[Flipside]

The thing that annoys me is that you can live your entire life being a good person, helping the poor, healing the sick, comforting the lost and the lonely, and then, when you die, get told that because you didn't thank some kind of deity every single day for the fact that you choose to do this, that you are 'on the wrong side' and therefore deserve to burn in Hell...

Being a 'good person' is not the realm of any religion, never has been, though many try to stick their flag in the concept, so any Deity supposed to judge people by what they believe, rather than what they do, has no truck with me whatsoever.

Edit: I always think of God as a 'Babysitter for Life', it's like your parents telling you that there's a monster in the closet, and if you misbehave, even if your parents don't see you, the monster in the closet will jump out and eat you. Some parents actually consider this good parenting, rather than permanent phsychological damage in the making, and I see Religion tending to work along pretty much the same mentality.

[newman]

The thing that annoys me is that you can live your entire life being a good person, helping the poor, healing the sick, comforting the lost and the lonely, and then, when you die, get told that because you didn't thank some kind of deity every single day for the fact that you choose to do this, that you are 'on the wrong side' and therefore deserve to burn in Hell...

Being a 'good person' is not the realm of any religion, never has been, though many try to stick their flag in the concept, so any Deity supposed to judge people by what they believe, rather than what they do, has no truck with me whatsoever.

Any mass religion is a big organization not unlike a big business in many respects. In the same way a business needs customers, organized religion needs followers - without them it would be nothing. It's hardly surprising then that any religion's first goals are the acquisition and retention of followers, rather appropriately sometimes also referred to as "flock".
The stick and carrot method is an old but proven way of keeping people in line. You want them to basically do as they're told, remain inside the organization, and not ask too many questions; so you have a simple system of reward and punishment. Those who remain loyal and faithful (as in, accept and do what they're told without asking for proof or reason) shall be rewarded in the afterlife (rather convenient as it makes it unnecessary to actually reward them yourself). Those who require proof are labeled as non-believers, cynics, and so on - and they will be punished.
The fact that most religious organizations do like to say at least indirectly that being a good person isn't enough, that you need to be a faithful member for it to count, is essential to most religion's efforts to keep their "flock" inside. After all, if they simply said "look, it doesn't really matter if you go to church every sunday, what matters is what sort of a person you are and how you treat the people around you", that would somewhat work against their efforts to keep people in, and to some extent defeat the whole purpose of an organized religion.
Which is why they monopolize goodness. And partly why I don't like any organized religion on the planet.
Also why I'm having another beer

[mister J]

lol if someone does come in 2050 I'm going to pit him against Hindu Floaty Thing.

Deity Fight!!

[General Battuta]

Why? Jesus would just turn the other cheek, man.

He's not about hurting people.

The character of the second coming will be significantly different from the first.

What he means is that when the Second Coming happens, if you are not with Him you are with The Enemy and will be treated as such.  He will come as an avenger and all that serve The Enemy will be...dealt with.

Jesus ****ing Christ that's terrible. There's seriously no difference between the Biblical God and Satan?

I'm joining team NGTM-1R and rooting for Nuke and his sniper rifle. This guy sounds like ****ing Hitler. Anything that can be done to stop him should be.

I mean for ****'s sake your Jesus would have torched Mother Theresa just because she was a nonbeliever.

No omniscient being of supreme love would accept massive collateral damage amongst those who never had a chance or choice to meet the 'good guy' criteria as an acceptable price for anything.

(Of course I was raised Christian and read the Bible and I'm pretty sure Jesus isn't gonna pull any **** like that. This is just a line of **** fed to people by alarmists who try to evoke obedience through terror rather than faith through love and compassion.)

[Kosh]

American Christianity is, in certain areas, fast becoming a Doomsday Cult, and we know how those usually turn out.

Edit: it's like to 2012ers, who think Christ will return at the restart of the Mayan Calender...

"God called, he sounded angry. Said something about the First Commandment...."

What's scary about that statement is America actually does possess enough weapons of mass destruction to bring on the apocalypse, if one of them got into power with enough support.

[Snail]

Jesus ****ing Christ that's terrible. There's seriously no difference between the Biblical God and Satan?

I'm joining team NGTM-1R and rooting for Nuke and his sniper rifle. This guy sounds like ****ing Hitler. Anything that can be done to stop him should be.

I mean for ****'s sake your Jesus would have torched Mother Theresa just because she was a nonbeliever.

No omniscient being of supreme love would accept massive collateral damage amongst those who never had a chance or choice to meet the 'good guy' criteria as an acceptable price for anything.

