bigbrightgoldenhalo:

As an agnostic I find myself baffled by a few habits of the religious, one of which is the strange Christian (and post-Christian) preoccupation with the sufferings of Christ. Let me put the sufferings and crucifixion of this simple carpenter into context for you: some thirty years after the apparent execution of the man Yeshua (Anglicized ‘Jesus’) on Golgotha in Jerusalem, thousands of Jews (count that, thousands - specifically, somewhere between 3,000-4,000) were simultaneously crucified on the road out of Jerusalem when elements within the community tried to rebel against the harsh rule of the imperial Roman governors. That is, everyone leaving or entering the ‘holy city’ would have seen thousands of Yeshua’s Jewish brethren hanging on crosses - some nailed and some bound by ropes - writhing in pain, bleeding, most eventually suffocating due to lung collapse before they could starve to death.

Men in our own time are being tortured and slowly killed in worse ways than this distant carpenter. Hell, his own closest friends were martyred in increasingly more barbaric ways: Peter is recorded as having been crucified upside down, Matthew was chopped to death with an axe, Thomas was lanced and burned to death etc. etc. The apparently malevolent God of the Judeo-Christian matrix, it seems, has come up with hundreds of ways - each more barbaric than the last - to scourge and execute his creations and loyal followers. It’s disingenuous for religious folk to turn the sufferings of Christ into sacraments and nullify the shocking nature of the Christian message; which effectively boils down to the maxim ‘suffering is good’, and the teaching that it is out of suffering that people are saved from their base natures. This is and should be anathema to anyone who loves and prizes freedom and progress.

Very well said

lunaradvent:

1. If I (atheist) deny Jesus yet don’t go to hell, then Jesus is a liar.
2. If Jesus is honest and you (progressive Xian) don’t think that I deserve hell, then Jesus is unjust.
3. If Jesus is both honest and just, then you believe that I deserve to spend eternity in hell.”

• SciencePundit

This conundrum is easily solved either by assuming that Jesus never existed or that if he did exist he wasn’t a god and didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.  (Get it?  What the “hell”?  I just crack me up sometimes.)

gordon116:

Revelation 20:11-15 Talks about The Great White Throne Judgement. You need to get familiar with that and study it because it WILL change your life. Paul Washer has a sermon on it, R C Sproul talks about it to. In this passage we see God’s wrath against sinners. It’s a holy wrath that will not hesitate to judge sinners and forever condemn them to the lake of fire where Satan and his angels will be for an eternity. However, here is why I say that God really hates sin. Rev. 20:14 says “Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.” Rev. 20:6 says ” Blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power, but they shall be priest of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.”

Where am I getting to? When a Christian dies, his soul goes to be present with God, yet his body stays here on Earth. And is at the second coming of Christ, meaning after the The Rapture and The tribulation that the believers body joins his soul and is forever with Christ. When an unbeliever dies, their soul goes to Hell, yet their bodies stay here. However we see here in Rev. 20:6 that there is a second death where the Christian does not take place in. He only takes place in the first resurrection. What happens is that at the Final Judgement the bodies of unbelievers will be united with their soul and spirit. (The Final Judgement is after everything has come to pass and the only thing remaining is the creation of the New Heavens and the New Earth.) This means that you will present yourself before a holy God at that Final Judgement and He will judge you according to your deeds. And obviously you fall short of His perfect standard of living and your resurrected body will be thrown into the lake of fire forever. Why a second death? Well the sinner dies once, but then his body is resurrected and joins his soul and spirit only to be judge at the Final Judgement, and both physically and spiritually he dies again and is thrown into the lake of fire forever for loving his sin more than God. A sinner dies twice, that how much God hates sin. The Christian dies once, but then his physical body is resurrected and is joined with his soul and stays alive and is forever with Christ. 

It’s intense stuff that isn’t talked about anymore. But this is why we have to put away sin and repent and follow Christ. God is holy, but we have no idea what that means. All we like to hear is “God loves me, and he loves the world. And He’s good. He won’t let me go to hell” And we ease our conscience with these words. But in reality because God is love, he has to hate what is evil. 

