Why are heaven or hell the only options

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You have to come to a conclusion about what you think is actually true. Otherwise, you are just making things up in your head.

For me, after exploring different religions and systems of belief, I came to the conclusion that Christianity was most likely to be true — not 100% convinced, but at the same confidence level that I make any other important life decision (which is always less than 100%).

Hell is one of the Christian doctrines that makes the most sense to me. If there is no hell at all, no final judgment, then there is really no basis for any moral obligation. We can just act however we want, no matter how terrible or cruel it is. The current occupant of the White House is exhibit A of the horrible place where this leads. That way of looking at the world doesn’t seem like any way to live.

Also, trying to “delete” hell from Christianity is a very western way of looking at the world. People living in oppressive regimes care a lot more about a God of justice making things right in the end than a God who just loves everyone.

Religion makes much more sense when you see it as a way to control people.

Is the only reason you don't harm your friend because of God? Or because you are intelligent enough to recognize harm and decided it was bad?

Why is it “bad”? How you even define “harm”? There can be plenty of things that you might do to your friend that they may consider “harmful,” but you may not. Where do you even begin to draw these lines?

The entire premise of your answer is based on a moral value judgment. If there is no God, then there really cannot be these categories of “good” and “bad.” If all that ever happened was one day millions of years ago a fish got on the land and we have been evolving ever since — then there really isn’t any moral obligation at all not to “harm your friend.” It is simply a strong eats the weak world - just like the animal kingdom. And all of life is completely and utterly meaningless.

You are free to use this as a reason not to believe in God. But then own the natural endpoint of your argument.

And yet, there is. Think of it as "advantageous to a social species" or not. Some non-human animals help others, even outside of their own species.

If your life only has meaning because you think there is some future supernatural world waiting for you...that's beyond sad.

And some animals bite each others heads off, literally. What’s your point?

How do you draw the line around your categories of good and bad — “advantageous to a social species” — ? Who says? How is it defined? A little old woman is crossing the street about to hit by a truck she cannot see. Is it “advantageous to a social species” to risk your life to save hers? What if she is very rich and you are very poor? What if she had a large family that relies on her and you have nobody?

Under a pure evolutionary perspective, your origin to life has no meaning — and your ending has no meaning because the sun will just burn up someday — so why does your actually life have any meaning? Why not simply live for yourself and not care too much about the rest of the world?

Your worldview has no moral answers for any of these questions beyond some vaguely defined idea about “how we should act.”

My worldview goes far beyond the supernatural after life — though that’s part of it. My view is that there is a supernatural creator, that we are made in his image, and there is a moral order to the universe that we innately understand as humans — the law of God is written on our hearts as the apostle Paul writes in the Book of Romans. But under this worldview, there are moral obligations, a clear definition of right and wrong, and a strong moral basis for everything that we hold important to us as humans — justice and love.

Just curious...do you have any idea how the bible was written/assembled/translated/copied? The real history of that book? Do you know why Paul's words (someone who had never met Jesus) are being followed today as if they are the word of god?

DP, but his always cracks me up. As if Christians are oh-so-ignorant about the recognition of the canon that we'll be shocked, just shocked to find that Paul never met the incarnate Christ.

Therefore what? You don't believe Paul is authoritative, but you DO believe that the Gospels are? No? Didn't think so.

Right? As if there haven’t literally been hundreds of thousands of Christian scholars in the last 2,000 years that have not looked at these exact issues in great detail?

My favorite expert on the cannon is Dr. Michael Kruger. He has a PhD from the University of Edinburgh and his doctoral dissertation was on P.Oxy. 840. (You can google it and then tell me if you are ready to debate someone who has written an entire PhD level dissertation from a secular university).

Here is a YouTube video where he discusses the cannon in a digestible way. But the bottom line is that the cannon isn’t just something that was randomly assembled like some uneducated social media influencers claim. As Kruger says — if that was true — then he wouldn’t believe it either.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zSd9oC4QM74&vl=en

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You have to come to a conclusion about what you think is actually true. Otherwise, you are just making things up in your head.

For me, after exploring different religions and systems of belief, I came to the conclusion that Christianity was most likely to be true — not 100% convinced, but at the same confidence level that I make any other important life decision (which is always less than 100%).

Hell is one of the Christian doctrines that makes the most sense to me. If there is no hell at all, no final judgment, then there is really no basis for any moral obligation. We can just act however we want, no matter how terrible or cruel it is. The current occupant of the White House is exhibit A of the horrible place where this leads. That way of looking at the world doesn’t seem like any way to live.

Also, trying to “delete” hell from Christianity is a very western way of looking at the world. People living in oppressive regimes care a lot more about a God of justice making things right in the end than a God who just loves everyone.

Religion makes much more sense when you see it as a way to control people.

Is the only reason you don't harm your friend because of God? Or because you are intelligent enough to recognize harm and decided it was bad?

Why is it “bad”? How you even define “harm”? There can be plenty of things that you might do to your friend that they may consider “harmful,” but you may not. Where do you even begin to draw these lines?

