Allahpundit on February 12, 2009 at 9:20 PM

Read Return From Tomorrow by George Ritchie might enlighten you about the concept of eternal damnation. It’s not God that does it, it’s you. You do it to yourself by looking away from God, by have a false perception, from losing sight of your true essence. You get the gist when you read his near death experience as to the concept because he doesn’t spell it out, he just describes the experience.

When the economy’s in crisis, the only politicians who’ll be willing to vote en masse against entitlements and be portrayed as “callous” are ideologues of a Reagan/Paul degree of libertarian purity

WRONG. YOU ARE SIMPLY WRONG.

Allah wrote:

It’s not the disagreement I mind. It’s the condoning of suffering. I don’t like liberals but I can be friends with them because (usually) they don’t want me to be harmed, they just want their policies to prevail. When we’re talking about eternal suffering, it’s personal.

(emphasis added)

Did this ex-friend actually “WANT” you to be harmed? Did they actually desire for you to be punished forever? Or did she just say that, based on her belief, she is AFRAID that that will happen to you based on your present rejection of God?

Did she not hope that you would come to a knowledge of God and a belief in Jesus? Did she not ferverently hope that you would come to believe as she did?

Because if she did, she certainly did not “WANT” you to be eternally punished, in fact it sounds to me like she was doing everything she could to make sure that DID NOT happen!!

And you judged her for that. You judged her as evil and wicked because she hoped that you would come to believe as she did, know the joy she knows, know the confidence of eternity that she knows, HOPE THAT YOU WOULD BE AROUND TO ENJOY AN ETERNITY OF HEAVEN!!

What an evil, wicked, terrible person she was! Good thing you decided to end all contact with such a person. I mean, I wouldn’t want to be around anyone who was hoping that I would find joy and happiness, in this life and the next.

Uhm?

If you live your life in an otherwise un-evil capacity, simple skepticism might allow you to enter purgatory. However, that’s not my judgment call.

jimmy the notable on February 12, 2009 at 9:10 PM

Not sure how this figures in on an entitlements thread. But the God in my bible is pretty protective of his turf. God loves everyone, but he also demands his rightful authority (many of the Ten Commandments center around worshiping him).

I think of it as similar to any other authority figure. If you ignore an order from a police officer, he has a right to toss you in jail. If you don’t follow a judges orders, he locks you up until you see the light. How much more authority does God have than a judge or a cop? And he does so for the same reason, to protect society at large. Skepticism works to undermine God’s authority. And just as anarchists end up causing innocent deaths, skeptics end up causing people to turn away from God.

However fine this argument is theoretically, politically it’s a non-starter.

While America DID vote for this, your statement is not true. Just remind people of how they, along with businesses, are being forced to cut back while goBernment employees remain in secure jobs as The One works hard to bankrupt the country we all work to support via taxes collected by gun toting thugs. In other words, it is the working Americans and their offspring that are about to be screwed by the entitlement cult of O.

There are two basic principles of western morality when it comes to justice: (1) we punish deeds, not thoughts, and (2) the punishment should fit the crime. Punishing people with eternal suffering for nothing more than skepticism violates both. It’s wicked.

Allahpundit on February 12, 2009 at 8:50 PM

Not all Christians believe in Dante’s inferno Mr. AllahPundit. To presume that they ALL do is shallow on your part. If you want to read an alternative view of what eternal separation from God might REALLY be like, I suggest that you read C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce. You will find that the viewpoint presented there is very much a “punishment shall fit the crime” type scenario. It is the sort of thing that I would expect from a God who is just. So much so, that the read is actually somewhat hilarious — if hell can actually BE such a thing.

Most of the nasty stuff about eternal damnation comes from the book of Revelation — thought to be written by Jesus’s disciple John while he was in exile on Patmos. The inclusion of that book in the canon was hotly debated. Not everyone thought it should be included. Even some of those that do think that it DOES belong in the Bible are very hesitant to attach a literal interpretation to much of it. The apocalypse according Peter (an apocryphal book that was NOT included in the canon) even vaguely hints that damnation in hell might not be eternal — there might be a way for the condemned to find their way out. All in all, I’d say that the Christian doctrines regarding Hell, damnation, and judgment are somewhat mysterious. In the end, we (as Christians) trust that God is just and fair, in addition to being Holy and righteous.

My collie says:

The important thing to know is that it would be a mistake to reject and isolate yourself from the love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, and self-control that can found in a relationship with your Creator simply because you disagree with a single doctrine that is held by one particular sect of the Christian religion. Christianity has a LOT more to offer than just doctrinal dogma.

The people in these clips are the product of an education system which has failed them, or who did not attend enough classes to obtain the credits to graduate.

