Are You Going To Hell? Probably, But Who Cares?

Over the last several years, I have had several friends and acquaintances whom have held various religious beliefs. Each of them tell me that if I do not follow a certain way of life or a certain religion, that I am indeed going to burn in hell and be tormented by their various deity as punishment for not believing and following their respective religion and scriptures.

In my opinion, the reality of religion is that there are just too many rules to follow to obtain this right of passage into the divine great beyond for any human being to be able to get there. Each and every single human being on this planet has a dark side or negative quirks that do not fall in line with any religion and as such, I believe it is ludicrous to say that because someone does not follow a list of rules and guidelines that are as archaic as language itself, that they will be punished eternally and experience never ending pain and suffering because they did not follow the way and the light of a specific denomination.

I have also heard from multiple people that their Gods or what have you believe in free will and you have the proverbial right to do and say whatever you want. Well, if this were the case, then why should we be punished if we choose to live a life rife with debauchery and sin and such. I have heard so many arguments saying that God placed humans on Earth as a testing centre, to prove whether or not you are worthy of eternal paradise. This to me is completely unfair and asinine.

If humans were created in the image of God, Yahweh, Allah, Moses or whomever, then why are we to be punished for living our lives the way we want to, and why are we pressured to donate to churches so much when they all operate in the manner of businesses and yield very high profits for the most part anyway? I understand some may say I am some sort of demon sent here to push people away from religion and that I am going to burn forever once I die, but I really do not care.

I think it is absolutely ridiculous how someone has to live their lives and fear their respective God or Gods because they will be punished if they do not follow everything that is said in scripture. I am not entirely atheist, but I do not believe in a God so to speak. I believe in nature, and that it governs itself for the most part. It seems hypocritical to me to say that God loves each and every person the same as the next person, but if you step out of line, you will burn in eternal hell fire.

The bottom line is, I wish to live my life the way I deem it to be fit. I think that if one wants to criticize how others live, then they should criticize themselves as well. I am far from perfect, but I refuse to live my life in fear and blind obedience for something that is not even proven to exist.

Your thoughts ATS? Please no ridiculous replies indicating how I am going to burn, I have heard it before, and it will fall on deaf ears.

Just live your life, religious controls are simply controls. A large majority of people who say they follow x-religion don't stick to them anyway.

Leaving it simply a vehicle for manipulation. No one has any right to tell you how to live your life unless it is directly impacting theirs in some way, in which case resolutions need to be sorted out, not revelations...

If we go by man-made religion we are all going to some form of hell or another according to one religion or another.

I think, live your life to the best of your abilities as you see fit. What more can a person feasibly do?

Heaven won't have me
And hells afraid I'd take over

Purgatory then !

reply to post by DragonRain311


The irony... many iconic Christian thinkers and Saints had the same conversations with themselves.

Martin Luther comes to mind, as do others.

Speaking theologically, man is the image of God, but not God. We are no more God than a doll is human. In Christianity, specifically, we address these issues by the new covenant and the release from the curse of the law by the sacrifice of the lamb.

Speaking personally... Crowley stated "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law". A very appealing thing, to imagine that one might pursue their own compulsions without regard or concern for outcome. But, as a person who lived a large chunk of his own life that way, I can tell you that it's an empty pursuit. Satisfaction is an illusion and there is never enough. More is always the imperative.

There is a balance to be had between self interest and respect for others. Selfishness and compassion don't have to be mutually exclusive. You can sate your own wants while being mindful of others and how your acts effect them.

As for Hell? Well that's between you and God.

~Heff

How would God burn a soul?
Does the soul feel physical pain without the flesh?

We don't leave this world with flesh and bones. Jesus said we don't get to take anything with us to the next place. He also said we wouldn't remember anything from this life after we have died.

Hell
A "loving God" who condemns his followers to a place of eternal damnation of torture is extremely silly to me.
My traditions is Hel is a Goddess who resides over the same name. To go to Hel upon death just simply mean I cease to exist.

Any tradition that teaches that they are all loving but if you don't do what they say is ridiculous. I wan't no part of a Authoritarian.

If you live your life with courage, strength, honor, virtue, fidelity and self reliance a God that sends you to Hell is not worth worshiping.

I care, I don't want everyone going to hell, I'm not into having all those people to look after (torture). I'll be a foreman down there and with too many under me I will go bonkers in a short time. Everyone go get saved so I can get a break once in a while.