The entire premise of your answer is based on a moral value judgment. If there is no God, then there really cannot be these categories of “good” and “bad.” If all that ever happened was one day millions of years ago a fish got on the land and we have been evolving ever since — then there really isn’t any moral obligation at all not to “harm your friend.” It is simply a strong eats the weak world - just like the animal kingdom. And all of life is completely and utterly meaningless.

You are free to use this as a reason not to believe in God. But then own the natural endpoint of your argument.

And yet, there is. Think of it as "advantageous to a social species" or not. Some non-human animals help others, even outside of their own species.

If your life only has meaning because you think there is some future supernatural world waiting for you...that's beyond sad.

And some animals bite each others heads off, literally. What’s your point?

How do you draw the line around your categories of good and bad — “advantageous to a social species” — ? Who says? How is it defined? A little old woman is crossing the street about to hit by a truck she cannot see. Is it “advantageous to a social species” to risk your life to save hers? What if she is very rich and you are very poor? What if she had a large family that relies on her and you have nobody?

Under a pure evolutionary perspective, your origin to life has no meaning — and your ending has no meaning because the sun will just burn up someday — so why does your actually life have any meaning? Why not simply live for yourself and not care too much about the rest of the world?

Your worldview has no moral answers for any of these questions beyond some vaguely defined idea about “how we should act.”

My worldview goes far beyond the supernatural after life — though that’s part of it. My view is that there is a supernatural creator, that we are made in his image, and there is a moral order to the universe that we innately understand as humans — the law of God is written on our hearts as the apostle Paul writes in the Book of Romans. But under this worldview, there are moral obligations, a clear definition of right and wrong, and a strong moral basis for everything that we hold important to us as humans — justice and love.

Just curious...do you have any idea how the bible was written/assembled/translated/copied? The real history of that book? Do you know why Paul's words (someone who had never met Jesus) are being followed today as if they are the word of god?

DP, but his always cracks me up. As if Christians are oh-so-ignorant about the recognition of the canon that we'll be shocked, just shocked to find that Paul never met the incarnate Christ.

Therefore what? You don't believe Paul is authoritative, but you DO believe that the Gospels are? No? Didn't think so.

Right? As if there haven’t literally been hundreds of thousands of Christian scholars in the last 2,000 years that have not looked at these exact issues in great detail?

My favorite expert on the cannon is Dr. Michael Kruger. He has a PhD from the University of Edinburgh and his doctoral dissertation was on P.Oxy. 840. (You can google it and then tell me if you are ready to debate someone who has written an entire PhD level dissertation from a secular university).

Here is a YouTube video where he discusses the cannon in a digestible way. But the bottom line is that the cannon isn’t just something that was randomly assembled like some uneducated social media influencers claim. As Kruger says — if that was true — then he wouldn’t believe it either.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zSd9oC4QM74&vl=en

Yawn. The gospels. The epistles.

If you took the actual time to understand them as they were understood by the audiences when they were written, it might blow your mind.

Hint - most "Christians" today practice nothing alike to what the first "jewish Christians" believed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You have to come to a conclusion about what you think is actually true. Otherwise, you are just making things up in your head.

For me, after exploring different religions and systems of belief, I came to the conclusion that Christianity was most likely to be true — not 100% convinced, but at the same confidence level that I make any other important life decision (which is always less than 100%).

Hell is one of the Christian doctrines that makes the most sense to me. If there is no hell at all, no final judgment, then there is really no basis for any moral obligation. We can just act however we want, no matter how terrible or cruel it is. The current occupant of the White House is exhibit A of the horrible place where this leads. That way of looking at the world doesn’t seem like any way to live.

Also, trying to “delete” hell from Christianity is a very western way of looking at the world. People living in oppressive regimes care a lot more about a God of justice making things right in the end than a God who just loves everyone.

Religion makes much more sense when you see it as a way to control people.

Is the only reason you don't harm your friend because of God? Or because you are intelligent enough to recognize harm and decided it was bad?

Why is it “bad”? How you even define “harm”? There can be plenty of things that you might do to your friend that they may consider “harmful,” but you may not. Where do you even begin to draw these lines?

The entire premise of your answer is based on a moral value judgment. If there is no God, then there really cannot be these categories of “good” and “bad.” If all that ever happened was one day millions of years ago a fish got on the land and we have been evolving ever since — then there really isn’t any moral obligation at all not to “harm your friend.” It is simply a strong eats the weak world - just like the animal kingdom. And all of life is completely and utterly meaningless.

You are free to use this as a reason not to believe in God. But then own the natural endpoint of your argument.

And yet, there is. Think of it as "advantageous to a social species" or not. Some non-human animals help others, even outside of their own species.

If your life only has meaning because you think there is some future supernatural world waiting for you...that's beyond sad.

And some animals bite each others heads off, literally. What’s your point?

How do you draw the line around your categories of good and bad — “advantageous to a social species” — ? Who says? How is it defined? A little old woman is crossing the street about to hit by a truck she cannot see. Is it “advantageous to a social species” to risk your life to save hers? What if she is very rich and you are very poor? What if she had a large family that relies on her and you have nobody?