They provide more evidence that the Demoncratic system of governance is moving closer to Socialism at a faster pace then anytime before. The proof, is in the demographics of the country whereby the middle class is disappearing at its fastest clip than ever before.

Socialism/Communism requires the elimination of the middle class it relies on the existence of two classes, the Have’s and Have Not’s, so the Have’s can take from the Have Nots and giving it back to them creating a sense that only the government can save them.

However fine this argument is theoretically, politically it’s a non-starter.

Just keep showing those clips for the next four years – losers begging Obamassiah for free stuff and the creepy cult worship – the idea of personal responsibility might come into vogue again.

God should have “spread the wealth around” and given other women at least some of what she has!

Star20 on February 12, 2009 at 9:46 PM

Now you know why Michelle Obama is bitter.

No-one can stop what is about to happen.

Liam1304 on February 12, 2009 at 9:16 PM

Screw you, pal. I’m not normally so pointed when it comes to arguing with my fellow commenters, but this is one American who is not going to take this lying down.

America has been a unique country for its entire 233 years of existence. If we do go under, and God-forbid we do without a fight, the last, best hope for justice, peace, and true equality will be gone.

A patriot

1 Thessalonians 4:13 ¶But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.
14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.
15 For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent {King James for “precede”} them which are asleep.
16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

Not an essential for the faith, and I have tended to agree with many of your positions in the past, but just going on record to say I believe it like it is written.

Finally, I find it very curious that a post about the creeping socialism in our national culture ends up being about atheism and Christianity. (But I guess it’s appropriate seeing that most socialist and communist regimes are almost all run by atheists.)

I’m an Evangelical Christian and like most Christians I don’t belive in a “rapture”…just in the Second Coming of Christ…

CCRWM on February 13, 2009 at 12:32 AM

No worries. Follow Christ, obey His teachings, watch for His return…and we’ll explain the Rapture to you on the way up.

;-)

#1 In my view, it’s not eternal

jgapinoy on February 12, 2009 at 9:18 PM

The author of that site (Dr. Brown) is very wrong in his presentation of the Scriptures he quotes. He is manipulating those verses to show ex post facto that they support his pre-determined theological conclusion — namely that God will annihilate those who reject Him.

He overemphasizes the material aspect of the human person and completely ignores the Biblical verses which speak of the spiritual nature of the persons who will be subject to God’s wrath.

Case in point: the author cites Ez. 28:18 as proof that the ultimate destiny of Satan (an entity which, being an angel, is a being whose existence transcends what we know as the material world) will be a cessation of existence, based on the verse’s use of the word “ashes”.

Putting aside the numerous verses in the New Testament which speak of the existence of the person subsequent to the destruction of the material body, Dr. Brown commits a huge logical error by assuming and asserting that a spiritual being is destroyed by transforming its material body (assuming it has one) to another kind of matter (ashes).

Furthermore, the ultimate destiny of those who rebel against God and align with His enemies is not some barbeque where they are char-roasted to ash (furnace and fiery lake imagery notwithstanding). The final destination for those persons is described as being in “the outer darkness” where the primary activity is weeping and the grinding of one’s teeth (which is indicative of frustration, sorrow, bitterness, and obstinacy). There is no indication that the eternal (eternity is not the same thing as having lots of time, btw – it is being outside of time) torment such persons experience is physical, nor is there any indication that those persons even exist in the material realm any longer (which would certainly explain the ‘eternal’ part of it).

Dr. Brown may be a fine molecular biologist, but his theology and Biblical interpretation are extremely flawed. I suggest he stick to his day job.

jgapinoy, you are free to believe whatever you want, but the Bible is rather consistent in its portrayal of the severity (and duration) of sin’s ultimate wages. No one says that Hell/Gehenna/the Lake of Fire is a comfortable thought or that it should be – not even God is happy with it – but one’s comfort with a thing has little to do with that thing’s reality.

I fail to see the equivalency between Thomas’ doubt of an improbable event (the resurrection of Jesus) and your blanket denial of the existence of any deity.

(b) Thomas shortly thereafter repented of his doubt and, without any apparent hesitation or skepticism at what his eyes and ears were showing him, worshipped Jesus as Lord and God.
Harpazo on February 13, 2009 at 12:09 AM

Thomas was martyred for his faith in Christ. So, AP, you’re just like him, right? Really poor analogy.

But. If her main offense in your mind is that she accepts what her scriptures say on the subject of the fate of those who reject God — not that she is in any way eager that you should suffer — then you have come close to slandering her here.

It’s not so bad once you get used to it.

Jim Treacher on February 12, 2009 at 9:44 PM

Do you the suffering or the inflicting? Cause, I imagine, one’s a bit easier than the other. Just sayin’.