if after you die you find yourself in front a god ready to judge you.
what will you say in your defense for not believing?
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There are many other explanations of hell. This is the most famous of them but not the only one. No one really knows until he goes to the otherside. if God is real and He is love personified, He will be merciful more than the best that any human being can be.
http://oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/spirituality/the-kingdom-of-heaven/heaven-and-hell
true believers, whether christian, muslim or whatever, want to convert you, they want you to believe what they do, and they're willing to go to extremes to make it happen.
atheists don't really care what you believe, and don't go out of their way to convert someone.. http://ow.ly/vn1jz an example of what believers in power do to suppress any difference in thought.
http://ow.ly/vraeo an example of why believers want to suppress different ideas (because they can't win in a fair fight, that's why).
oooh..so that is why the org is warning us about this diseased apostates...all these bitterness and hate...what had become of them? the elders were right.
true believers, whether christian, muslim or whatever, want to convert you, they want you to believe what they do, and they're willing to go to extremes to make it happen.
atheists don't really care what you believe, and don't go out of their way to convert someone.. http://ow.ly/vn1jz an example of what believers in power do to suppress any difference in thought.
http://ow.ly/vraeo an example of why believers want to suppress different ideas (because they can't win in a fair fight, that's why).
dear cofty, i noticed you mentioned in another thread that you became a born again christian after you left the JWs... i am wondering what made you leave christianity for good, what made you lose hope in it? was it the people, or was it just your constant readings and meditations that lead you to concluding it all false?
true believers, whether christian, muslim or whatever, want to convert you, they want you to believe what they do, and they're willing to go to extremes to make it happen.
atheists don't really care what you believe, and don't go out of their way to convert someone.. http://ow.ly/vn1jz an example of what believers in power do to suppress any difference in thought.
http://ow.ly/vraeo an example of why believers want to suppress different ideas (because they can't win in a fair fight, that's why).
One important difference between atheists and true believers is that the believer by definition is compelled to act at times in horrible ways in the name of their belief .
I always love it when its one-sided.
look...i am not an atheist.
even so, i have never had one prayer answered my entire life.
the only thing that would even come close was learning ttatt.
I think you should these guys, and a few more of their kind. Capitalism at its best.
look...i am not an atheist.
even so, i have never had one prayer answered my entire life.
the only thing that would even come close was learning ttatt.
yes. but whenever i pray, i keep reminding myself that God is not obligated to answer any of my requests and i try not to act as a self entitled teenager when things don't go my way. i keep reminding myself that i am a lowly being and that he is God, although i now come to know that even he doesn't care about his dignity.
anyways, i am amazed sometimes at how he answers. i feel that everything he does is for the growth and learning of our souls, so that the answers and non-answers are equally important. of course, i can easily dismiss his answers as just natural occurrences.
however, every miracle must in the same time be a natural occurence.
this reminded of C.S Lewis thought about miracles:
"It is therefore inaccurate to define a miracle as something that breaks the laws of Nature. It doesn't. ... If God creates a miraculous spermatozoon in the body of a virgin, it does not proceed to break any laws. The laws at once take it over. Nature is ready. Pregnancy follows, according to all the normal laws, and nine months later a child is born. ... The divine art of miracle is not an art of suspending the pattern. ... And they are sure that all reality must be interrelated and consistent. I agree with them. But I think they have mistaken a partial system within reality, namely Nature, for the whole. That being so, the miracle and the previous history of Nature may be interlocked after all but not in the way the Naturalists expected: rather in a much more roundabout fashion. The great complex event called Nature, and the new particular event introduced into it by the miracle, are related by their common origin in God, and doubtless, if we knew enough, most intricately related in his purpose and design, so that a Nature which had had a different history, and therefore been a different Nature, would have been invaded by different miracles or by none at all. In that way the miracles and the previous course of Nature are as well interlocked as any other two realities, but you must go back as far as their common Creator to find the interlocking. You will not find it within Nature. ... The rightful demand that all reality should be consistent and systematic does not therefore exclude miracles: but it has a very valuable contribution to make to our conception of them. It reminds us that miracles, if they occur, must, like all events, be revelations of that total harmony of all that exists. Nothing arbitrary, nothing simply "stuck on" and left unreconciled with the texture of total reality, can be admitted. By definition, miracles must of course interrupt the usual course of Nature; but if they are real they must, in the very act of so doing, assert all the more the unity and self-consistency of total reality at some deeper level. ... In calling them miracles we do not mean that they are contradictions or outrages; we mean that, left to her [Nature] own resources, she could never produce them."
it's obvious the bible is very clear on a actual hell of fire.
"cursed into the eternal fire with the devil and his angels", rev.20:15.
"lake of fire", rev.21:8 "fire and brimstone".
Here is George MacDonald's explanation of "hell fire", if anyone cares to see another point of view (this man courageously preached Universal salvation, and was driven out of his church as pastor in just four years):
http://www.online-literature.com/george-macdonald/unspoken-sermons/2/
"The kingdom he has given us cannot be moved, because it has nothing weak in it: it is of the eternal world, the world of being, of truth. We, therefore, must worship him with a fear pure as the kingdom is unshakeable. He will shake heaven and earth, that only the unshakeable may remain, (verse 27): he is a consuming fire, that only that which cannot be consumed may stand forth eternal. It is the nature of God, so terribly pure that it destroys all that is not pure as fire, which demands like purity in our worship. He will have purity. It is not that the fire will burn us if we do not worship thus; but that the fire will burn us until we worship thus; yea, will go on burning within us after all that is foreign to it has yielded to its force, no longer with pain and consuming, but as the highest consciousness of life, the presence of God. When evil, which alone is consumable, shall have passed away in his fire from the dwellers in the immovable kingdom, the nature of man shall look the nature of God in the face, and his fear shall then be pure; for an eternal, that is a holy fear, must spring from a knowledge of the nature, not from a sense of the power."
Also, Hell is simply the simply the absence of God, the Outside Darkness. Man finally left to waddle in his own folly and error, even into eternity - if his pride does not allow him to turn.
true believers, whether christian, muslim or whatever, want to convert you, they want you to believe what they do, and they're willing to go to extremes to make it happen.
atheists don't really care what you believe, and don't go out of their way to convert someone.. http://ow.ly/vn1jz an example of what believers in power do to suppress any difference in thought.
http://ow.ly/vraeo an example of why believers want to suppress different ideas (because they can't win in a fair fight, that's why).
"How are you to know that He is in the midst of you?"
"If we are not keeping His commandments, He is not. But His presence can not be proved; it can only be known. If He meets us, it is not necessary to the joy of His presence that we should be able to prove that He does meet us! If a man has the company of the Lord, he will care little whether another does or does not believe that he has."
- George MacDonald
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27090580.
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bart ehrman and stephen colbert.
http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/lywaay/bart-ehrman.
Bart Ehrman and Stephen Colbert