Under a pure evolutionary perspective, your origin to life has no meaning — and your ending has no meaning because the sun will just burn up someday — so why does your actually life have any meaning? Why not simply live for yourself and not care too much about the rest of the world?

Your worldview has no moral answers for any of these questions beyond some vaguely defined idea about “how we should act.”

My worldview goes far beyond the supernatural after life — though that’s part of it. My view is that there is a supernatural creator, that we are made in his image, and there is a moral order to the universe that we innately understand as humans — the law of God is written on our hearts as the apostle Paul writes in the Book of Romans. But under this worldview, there are moral obligations, a clear definition of right and wrong, and a strong moral basis for everything that we hold important to us as humans — justice and love.

So this whole fabricated origin story is to fill some need you have for "meaningfulness"? And a set of rules? Seems like a cope for people who can't handle uncertainty.

Right/wrong can all be boiled down to what is advantageous to the survival for our species. It is advantageous for humans (and other species) to help each other; to save each other from harm. Pretty sad that you need some supernatural story to tell you right/wrong.

No, I believe the origin story is true because … it is true. It goes back to the first point I made in this thread — you must determine what you think is actually true.

But your second point is *incredibly* naive. First, again, says who? You? It sure sounds like you want people to be nice to each other, therefore, you have come with your own arbitrary rule saying people should be nice to each other. Why? If we all come from fish and there is no actual moral order, why is your rule superior to anyone else’s? Who made you God? What if people don’t want to help each other? Why is that not an equally valid choice under your theory of a complete denial of moral order since everything is simply a social construct?

Beyond that, many many, many times it is *not* advantageous for someone to help somebody else. In fact, many times it is advantageous not to help anyone at all — to eliminate your threats and exploit the weak. And that’s certainly the basis of how the animal kingdom works. I live on a small 5 acre farm. Yes, it all seems peaceful and tranquil out here with trees, and birds chirping, and a little peaceful creek. But I’ve personally observed incredible cruelty between animals. Animals that do bite each others heads off, quite literally. There is nothing — nothing — in the DNA of other species that says that they do what is helpful to each other.

Don’t so casually dismiss meaning in life. Christians believe that we have meaning in life in the cosmic sense because we were created by a creator in his image; that there is a moral difference between right and wrong that the creator had established; that the end matters because there is an afterlife and a final judgment by the same creator; and therefore what you do here matters too because people have a moral obligation to each other and God to abide by the created moral order. This then gives you meaning in life because your life and how you conduct yourself here absolutely matters.

If you are really no different than a fish at your core; and the world is just going to burn up anyway; if all moral rules are arbitrary — you have your “you must help people” rule that you made up but another human being can come with an equally valid rule since everything is a social construct and it might say completely the opposite; then nothing we do here really matters. People can be kind or people can be cruel but it doesn’t ultimately matter since we all rot in the ground in the end. If your beginning doesn’t have meaning, and your end doesn’t have meaning, then, your life doesn’t have meaning either.

The reality is — a lot of people don’t want to go there because they want to feel like life has meaning. So they come up with their own little social constructs that are every bit a religion as any organized religion — we can call the previous poster “the religion of helping each other” — and that’s how they live their life. No God, but a moral
rule that I come up with in my head to try to make sense of it all. People deny religion and then just invite their own to help them get up in the morning and live life every day.

There’s nothing wrong with that. Just be honest about what you are doing.

You think it’s true. There is a difference.

It sounds like you want your religious stories to be true because they provide your life with meaning and guidelines. OK. Not everyone needs that.

“Moral order” was formed by humans over thousands of generations of people figuring out how societies work best. It’s not arbitrary, it’s been tested and evolved over thousands of years.

It’s advantageous on the whole to help others. Some people don’t help others. Some people hurt others. It happens. Over time, those people are less likely to reproduce so it tends to be a self-limiting issue.

You’ve referred to “coming from fish” multiple times. Do you not believe in evolution? People are obviously different than fish. And different than the organisms that first left the oceans billions of years ago. And even different from humans 20,000 years ago. It’s called evolution.

Other species do help each other. There are also many examples of symbiotic behavior.

Life matters here and now, even if there isn’t some supernatural end game. People find meaning in all sorts of ways that don’t involve supernatural beings.

People have been making stuff up, like religion, to explain the unknown forever. Nothing new about that.

“It’s advantageous *on the whole* to help others” — again, says who? Are you now God? On what basis do you draw that very strong and definitive conclusion?

If everything is a social construct and there is no ultimate moral order, then I can just as easily say — it is actually not advantageous on the whole to help others — it is on the whole better for humans to look out solely for themselves, protect themselves at all costs for longevity, eliminate threats, and exploit the weak. Because there is no afterlife or larger purpose to life, why not? It’s also interesting how your entire theory of moral order has shifted even on an anynomous social message board in the course of this debate.

What proof or evidence do you have for your reproductive theory? There is absolutely no empirical evidence that the so-called “not nice people” will reproduce themselves out of existence.

Is that what we were *really* see in the world today?