Please Delete----wrong thread

All one has to do is look up the ORIGINAL MEANINGS of the words such as "Hell", "Satan" etc, and one can see that they do NOT mean anything as to what our pastors, preachers, televangelists and other DEGENERATES wish to SCARE us with. Scaring us to ensure that their donations keep FLOWING in to them. They love using FEAR OF PUNISHMENT to manipulate people, and get RICH.

Its all NONSENSE!!!!! Religious folks REFUSE to study the original MEANINGS of the words in their own sacred books!!! Nothing can be more foolish than that, if their books are so "sacred" and their "souls" depend on it for all "eternity" as they say.

Religion = man-made fairy tales anyways. Total bloody (no PUN INTENDED) nonsense.

I shall freeze in hell. I like the warmth So its going to be hell for me.
Because all the fires, will be surrounded by priests rabbis imans and politicians. Not forgetting all those good decent upright respectable pillers of soceity.

reply to post by DragonRain311

then why are we to be punished for living our lives the way we want to

This is a great question. One of the cruelest things that religious apologists like to say is that God gave us free will, but then they turn around and claim that if we don't do exactly what God wants than God has every right to judge us, or even torment us for eternity. This seems fundamentally cruel and evil on God's part. It's like telling a child they are free to do what they want and getting angry when they don't do what YOU want. God is giving us free will but not allowing us to use it to make our own mistakes, and when we do muck up he sends a flood, or a plague or burns us in Hell.

To make matters worse God comes off as a very confused parental figure to us, his children. When he does create rules for us they are confusing, self-contradictory and seem to violate our own evolving moral conscience. For example the God of the Bible directly approves of slavery and even tells Moses how to set up the slavery system, yet we know today that owning a human being as property is wrong.

To those of us who really THINK hard about it, and have a good deal of empathy and compassion on our fellow human beings, the conclusion has to be that these rules and holy books are MAN made, not God made.

It seems hypocritical to me to say that God loves each and every person the same as the next person, but if you step out of line, you will burn in eternal hell fire.

Indeed, it is the most glaring discrepancy in all of fundamentalism, the idea that a loving God would torment you for eternity is absurd on the most basic of levels. As a flawed human being I could never see myself torturing anyone for any length of time, let alone eternity, so how can a perfect God commit a sin more heinous than any I could ever commit while remaining blameless.

That is the double-standard of the fundamentalist God. He can punish, enslave, murder and torment without it ever being a sin to do so simply because he is God. It is the ultimate case of Might Makes Right. God, in the Bible, is portrayed as a King seated on a throne and scenes of Heaven often involve folks bowing down to him.

Sure some believers choose to take a more reasonable loving approach but that doesn't change the bizarre, immoral and self-contradictory nonsense that clutters their religious texts.

If the Bible is to be taken literally, including Revelations, than the vast majority of human-kind will end up in the Lake of Fire anyway. Chances are every living human, even the devout Christians, will have a loved one, friend, family member, lover, who end up in the Lake of Fire. Meaning Christians will spend ETERNITY BOWING DOWN to the monster that is torturing their loved one(s) endlessly. How anyone could enjoy Heaven with that knowledge is beyond me...

but of course it's only a problem for those that believe in Hell, the Bible and God. For those that have seen through the stories and set aside the superstition it's just another point of empathy, logic and reason that leaves religion broken.

It depends on how one uses hell as a metaphor. Hell, for me, is being at a shopping mall for an extended amount of time. I try to stay away from there as much as I can.

If you're talking about the metaphysical hell, a realm about which no one has a clue, and anything ever written and asserted about it is the mere speculations of ancient tribes, one needs only to look at the probability of such a place existing, and go from there.

The biggest flaw in the " obey god or rot in hell" theory is that we aren`t even sure if we really know what "god" wants us to do or how to act.
people might obey everything to the letter, that their religion or beliefs tell them to do, but still end up in hell because over the millennium something might have been misinterpreted or mistranslated.

look at the bible for example, it has been translated and retranslated so many times who can say for certain that the original words spoken have not been mistranslated or interpreted incorrectly during all those retranslations?
How can we be sure that the bible is the complete word of "god",can we be sure that we have found ALL of the ancient texts relating to "god`s" word and the bible?

