Religion and hell?

hello...

as has been argued on other fronts is the 'Religion Conspiracy'

i have been posed with a question from my RS (religious studies) teacher after i got into a huge debate. goes on for a rather long time so ill try to sum it up.

we was doing work on miricles and it seems that alot of the miracles were to drastic to be coincidence. so i posed him a question saying that if all of these "miracles" are generaly v they must have been performed by the infuencle of one God since he/she/it is the only one capable of performing miracles. but if we belive in the "one God" (from a catholasism point of view) then how come other religions still believe there religion is correct and how have they had miracles performed too?

another debate that made me think was the idea off hell. i have been thinking that if God wishes to save everyone then if people go to hell then God has failed. but in the bible it is written that to go to hell you have to be denied by God. but god wants to save us. WHATS HAPPENING?



[edit on 22/03/2009 by chris3340]

reply to post by chris3340


Perhaps hell is also known as religion?

Is it possible that religion has the Bible wrong, especially when it comes to fundamental doctrines such as; Dante's Inferno?

Could the FACT that not even two religions can agree on Bible prophesy or doctrine, be an indicator that SOMETHING is wrong?

Step outside the box! It is amazing what is then revealed.

yeh i know it is...

i used to hate religion but now i guess i say its one of the most interesting subject purly because of the fact that we can question it.

knowone can agree on it either.

i used to hate religion but now i guess i say its one of the most interesting subject purly because of the fact that we can question it.

knowone can agree on it either.

My motto is to keep asking regardless of your set of beliefs or upbringing. Check out my threads below (click on the links) and see if any get you to questioning more!! That is what we are all here for. Take what resonates with you and leave the rest.

IMO you can't have religion without some form of hell really. What would be the drive to have people behave the way you want them to behave?

The answer is simple, there are two things that drive religion. The idea of reward for following blindly, or the idea of eternal suffering for thinking outside the box.

These doctrines, religious ones, required an evil dark place for people who did not "believe" in what the high master had to say. The Bible contradicts itself in many ways, your example is just one of them.

I think the above poster made a good point. The fact that none of these religions can agree with eachother and all the stories are somewhat similar, some almost identical make it very difficult to believe any of it to be true.

I can think of only one thing that would anger "God" as religious folk see things today more than not believing in him, it would be believing in a lie.

~Keeper

I can think of only one thing that would anger "God" as religious folk see things today more than not believing in him, it would be believing in a lie.

Oh, my friend, I couldn't agree more!! The "Lie" is made up of threads that are woven within the fabric of society, and most find comfort and warmth within.

yeh i couldnt agree more either.

thats the idea of me posting this question to see how many other people agree with my religious beliefs. thats all.

and it seems alot of you do but there are still many questions that will remain unanswered.

reply to post by chris3340


Well to tell you the truth I am not religious, at all. I truthfully do not believe in any religion that the we as humans have come up with. I preach the gospel of I don't know.

I am a spiritualist attempting to become one with my inner being through worship of myself really (not in a narcisistic kind of way however) and have found it much more rewarding than my Catholic upbringing.

I think that we at this current stage are incapable of truly understanding the concept of God, I feel as though it is far too complex for any one human to understand with our current ideals, morals and spiritual advancement.

~Keeper

yes i agree with you too.

but is it just me or do most people with christian/chatholic upbringing are lead astray?

reply to post by chris3340


It depends on what type of information is available to you I figure.

Most people of christian beliefs usually will live in middle class societies where an abundance of knowlege is avaible and you won't be persecuted for studying and trying to find your own way.

In muslim countries as well as most other countries where alternative religions are found to be more popular that christianity you see the religious structure being the heart of most communities. It is what they are brought up in from time of birth, usually with no real chance to ask questions or study other forms of religion.

I think to be lead astray you need to be an individual who doesn't require the gratification of serving a higher purpose in order to feel complete. I believe it is the quest for knowledge and the truth that leads us to believe that some of these things are false.

~Keeper

yes... i never thought of it in that context.

but the backgrounds somtimes revolve entirly about there religion. it is taught in almost all religions that everyone is equal. why do people think that giving more money to charity or by helping more people earns u a higher amount of power in the afterlife?

reply to post by chris3340


Most of them don't, it's simply a formality that has long been built into the church.

Looking back at history where the church started, they were the ones who collected taxes and tarrifs and on the people. They have always collected money from their followers, today it's simply a matter of choice, versus life or death.