When I look around I see a world filled with selfishness, cruelty, war, anguish, malice, and other horrible things. I see it on the macro level every single day when I read the news, I see it on the micro level with how I watch how other people treat each other, and I even see it on the personal level with myself in all kinds of ways that I have fallen short in life. If you can’t see it in yourself, then you are woefully ignorant and blind to your own flaws and imperfections.

Christianity actually has the most realistic view of human nature — it comports completely with what I observe in the real world. That is — all hearts are ultimately very dark because of selfishness. The only difference between a priest and someone on death row is that the seeds are watered differently in the latter case.

You end with “life matters here and now, even if there is no supernatural end game.” That’s what you tell yourself to get up every morning. That’s YOUR religion. It is every bit a belief system as any organized religion. So you end up doing exactly what you accuse other people of doing — believing in something you cannot empirically prove to have meaning in life.

For whatever it is worth — I used to do the same exact thing. I made up a social construct in my own head to get up every morning, regardless of whether there was any actual evidence to back it up. (Ironically, at the same time, I would tell people that I only believed in science and “evidence” — even though
there was no real evidence AT ALL for the things I said were most important!).

And then I realized — instead of me coming up with my own arbitrary systems, why don’t I look at what Christianity actually says about the world and determine if it is both factually true and also consistent with reality? It is absolutely consistent with my lived reality (that part was easier to determine — see above examples) and after some historical research, I came to the conclusion that it is more likely than not to be true. I am not 100% convinced, but I am at the same confidence interval that I am around the existence of any other major historical events (I wasn’t at the Gettysburg Address but I have read enough about it to believe it basically happened the way that we think it happened) — and the confidence level that I need to make any other major life decision — whether to get married, take a job, etc.

Finally, no, I don’t believe that humans evolved from fishes millions of years ago. I believe that the human species was created by God and that explains why we have a fundamentally different physical nature and, more importantly, conscience from animals.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I mostly like my religion but this is where I get confused, on one side God claims to be merciful and love each of us many times more than any mother can and on other side, he can't take disobedience and feels like people should burn in hell.

not just that, he created cancer and other deadly life forms like bubonic plague. These cause good innocent people to die painful deaths

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I mostly like my religion but this is where I get confused, on one side God claims to be merciful and love each of us many times more than any mother can and on other side, he can't take disobedience and feels like people should burn in hell.

It’s not that he “can’t take disobedience.”

God is by definition perfect. There can be no sin in His presence. You make the choice between remaining in a sinful state or seeking the redemption he offers.

God created sin. And then decided we all do it and have to grovel to be forgiven or we burn for eternity? Is that your perfect deity?

No, God did not create sin. Man created sin.

No. Christian scripture and tradition teach that sin entered the world by one man (Adam). But he did not create sin. The first sin we know of was the war in heaven led by Satan, after which 1/3 of the angels were cast out of heaven. Jesus himself said he saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. All of this occurred in eternity past and was indeed very sinful. Man had not even been created yet.

OK, but you're splitting hairs here. Yes, technically Lucifer/ Satan and his band of angels created sin. But it manifested itself in mankind through Adam. Let's say man created sin in that mankind brought it alive on earth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Religion exists because people need to make sense of the world. If you are comfortable with the idea that the world does not have to make sense, then you don't need religion.

No, "religion," such as it is, exists because mankind is created with a God-given desire to know and worship the creator. The "religion" part that you're talking about has been plenty corrupted by man along the way, but that's still the basis for why it exists.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Religion exists because people need to make sense of the world. If you are comfortable with the idea that the world does not have to make sense, then you don't need religion.

No, "religion," such as it is, exists because mankind is created with a God-given desire to know and worship the creator. The "religion" part that you're talking about has been plenty corrupted by man along the way, but that's still the basis for why it exists.

The fact that you believe there is a creator already shows your need to make sense of the world. Why does there need to be a creator?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ridiculous to think that you can only choose between those 2 options once you die.
Surely the other side has multiple options on how to be. With each option having their own leaders and entrance requirements.
There are numerous benefits anyway.

This isn’t really a problem. It’s pretty well established that when you die you die.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Religion exists because people need to make sense of the world. If you are comfortable with the idea that the world does not have to make sense, then you don't need religion.

Exactly

That's how many created it in the first place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Religion exists because people need to make sense of the world. If you are comfortable with the idea that the world does not have to make sense, then you don't need religion.

No, "religion," such as it is, exists because mankind is created with a God-given desire to know and worship the creator. The "religion" part that you're talking about has been plenty corrupted by man along the way, but that's still the basis for why it exists.

When, approximately, was mankind created?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I mostly like my religion but this is where I get confused, on one side God claims to be merciful and love each of us many times more than any mother can and on other side, he can't take disobedience and feels like people should burn in hell.

It’s not that he “can’t take disobedience.”

God is by definition perfect. There can be no sin in His presence. You make the choice between remaining in a sinful state or seeking the redemption he offers.

God created sin. And then decided we all do it and have to grovel to be forgiven or we burn for eternity? Is that your perfect deity?

No, God did not create sin. Man created sin.