There are many many many ancient texts that were not included in the "official" version of the bible because a group of people took it upon themselves to decide that those texts weren`t "god`s" words or will for us.

Without adequate information to base a decision or choice on, free will is useless.
If i ask you to dive into a pool of water without telling you the depth or temperature of the water, then your free will to chose whether to dive in or not is worthless,because you don`t have enough information to make an informed decision.

Ancient fables and stories are not adequate enough information to base a decision on that will determine the fate of your "eternal soul".All religions require faith rather than proof,so choosing a religion is basically a crap shoot and with so many religions your odds, of picking the "right" one that will save your eternal soul from hell, are very slime.

With the fate of eternal souls on the line, the best that god could do was to leave our free will decision making in the hands of fate and faith?UFO believers rely on faith,and dubious evidence, to support their belief in UFO`s surely the fate of our eternal souls should require more solid information and proof than that required to believe in UFO`s.
All religions claim that their god is the one and only true god and yet they all follow the same pattern of requiring faith rather than offering proof.Since the one true god is suppose to be all knowing then obviously he knew that using the same formula as that of all the other fake gods,would create mass confusion and cause people to pick the wrong god.

I`ve decided that none of us have any control over what happens when we die or where we might go or not go.I think the best that people can do is to conduct themselves in a manner that allows them to live with what they have done and be able to sleep at night with no regrets and let the chips fall where they may when you die.

Originally posted by DragonRain311
Over the last several years, I have had several friends and acquaintances whom have held various religious beliefs. Each of them tell me that if I do not follow a certain way of life or a certain religion, that I am indeed going to burn in hell and be tormented by their various deity as punishment for not believing and following their respective religion and scriptures.

Some "friends" eh?

You know what we probably will burn in hell.A grim thought right enough but then who wants to spend eternity wi all those god fearing christians - wi Cliff Richards.lol.

As Brian said 'If gods on the left then I'm sticking to the right'.

Seriously though much of what you've brought up in your op has crossed my mind over the years.

I've never remotely felt or sensed the presence of god or jesus.Am sorry but god has always dwelt in the same make believe,fairytail world as santa n the tooth fairy but I've know many for who its central to their lives and often debate and chucked the hypocrisy at them mostly in good humour.

I often put this query to them.

if you dont go to heaven you burn in hell and to be saved you have to believe in,accept and acknowledge god as almighty,your saviour right ??

Yes they'd reply.

Ok then what about my old man.He is genuinely good man,will help anyöne not cos god says so but out of consideration for others.He's an athiest thru n thru,god n religion to him nothing but a product of fear at our own mortality plain n simple.If he's wrong thou he'll burn in hell.That he was a good man means nothing simply cös he didnt believe ??

He'll go to hell they say.

Ok but a fat priest can bugger choirboys but be forgiven if he if he ask for it while good men burn over a belief and thats the kind of god you believe in??,arent you ashamed ??

He created everything,you say.He is creation yet needs man to worship him.Gave us free will but expects us to freely choose to glorify him n condemns those that dont to burn.

Sounds to me like someone has a huge egö n created us basically to flatter it.lol.

Whatabout the cavemen or pigmys in the Amazon who've never heard of the bible,christianity or abraham.Do they burn too.

Serious its his way or no way wi the supreme being !!!

As I said,he's a myth to me.Course I might be wrong.Doesnt matter cos I've no use for a god even if he's real.

So yeah reckon i'm going to hell to see satan n he's prob as bad as god !!!

reply to post by spy66

He also said we wouldn't remember anything from this life after we have died.

Could you share with us the verses where he says this? Thanks.

Originally posted by spy66
How would God burn a soul?
Does the soul feel physical pain without the flesh?

We don't leave this world with flesh and bones. Jesus said we don't get to take anything with us to the next place. He also said we wouldn't remember anything from this life after we have died.

edit on 27.06.08 by spy66 because: (no reason given)

Luke 24:39(KJV)
39 Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.

Philippians 3:20-21(KJV)
20 For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ:
21 Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.

1 Corinthians 13:10-12(KJV)
10 But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.
11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

you'd think we would still be hanging people off the crosses...

if god were real and wanted this type of worship he'd send a Jesus back for every generation to crucify, am I right?

think of all the people who will inadvertently go to hell because of the way god pulled this stunt? lol...