much" -- i.e., the amount you think. :P
ReplyDeletemany philosophers have done the pro/con chart and concluded it's better to err on the safe side, as you pointed out. from an agnostic's point of view, the only logic i can offer is that in some way, being atheist/agnostic is in its own way as much of a leap of faith as being religious. regardless, the only concrete reason one believes in an organized church and another doesn't is because of a tiny clump of cells in your limbic system.
very interesting question though. i've only minimally studied the christian bible and i'm even less versed in the torah and qur'an, not to mention i'm agnostic anyway, so i can't pretend i have any sort of theologically thought out answer for you.
My brain never stops moving and it really pisses me off. Especially when I get vapor locked as my brain sucks up all the resources. I'm lucky if I don't drool on myself as I stare inward.
ReplyDeleteAnd that is one of the many reasons I don't find myself to be Christian. My logic insists that I must not trust things like that.
ReplyDeleteI did notice, though, the implication that the options are "organized church" or "atheist/agnostic." What about "spiritual?" I'm nowhere near Christian, but I wouldn't consider myself to be quite atheist either. I guess I'd say my mind has combined elements of taoism and paganism and kind of made my own little mix that works for me. There are infinite possibilities, after all.
And should you ever go so far as to believe in an entire life path just because a logic chart brings it out to be the safer option? Screw safe. Safe is not interesting.
I have never been the one to take the safe route. I have been predictable in taking the selfish route. Whatever I feel like is the right way whether I am fooling myself or not.
ReplyDeleteTo boil religion down. I believe there is a God and I believe he is cool with you just as long as he gets his due props.