No. Christian scripture and tradition teach that sin entered the world by one man (Adam). But he did not create sin. The first sin we know of was the war in heaven led by Satan, after which 1/3 of the angels were cast out of heaven. Jesus himself said he saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. All of this occurred in eternity past and was indeed very sinful. Man had not even been created yet.

Sin is the temerity to refuse to be enslaved by an arrogant and selfish god.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Religion exists because people need to make sense of the world. If you are comfortable with the idea that the world does not have to make sense, then you don't need religion.

Religion exists because people need to make sense of the world but don't want to put in the hard work to understand. If you are comfortable with the idea that the world does make its own sense and doesn't owe you anything , then you don't need religion

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You have to come to a conclusion about what you think is actually true. Otherwise, you are just making things up in your head.

For me, after exploring different religions and systems of belief, I came to the conclusion that Christianity was most likely to be true — not 100% convinced, but at the same confidence level that I make any other important life decision (which is always less than 100%).

Hell is one of the Christian doctrines that makes the most sense to me. If there is no hell at all, no final judgment, then there is really no basis for any moral obligation. We can just act however we want, no matter how terrible or cruel it is. The current occupant of the White House is exhibit A of the horrible place where this leads. That way of looking at the world doesn’t seem like any way to live.

Also, trying to “delete” hell from Christianity is a very western way of looking at the world. People living in oppressive regimes care a lot more about a God of justice making things right in the end than a God who just loves everyone.

Religion makes much more sense when you see it as a way to control people.

Is the only reason you don't harm your friend because of God? Or because you are intelligent enough to recognize harm and decided it was bad?

Why is it “bad”? How you even define “harm”? There can be plenty of things that you might do to your friend that they may consider “harmful,” but you may not. Where do you even begin to draw these lines?

The entire premise of your answer is based on a moral value judgment. If there is no God, then there really cannot be these categories of “good” and “bad.” If all that ever happened was one day millions of years ago a fish got on the land and we have been evolving ever since — then there really isn’t any moral obligation at all not to “harm your friend.” It is simply a strong eats the weak world - just like the animal kingdom. And all of life is completely and utterly meaningless.

You are free to use this as a reason not to believe in God. But then own the natural endpoint of your argument.

And yet, there is. Think of it as "advantageous to a social species" or not. Some non-human animals help others, even outside of their own species.

If your life only has meaning because you think there is some future supernatural world waiting for you...that's beyond sad.

And some animals bite each others heads off, literally. What’s your point?

How do you draw the line around your categories of good and bad — “advantageous to a social species” — ? Who says? How is it defined? A little old woman is crossing the street about to hit by a truck she cannot see. Is it “advantageous to a social species” to risk your life to save hers? What if she is very rich and you are very poor? What if she had a large family that relies on her and you have nobody?

Under a pure evolutionary perspective, your origin to life has no meaning — and your ending has no meaning because the sun will just burn up someday — so why does your actually life have any meaning? Why not simply live for yourself and not care too much about the rest of the world?

Your worldview has no moral answers for any of these questions beyond some vaguely defined idea about “how we should act.”

My worldview goes far beyond the supernatural after life — though that’s part of it. My view is that there is a supernatural creator, that we are made in his image, and there is a moral order to the universe that we innately understand as humans — the law of God is written on our hearts as the apostle Paul writes in the Book of Romans. But under this worldview, there are moral obligations, a clear definition of right and wrong, and a strong moral basis for everything that we hold important to us as humans — justice and love.

So this whole fabricated origin story is to fill some need you have for "meaningfulness"? And a set of rules? Seems like a cope for people who can't handle uncertainty.

Right/wrong can all be boiled down to what is advantageous to the survival for our species. It is advantageous for humans (and other species) to help each other; to save each other from harm. Pretty sad that you need some supernatural story to tell you right/wrong.

No, I believe the origin story is true because … it is true. It goes back to the first point I made in this thread — you must determine what you think is actually true.

But your second point is *incredibly* naive. First, again, says who? You? It sure sounds like you want people to be nice to each other, therefore, you have come with your own arbitrary rule saying people should be nice to each other. Why? If we all come from fish and there is no actual moral order, why is your rule superior to anyone else’s? Who made you God? What if people don’t want to help each other? Why is that not an equally valid choice under your theory of a complete denial of moral order since everything is simply a social construct?

Beyond that, many many, many times it is *not* advantageous for someone to help somebody else. In fact, many times it is advantageous not to help anyone at all — to eliminate your threats and exploit the weak. And that’s certainly the basis of how the animal kingdom works. I live on a small 5 acre farm. Yes, it all seems peaceful and tranquil out here with trees, and birds chirping, and a little peaceful creek. But I’ve personally observed incredible cruelty between animals. Animals that do bite each others heads off, quite literally. There is nothing — nothing — in the DNA of other species that says that they do what is helpful to each other.

Don’t so casually dismiss meaning in life. Christians believe that we have meaning in life in the cosmic sense because we were created by a creator in his image; that there is a moral difference between right and wrong that the creator had established; that the end matters because there is an afterlife and a final judgment by the same creator; and therefore what you do here matters too because people have a moral obligation to each other and God to abide by the created moral order. This then gives you meaning in life because your life and how you conduct yourself here absolutely matters.

