quote:
You're familiar enough with the options open to you being eternal life or eternal death (biblical death involving ongoing existance - not annihilation)? The way in which you arrive at one or other of these destinations involves your will and it's expression. Essentially it boils down to a choice and they are but twofold.
You can carry on as you are currently doing, deciding how it is you want to direct your life, deciding for yourself what you consider good and evil to be and living accordingly or no as you see fit, deciding for yourself what lifes meaning is, deciding for yourself that there is no need to bow down to a creator (primarily because he doesn't meet your criteria for proving his existance to your satisfaction). In short, you can choose to continue to live an independent, godless life.
The alternative is to surrender completely to God. You give up your God-given right to go your own way if you so choose, you give up your right to choose which direction and which morality and which purpose - in order that his direction, his morality and his purpose for you rule. We'll leave aside the fact that after such surrender you will sin (rebel) again and we'll leave aside the precise mechanics of how it is you chose to surrender to God (you can't chose for something when you have no sense of it being available to chose)
We can summarise your choice thus:
quote:You chose to maintain and sustain independance from God in which case you've chosen Hell and will spend eternity separated from the love of God
You surrender your will completely to God in which case you've effeectively chosen heaven.
We can see that there is no choice open to you regarding the nature of a non-Hell existance. In order to attain a non-Hell existance you'll have already given up your right to choose outside Gods will for you - so won't consider it immoral or unfair that you can't choose the nature of your eternal life existance. You choose not to be able to choose in other words - it'd be unreasonable of you to be whinging about it after the fact. Be a man - stick with the consequences of your decision
That is the most hellish explanations of heaven that I have ever heard.
To choose not to be able to choose?
To choose not to be able to be independent?
Why in the world would I want an eternal existence of not being able to make my own decisions?
I suppose if it felt good enough I would be fine with it, but then wouldn't I just be a robot?
Isn't that what the Christian God doesn't want? Isn't that why he doesn't reveal himself to everyone because he doesn't want people to love him just because he is the big daddy, but through faith?
Why would he then choose to spend the rest of his eternity surrounded by simpering fools who only got there because they were convinced by some fuzzy feeling or another?
If he wants people to come to him by choice why would he then keep everyone there by force of will (getting rid of all tears and pain and bribing them with mansions of gold *vomit*).
Why should I give up all of myself (the good and the bad) in order to spend eternity with someone who will make me forget the bad? That person will not be me. Forgetting those whom I love that are in hell will remove a significant part of me away from my eternal self. Why would I want that? Why would I want to forget? Why would a god who wants voluntary worship want me to forget an essential part of my "mortal" existence, especially if that existence is what made me accept him in the first place?
Of course, this can all be explained away by your god erasing my memory of those loved ones or providing some ad hoc explanation, but by that time, my acceptance of him is irreversible, no? I can't then say, you're full of shit and I want my life back, can I? Nor, apparently, would I want to.
But, then, why would he not just create beings who accepted him unconditionally without all of the messy in between? If that's what he wants, that is.
And why couldn't he get it right the first time...I mean, Lucifer defied him. Why couldn't he just implant some false memory in Lucifer in order to make him behave if that is what is supposed to happen if I go to heaven?
I know...he's supposed to be the tyrant who writes propaganda in order to make those who love him believe in him even more if there is a force of evil against him. Like Jim Jones. Funny how the force of evil is always stronger in those tales. Less funny is how people end up dying believing in that bullshit.
{ABE}
quote:
This post of yours is an excellent example of the kind of independent and irrational thinking that underlies your choice against God (as it currently stands). God says eternal life will be far better than here but that's not good enough for you. You have to speculate your way to supposing it such that God stick it. But this God was the same one who assembled a time/space existance whose attributes you point to as being preferable to anything you imagine an eternal life has to offer. If time/space a subset created for the purpose of allowing created beings to decide upon their eternal destination why would you suppose it "greater" than the destination itself? Would it not be more likely that Heaven will offer far better than the best on earth and Hell far worse that the worst on earth?
This is the same god that supposedly wants voluntary worship. This same benevolent god that "gave" us brains and allowed free will but then offers no evidence for his existence except that which we can glean from other humans who are also fallible?
Your definition of heaven sounds like hell to me, but if it then becomes heaven upon my salvation and ascension into heaven and it will NEVER be changed, then what was the point of my earthly existence? Why was I "created" in order to suffer and then forget all of that and just bow prostrate to some god? Why not skip the middle step?
Why not just create beings who will sing praise with their every step if that is what we will be in heaven anyway?
Edited by Jaderis, : got caught up and forgot about the rest of the post i was responding to
"You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics; and having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other metaphysician wrong--to his own satisfaction. You are anarchists in the realm of thought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of you dwells in a cosmos of his own making, created out of his own fancies and desires. You do not know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental aberration." -
The Iron Heel by Jack London
"Hazards exist that are not marked" - some bar in Chelsea
™ Version 4.2