They are giving to the movement so to speak, and in that sense most religious people think that they are in turn, spreading the message of God by doing so.

And religious doctrines state that people are created equal yes, however the ideals and rhetoric is only kept so long as it is convenient to the person following it.

The church has always made obscene ammounts of money from their followers in order to expand and convert. They've simply managed to keep the practice popular.

As for helping other people, that's simply a practice that has been adopted since the beginning of human kind. Help another, good karma comes flowing back to you. (if you believe in such things)

Not everything taught in these religions is wrong, there are some very good stories and morals to be learnt from religious texts. It's the interpretation of these texts that makes them dangerous when people blindly follow what others say.

~Keeper

[edit on 3/22/2009 by tothetenthpower]

reply to post by chris3340


From my understanding there is a point of view that many people tend to disregard. If we look at the context of there being a God and a Devil who contend with one another then it's reasonable to expect that the Devil would infact try and confuse the message that was left by God.

So, you ask the question how can miracles be performed for these other religions if there is only one? This quesiton assumes that God would restrict the blessings given out to us to only his "true believers". This does however lead us to the question of why not keep these sort of things within the boundries of His chosen religion?

Why indeed? What if it wasn't the power of God that was being manifest? In order for something to qualify as a miracle it would have to defy current understanding. If you knew how to manipulate the immune system of someone with only your mind, that would be considered a miracle. Now so far no one has been able to demonstrate this, but imagine for a second that there are beings who do poses this knowledge. Beings that have been on the Earth since the beginning of time.

Satan and his Devils are more devious and ruthless than you can imagine. For them miraculously saving someone inorder to keep thousands from finding the truth is a worthy goal. Ensuring that there are as many differing religions, each with thier own understanding of the "truth" is exactly what he wants to happen. The more people confused and unable to find the truth, the better a job he's doing.

Now you may ask why would God allow this? Because we have free will and our own agency to choose what we do with our lives. This is also exactly the reason that God doesn't take a more active role (as in visable) in our day to day lives. We are the ones that have to make the choices in our lives because we are the ones who have to answer for them.

This then leads me on to the topic of Heaven and Hell. It is my belife that the Hell discribed in the Bible is a symbolic thing, as many things in there are. If we for the moment imagine that being with God was infact the most important thing in all of exsistance and we, thought our own choices had made that an impossibility don't you suppose that wherever we are would be like that symbolic Hell? Nothing would ever be good enough for us because we aren't where we wanted to be. There would be "wailing and knashing of teeth" because we would be cut off from God, not because of his actions, but our own.

Anyway, these are my opinions and I hope they where somewhat helpfull.

God is not hard to understand and neither is hell.

Just think of the fun it would be to debate and disect the song "Yesterday" by the Beattles. Some would argue that the chord progression is...and the lyrics are....and the meaning of the song is..... but what does the song say to you? Do you have to be a music major to appreciate it or know how it makes you feel even if you can't articulate it like some people can?

Do you know what it feels like to love anyone or anything? Do you think you can love more than that which gave you the capacity to love? Do you think you need to understand more than that to know what is what in the world? John Paul II and myself say that Hell is a condition and not a place. If you don't want to be with God he isn't going to make you. You just die and don't exist anymore. Thats it. Even a 10yr old can comprehend that.

It is the world around you that confuses the simple. Jesus said stuff about the children and their understanding. (Bible thumpers can give you the book and verse) Think simple. Organized Religion is not simple and they don't want it to be because then they can't tell you how to think. Rush can't give you both sides because then some of you will stop listening to him. Religion can't give you the truth because then you will go someplace else, you will give money to someone else, you might believe something else. Every "Religion" has a vested interest in you being a member of "their" Religion......Chrisitanity is NOT a RELIGION. Catholic is a christian religion but christianity is not a religion....follow?

The whole thing is easy if you have any idea what love is...go from there.

reply to post by chris3340


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miracles were to drastic to be coincidence

Maybe your RE teacher needs to speak with your maths teacher about statistical probability over time (i.e. the chance of a million monkeys producing s random string of characters in iambicpentamiter is very low if your evaluate a single days work, however given an endless amount of time they will produce the complete works of shakespear) - In the case of miraculous events of course at certain times highly unlikely things happened, the world would be far stranger if nothing unlikely ever happened. -The amount of people who have tried to command nature through our history it was bound to happen that some people would command just as it was going to change anyway, So when Joan commanded the wind to change direction and it did -does this really have to be the workd of god? Of course not.