If you are really no different than a fish at your core; and the world is just going to burn up anyway; if all moral rules are arbitrary — you have your “you must help people” rule that you made up but another human being can come with an equally valid rule since everything is a social construct and it might say completely the opposite; then nothing we do here really matters. People can be kind or people can be cruel but it doesn’t ultimately matter since we all rot in the ground in the end. If your beginning doesn’t have meaning, and your end doesn’t have meaning, then, your life doesn’t have meaning either.

The reality is — a lot of people don’t want to go there because they want to feel like life has meaning. So they come up with their own little social constructs that are every bit a religion as any organized religion — we can call the previous poster “the religion of helping each other” — and that’s how they live their life. No God, but a moral
rule that I come up with in my head to try to make sense of it all. People deny religion and then just invite their own to help them get up in the morning and live life every day.

There’s nothing wrong with that. Just be honest about what you are doing.

You think it’s true. There is a difference.

It sounds like you want your religious stories to be true because they provide your life with meaning and guidelines. OK. Not everyone needs that.

“Moral order” was formed by humans over thousands of generations of people figuring out how societies work best. It’s not arbitrary, it’s been tested and evolved over thousands of years.

It’s advantageous on the whole to help others. Some people don’t help others. Some people hurt others. It happens. Over time, those people are less likely to reproduce so it tends to be a self-limiting issue.

You’ve referred to “coming from fish” multiple times. Do you not believe in evolution? People are obviously different than fish. And different than the organisms that first left the oceans billions of years ago. And even different from humans 20,000 years ago. It’s called evolution.

Other species do help each other. There are also many examples of symbiotic behavior.

Life matters here and now, even if there isn’t some supernatural end game. People find meaning in all sorts of ways that don’t involve supernatural beings.

People have been making stuff up, like religion, to explain the unknown forever. Nothing new about that.

“It’s advantageous *on the whole* to help others” — again, says who? Are you now God? On what basis do you draw that very strong and definitive conclusion?

If everything is a social construct and there is no ultimate moral order, then I can just as easily say — it is actually not advantageous on the whole to help others — it is on the whole better for humans to look out solely for themselves, protect themselves at all costs for longevity, eliminate threats, and exploit the weak. Because there is no afterlife or larger purpose to life, why not? It’s also interesting how your entire theory of moral order has shifted even on an anynomous social message board in the course of this debate.

What proof or evidence do you have for your reproductive theory? There is absolutely no empirical evidence that the so-called “not nice people” will reproduce themselves out of existence.

Is that what we were *really* see in the world today?

When I look around I see a world filled with selfishness, cruelty, war, anguish, malice, and other horrible things. I see it on the macro level every single day when I read the news, I see it on the micro level with how I watch how other people treat each other, and I even see it on the personal level with myself in all kinds of ways that I have fallen short in life. If you can’t see it in yourself, then you are woefully ignorant and blind to your own flaws and imperfections.

Christianity actually has the most realistic view of human nature — it comports completely with what I observe in the real world. That is — all hearts are ultimately very dark because of selfishness. The only difference between a priest and someone on death row is that the seeds are watered differently in the latter case.

You end with “life matters here and now, even if there is no supernatural end game.” That’s what you tell yourself to get up every morning. That’s YOUR religion. It is every bit a belief system as any organized religion. So you end up doing exactly what you accuse other people of doing — believing in something you cannot empirically prove to have meaning in life.

For whatever it is worth — I used to do the same exact thing. I made up a social construct in my own head to get up every morning, regardless of whether there was any actual evidence to back it up. (Ironically, at the same time, I would tell people that I only believed in science and “evidence” — even though
there was no real evidence AT ALL for the things I said were most important!).

And then I realized — instead of me coming up with my own arbitrary systems, why don’t I look at what Christianity actually says about the world and determine if it is both factually true and also consistent with reality? It is absolutely consistent with my lived reality (that part was easier to determine — see above examples) and after some historical research, I came to the conclusion that it is more likely than not to be true. I am not 100% convinced, but I am at the same confidence interval that I am around the existence of any other major historical events (I wasn’t at the Gettysburg Address but I have read enough about it to believe it basically happened the way that we think it happened) — and the confidence level that I need to make any other major life decision — whether to get married, take a job, etc.

Finally, no, I don’t believe that humans evolved from fishes millions of years ago. I believe that the human species was created by God and that explains why we have a fundamentally different physical nature and, more importantly, conscience from animals.

There are no gods, so I'm certainly not one.

We are simply humans who evolved to help each other. This isn't some theory that I fabricated in my head.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201212/the-evolutionary-biology-altruism
https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/how-humans-evolved-to-care-for-others.html
https://www.science.org/content/article/human-altruism-traces-back-origins-humanity

The people who were more cooperative were more likely to survive and pass down their genes. We’re genetically inclined to help others.

“Moral order” is your language, not mine.

Nothing you described about human behavior requires supernatural forces. We are complex creatures capable of both good and bad actions.

I literally never think about what will happen after I die or the “meaning of life’”.

Religion is a social construct. A system built by people to explain the unknown (along with other ulterior motives).