(Of course I was raised Christian and read the Bible and I'm pretty sure Jesus isn't gonna pull any **** like that. This is just a line of **** fed to people by alarmists who try to evoke obedience through terror rather than faith through love and compassion.)

Maybe you should read Revelations again.

[General Battuta]

I read it. It's trippy as ****, but like most of the Bible is wildly open to interpretation. It's literature, not prophecy.

[Colonol Dekker]

God bombs have no discrimination in their target selection

[Dilmah G]

Well how's the bomb supposed to track the sparkle if Jesus is up there and not down here lazing the target?

[Scotty]

I read it. It's trippy as ****, but like most of the Bible is wildly open to interpretation. It's literature, not prophecy.

It's also not anything Jesus said or taught or even related to him at all except he'll supposedly be there.

I don't buy it. (This is a statement of agreement with Battuta, in case that's not clear.)

[watsisname]

I worship the sun cause it directly gives me warmth and indirectly gives me life, plus I get to see it rise every morning.

Also it will sooner or later wreak havoc and utter annihilation upon the earth.  And that's not a prophecy, that's a fact. 

[Jeff Vader]

I worship the sun cause it will sooner or later wreak havoc and utter annihilation upon the earth.

Now this kind of worshipping I could do.

[Sushi]

The thing that annoys me is that you can live your entire life being a good person, helping the poor, healing the sick, comforting the lost and the lonely, and then, when you die, get told that because you didn't thank some kind of deity every single day for the fact that you choose to do this, that you are 'on the wrong side' and therefore deserve to burn in Hell...

Not all sects of Christianity believe this, you know. Many, in fact, teach exactly the opposite... that what you actually do matters a lot more than what your claimed allegiance is.

http://scriptures.lds.org/en/matt/25/31-46#31

For whatever it's worth.

[iamzack]

It all depends on how liberal your particular sect's interpretation of some ancient book is.

[Sushi]

It all depends on how liberal your particular sect's interpretation of some ancient book is.

It's a bit more complicated than that. If you want to be critical of religion, fine. Just recognize that you can't lump everyone together and then complain that the resulting mishmash doesn't make any sense.

[iamzack]

Didn't I just point out that religions are somewhat different? That's what happens when you have billions of people trying to base their lives and worldviews around hearsay from over a thousand years ago. Irreconcilable differences.

And which interpretation of the world is correct? There's no way to judge, except that they are all probably wrong.

[Aardwolf]

Didn't I just point out that religions are somewhat different? That's what happens when you have billions of people trying to base their lives and worldviews around hearsay from over a thousand years ago. Irreconcilable differences.

And which interpretation of the world is correct? There's no way to judge, except that they are all probably wrong.

It would seem that most of the people here have deemed you a troll and decided not to listen to you anymore.




Slightly-more-on-topic: see, this is why I posted that thing toward the end of that thread about "Bible 'literally true'" ... Basically I was like, if you're going to treat the thing as open to interpretation, give written definition to it; go through section-by-section and remove the stuff you don't believe is true, or don't agree with, or don't give a damn about, and revise and edit the rest.

[Rand al Thor]

I mean for ****'s sake your Jesus would have torched Mother Theresa just because she was a nonbeliever.

Well, in reality Mother Theresa from what I've read was in some respects a horrible person, like many, many other nuns (especially here in good ol' parochial Ireland), who wasn't interested in actually lifting the people she 'helped' out of poverty because in her mind the suffering they endured made them better people and more worthy of God's reward.
Another reason to love certain organised religions; their support for the rich elite maintaining crushing superiority over the masses while they're shaped into good moral souls on the grinding whetstone of life.

It would seem that most of the people here have deemed you a troll and decided not to listen to you anymore.

While not a big fan of iamzack's usual contributions I found her last two posts to be fairly pertinent to the overall trend of the thread.

@ Flipside and newman; Kudos, right on the money!

[iamzack]

I'm a troll because I'm not nice to people when they spout retarded ****.

[General Battuta]

I mean for ****'s sake your Jesus would have torched Mother Theresa just because she was a nonbeliever.

Well, in reality Mother Theresa from what I've read was in some respects a horrible person, like many, many other nuns (especially here in good ol' parochial Ireland), who wasn't interested in actually lifting the people she 'helped' out of poverty because in her mind the suffering they endured made them better people and more worthy of God's reward.

I don't disagree and I'm well aware of those facts, but it doesn't change the fact that this would be irrelevant: all that apparently matters to this Monster Jesus is whether or not she Believes.