I wish I could write more about this. Maybe on another occasion I will write about the Great White Throne Judgement. It’s so deep and profound that I must say something and not keep quiet. 

Great White Throne of Judgement

I’m sorry.  I usually don’t take cheap shots like this, but I just couldn’t resist this one.  :)

Christ said “I surely come quickly.”  By Creationist accounting Jesus has been dead fully 1/3 of the totality of existence.  Even if we grant that God may have a different sense of timing than we mere humans, this is getting a bit ridiculous.  He also said that he’d be back before some in this generation have passed.  The Wandering Jew is a cheat code, and redefining generation as the Christian Church doesn’t negate the fact that the people he would have been talking to would have interpreted it an entirely different way.

It’s been 2000 years.  Jesus is dead, if he existed at all.  He’s not coming back.

I’m going to bed now.  In case I’m wrong, wake me up when Apocalypse comes.

~ Steve

jamesxjurassic:

I don’t see how people can not believe in Christ.  To start off, you’re a lot happier.  Before I found Christ, I was just so depressed before hand.  Another thing is, if you’re right you’ll live forever, if you’re wrong, well then there’s nothing.  That’s what you guys believe, there’s nothing after death? If you guys are wrong, you guys suffer eternally.  If you’re right, there’s absolutely nothing.  Another thing is, why do atheists always try to start something about Christianity, I mean seriously.  Why talk about something you DON’T BELIEVE IN.  Someone wanna explain that to me?  I’d really like to know.

Signed,
 A believer. :) 

To start off with, YOU may be a lot happier, but others have found that they are now a lot happier now that they no longer believe in a superstition which threatens them with eternal torture and that virtually guarantees that the majority of the world will burn forever if the words of the Bible are taken anywhere near literally.

You next state Pascal’s wager, which I sincerely doubt has ever convinced anyone to believe in the unbelievable.  The mythology of the stories of Jesus are just as unbelievable as the stories of thousands of other gods.  Statistically, I am much better off being a good person and not putting all my eggs in one basket than I am in believing in one unlikely god when another unlikely god could also theoretically exist.  You do not worship as the Koran wishes you to worship…what if you are wrong?

And atheists talk about Christianity because Christianity is constantly trying to pressure itself into our personal and political lives.  Christian “ethics” are constantly influencing public policy.  The vast, vast majority of people are only against gay marriage due to religious reasons—reasons that the atheist find both ridiculous and dangerous.

And interestingly, you gave absolutely no reasons why Christ is believable.  Happiness is not a factor.  It might make me happier to believe that my cat works tirelessly all night while I sleep to make good things happen to me the next day, but that does not make belief anymore desirable.  Pascal’s wager is simply a cop out.

The fact remains that there is absolutely no reason to believe that Jesus fulfilled as single messianic Old Testament prophecy or that any of the miracles attributed to him actually happened.  The New Testament is full of obvious and undeniable forgeries and blatant contradictions.  That which was moral in the teachings of Jesus was not original, and that which was original was not moral.  And the entire “dying for our sins” thing is ludicrous, as Jesus’s suffered for less than a day at worst and was only dead for a day and a half, after which he went to sit at God’s right hand.  All this and he “save the world” too.  That’s a deal that I suspect that anyone would take if offered.  The concept is, in itself, ludicrous.

I hope this helps to answer your question.  :)

Peace,

~ Steve

canabisexual:

You cannot rationalize with them.

There is literally nothing you can say to have them see things any other way. They’re completely self-validated and do not rely on logic. They’re right, end of story.

There was this teenage girl spreading the conservative Christian homophobic, abortion-fearing patriarchal propaganda; she thinks she’s here to cure the world of something that doesn’t exist, yet is completely ignorant to the world’s real problems. It’s an intense brain-washed schizophrenia, and I honestly think something needs to be done about it; but it can’t, because the religious hold so much power; it’s too much of a “politically sensitive” topic to deal with. At what point is religious freedom overstepping it’s boundaries?

I believe in a God, I am in no way bashing any belief system, but to remain completely ignorant and isolated to the outside world, and then enforce your personal bias experience onto the lives of others…

It fucks with my head. Religion can be a very positive influence, why do people so blatantly follow it when it’s negative and immoral?