There is nothing “factual true” about the supernatural.

So a creationist. Fascinating. Did you take much science in college? Did you go to college?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:You have to come to a conclusion about what you think is actually true. Otherwise, you are just making things up in your head.

For me, after exploring different religions and systems of belief, I came to the conclusion that Christianity was most likely to be true — not 100% convinced, but at the same confidence level that I make any other important life decision (which is always less than 100%).

Hell is one of the Christian doctrines that makes the most sense to me. If there is no hell at all, no final judgment, then there is really no basis for any moral obligation. We can just act however we want, no matter how terrible or cruel it is. The current occupant of the White House is exhibit A of the horrible place where this leads. That way of looking at the world doesn’t seem like any way to live.

Also, trying to “delete” hell from Christianity is a very western way of looking at the world. People living in oppressive regimes care a lot more about a God of justice making things right in the end than a God who just loves everyone.

Religion makes much more sense when you see it as a way to control people.

Is the only reason you don't harm your friend because of God? Or because you are intelligent enough to recognize harm and decided it was bad?

Why is it “bad”? How you even define “harm”? There can be plenty of things that you might do to your friend that they may consider “harmful,” but you may not. Where do you even begin to draw these lines?

The entire premise of your answer is based on a moral value judgment. If there is no God, then there really cannot be these categories of “good” and “bad.” If all that ever happened was one day millions of years ago a fish got on the land and we have been evolving ever since — then there really isn’t any moral obligation at all not to “harm your friend.” It is simply a strong eats the weak world - just like the animal kingdom. And all of life is completely and utterly meaningless.

You are free to use this as a reason not to believe in God. But then own the natural endpoint of your argument.

And yet, there is. Think of it as "advantageous to a social species" or not. Some non-human animals help others, even outside of their own species.

If your life only has meaning because you think there is some future supernatural world waiting for you...that's beyond sad.

And some animals bite each others heads off, literally. What’s your point?

How do you draw the line around your categories of good and bad — “advantageous to a social species” — ? Who says? How is it defined? A little old woman is crossing the street about to hit by a truck she cannot see. Is it “advantageous to a social species” to risk your life to save hers? What if she is very rich and you are very poor? What if she had a large family that relies on her and you have nobody?

Under a pure evolutionary perspective, your origin to life has no meaning — and your ending has no meaning because the sun will just burn up someday — so why does your actually life have any meaning? Why not simply live for yourself and not care too much about the rest of the world?

Your worldview has no moral answers for any of these questions beyond some vaguely defined idea about “how we should act.”

My worldview goes far beyond the supernatural after life — though that’s part of it. My view is that there is a supernatural creator, that we are made in his image, and there is a moral order to the universe that we innately understand as humans — the law of God is written on our hearts as the apostle Paul writes in the Book of Romans. But under this worldview, there are moral obligations, a clear definition of right and wrong, and a strong moral basis for everything that we hold important to us as humans — justice and love.

So this whole fabricated origin story is to fill some need you have for "meaningfulness"? And a set of rules? Seems like a cope for people who can't handle uncertainty.

Right/wrong can all be boiled down to what is advantageous to the survival for our species. It is advantageous for humans (and other species) to help each other; to save each other from harm. Pretty sad that you need some supernatural story to tell you right/wrong.

No, I believe the origin story is true because … it is true. It goes back to the first point I made in this thread — you must determine what you think is actually true.

But your second point is *incredibly* naive. First, again, says who? You? It sure sounds like you want people to be nice to each other, therefore, you have come with your own arbitrary rule saying people should be nice to each other. Why? If we all come from fish and there is no actual moral order, why is your rule superior to anyone else’s? Who made you God? What if people don’t want to help each other? Why is that not an equally valid choice under your theory of a complete denial of moral order since everything is simply a social construct?

Beyond that, many many, many times it is *not* advantageous for someone to help somebody else. In fact, many times it is advantageous not to help anyone at all — to eliminate your threats and exploit the weak. And that’s certainly the basis of how the animal kingdom works. I live on a small 5 acre farm. Yes, it all seems peaceful and tranquil out here with trees, and birds chirping, and a little peaceful creek. But I’ve personally observed incredible cruelty between animals. Animals that do bite each others heads off, quite literally. There is nothing — nothing — in the DNA of other species that says that they do what is helpful to each other.

Don’t so casually dismiss meaning in life. Christians believe that we have meaning in life in the cosmic sense because we were created by a creator in his image; that there is a moral difference between right and wrong that the creator had established; that the end matters because there is an afterlife and a final judgment by the same creator; and therefore what you do here matters too because people have a moral obligation to each other and God to abide by the created moral order. This then gives you meaning in life because your life and how you conduct yourself here absolutely matters.

If you are really no different than a fish at your core; and the world is just going to burn up anyway; if all moral rules are arbitrary — you have your “you must help people” rule that you made up but another human being can come with an equally valid rule since everything is a social construct and it might say completely the opposite; then nothing we do here really matters. People can be kind or people can be cruel but it doesn’t ultimately matter since we all rot in the ground in the end. If your beginning doesn’t have meaning, and your end doesn’t have meaning, then, your life doesn’t have meaning either.