This leaves us with the few impossible things which have happened in the christian tradition, there actually aren't very many of these at all - of course it is well known that returning from the dead is fairly common if you accept a iron age version of death -people wake from Comas all the time, in fact it was common practice to return after 3days to check anyone who had been hung or crusified was still dead. Almost all of the highly impressive things done as miraculous can be boiled down into a fairly simple practical event, however to what degree we have the REAL story of events is impossible to know so we can't say for sure if any of them are miraculous.

One thing is for sure the stories have changed since their first telling, we don't know if Jesus changed them chemical makeup of the Water to make it contain ethanol or if maybe the story got out of hand and confused when the people who attended told people 'It was looking like a disaster but then Jesus said, don't be silly drink the water and have fun -we don't need wine to have fun!' or who knows maybe Jesus put something in the jug? maybe his knowledge of Herbs he picked up in the first 30 years of his life taugh him about something you could dissolve in water to get a drunk like effect.

The point is, we don't have a very accurate account of how events happened surrounding these 'miraculous' happenstance so we can't judge them correctly. As you were very sharp to point out, indeed ALL religion has attributed lucky events to their deity, hehe it's human nature, infact its more than that it's logical nessesity - sometimes crazy and random things will happen, they might be totally unrepeatable or highly unlikely thus it's not worth changing the way you interact with the world to account for them, yet they must be explained -before complex science and scientific method could be invented to explain these things away with statistics and logic we had to have something, so God was the cause of otherwise terribly confusing things -thus no one needed waste time trying to work them out or reproduce the effects, it was just accepted you couldn't.

Just because people didn't understand how the world worked then doesn't mean we should accept their outdated conclusions - 2000 years ago what was amazing to them wouldn't even make a child smile now, science has come a very long way -until god does something really impressive which science can't explain away rationally then miraculous events are nothing more than hearsay. If a being like god really wanted to prove his existence he would lean down and tell me (and everyone else, maybe its every humans 10th birthday even -hehe he might even tell us WHY he bothered to make us) quite clearly so i could understand maybe using visual aids (i'm talkin wide screen 3d projection not a tree on fire) exactly what the deal was, that he doesn't do this we can only guess if he IS up there he isn't going to be telling us about it, i'm sure he doesn't do things by half messures - thus as he didn't to anything to let us know clearly and i just don't think leaving it confused like it is serves any purpose, hehe unless he likes war of course.

yes i agree with you 100%

God isnt there (if at all) to clean up our mess, but like it was said in a earlier post... surly worhiping the wrong religion would be the only thing that would make God mad.

we have been questioned on this topic so many times i feel quite knowledgable upon it now. but many people belive that dissprooving science is needed before prooving God. but prooving that we are so smart due to the copasity of learning within our minds, a system that is so complex, it would be silly if we had been made by someone or somthing.

[edit on 22/03/2009 by chris3340]

but many people belive that dissprooving science is needed before prooving God. but prooving that we are so smart due to the copasity of learning within our minds, a system that is so complex, it would be silly if we had been made by someone or somthing.

Man tends to be black and white, either - or, in thinking. Whereas, often the real truth lies somewhere in-between.

Man likes to connect to extremes, at times. Does it tend to give us more definition and security? Does it make us feel "right" or "better" or "smarter?"

Anytime one thinks outside the box, one faces judgment by his fellowman. Most cannot take the judgment, most MUST fit within a group consensus.

reply to post by MatrixProphet


Exactly. Religions are created by man to exercise control...nothing more. I am not implying that some omnipotent force does not exist, just that religion uses that divine possibility for its own selfish agenda.

i wouldnt describe that religion's background is purly for selfish needs. some of it is selfless which is one reason why religion is still encouraged and not denied.

For there to be a greater being there needs to be a sense of order, in that order are rules. Some rules like here on earth break but the greater plan is to put it back together and probably is part of its own plan regardless of the complications.

Hell in the Bible is not fire hell, its more of a recycle bin on the hardrive of your computer, once you delete the things in the recycle bin then its the lake of fire. There could be other realms just outside Hell for people waiting to go either side, but its for out own good and I think it takes time to go to Hell as we know it, God has a filtering system for that and is not as bad as people make out he is.