The reality is — a lot of people don’t want to go there because they want to feel like life has meaning. So they come up with their own little social constructs that are every bit a religion as any organized religion — we can call the previous poster “the religion of helping each other” — and that’s how they live their life. No God, but a moral
rule that I come up with in my head to try to make sense of it all. People deny religion and then just invite their own to help them get up in the morning and live life every day.

There’s nothing wrong with that. Just be honest about what you are doing.

You think it’s true. There is a difference.

It sounds like you want your religious stories to be true because they provide your life with meaning and guidelines. OK. Not everyone needs that.

“Moral order” was formed by humans over thousands of generations of people figuring out how societies work best. It’s not arbitrary, it’s been tested and evolved over thousands of years.

It’s advantageous on the whole to help others. Some people don’t help others. Some people hurt others. It happens. Over time, those people are less likely to reproduce so it tends to be a self-limiting issue.

You’ve referred to “coming from fish” multiple times. Do you not believe in evolution? People are obviously different than fish. And different than the organisms that first left the oceans billions of years ago. And even different from humans 20,000 years ago. It’s called evolution.

Other species do help each other. There are also many examples of symbiotic behavior.

Life matters here and now, even if there isn’t some supernatural end game. People find meaning in all sorts of ways that don’t involve supernatural beings.

People have been making stuff up, like religion, to explain the unknown forever. Nothing new about that.

“It’s advantageous *on the whole* to help others” — again, says who? Are you now God? On what basis do you draw that very strong and definitive conclusion?

If everything is a social construct and there is no ultimate moral order, then I can just as easily say — it is actually not advantageous on the whole to help others — it is on the whole better for humans to look out solely for themselves, protect themselves at all costs for longevity, eliminate threats, and exploit the weak. Because there is no afterlife or larger purpose to life, why not? It’s also interesting how your entire theory of moral order has shifted even on an anynomous social message board in the course of this debate.

What proof or evidence do you have for your reproductive theory? There is absolutely no empirical evidence that the so-called “not nice people” will reproduce themselves out of existence.

Is that what we were *really* see in the world today?

When I look around I see a world filled with selfishness, cruelty, war, anguish, malice, and other horrible things. I see it on the macro level every single day when I read the news, I see it on the micro level with how I watch how other people treat each other, and I even see it on the personal level with myself in all kinds of ways that I have fallen short in life. If you can’t see it in yourself, then you are woefully ignorant and blind to your own flaws and imperfections.

Christianity actually has the most realistic view of human nature — it comports completely with what I observe in the real world. That is — all hearts are ultimately very dark because of selfishness. The only difference between a priest and someone on death row is that the seeds are watered differently in the latter case.

You end with “life matters here and now, even if there is no supernatural end game.” That’s what you tell yourself to get up every morning. That’s YOUR religion. It is every bit a belief system as any organized religion. So you end up doing exactly what you accuse other people of doing — believing in something you cannot empirically prove to have meaning in life.

For whatever it is worth — I used to do the same exact thing. I made up a social construct in my own head to get up every morning, regardless of whether there was any actual evidence to back it up. (Ironically, at the same time, I would tell people that I only believed in science and “evidence” — even though
there was no real evidence AT ALL for the things I said were most important!).

And then I realized — instead of me coming up with my own arbitrary systems, why don’t I look at what Christianity actually says about the world and determine if it is both factually true and also consistent with reality? It is absolutely consistent with my lived reality (that part was easier to determine — see above examples) and after some historical research, I came to the conclusion that it is more likely than not to be true. I am not 100% convinced, but I am at the same confidence interval that I am around the existence of any other major historical events (I wasn’t at the Gettysburg Address but I have read enough about it to believe it basically happened the way that we think it happened) — and the confidence level that I need to make any other major life decision — whether to get married, take a job, etc.

Finally, no, I don’t believe that humans evolved from fishes millions of years ago. I believe that the human species was created by God and that explains why we have a fundamentally different physical nature and, more importantly, conscience from animals.

Interesting that you believe in a lie with no evidence but demand nearly perfect, never- ending evidence for truth. 🤔

[Anonymous]

To answer the OP's question, the Heaven/Hell you're talking about are not the only options for Christians to believe.

The doctrine of Hell as Eternal Conscious Torment has been anachronistically layered onto four different words in the bible that are typically translated as Hell: Sheol, Hades, Gehenna, and Tartarus. Many recent Bible translations have stopped using the term Hell altogether and just leave these words untranslated, because they don't want to conflate the four terms, which are used in different time periods and mean different things. There's a ton of debate about what Jesus was talking about when he referenced Gehenna, but it's worth mentioning that it references a real physical place on earth, and you can go there today (yes, you can go to Hell)

The early church mostly believed in a type of purgatory which led to eventual union with God, or they believed in annihilation (the wicked cease to exist after judgement, eternal death), but there was no consensus. I would add that early Christians didn't consider a liminal, spiritual "heaven" or "hell" to be the endgame, because "eternal life" meant real bodily resurrection. Over thousands of years, the doctrine drifted.