There is of course also the possibility that a god exists who only permits atheists to enter the afterlife. He keeps evidence from them and makes the idea of him existing illogical just so that some wont believe. He then just rubs it in their faces. A sick game.
I have a pet theory, of course, based on the assumption the christian bible and god is real.
God gave us the ability to have pride, and the brains to think. Maybe this time on earth is a test, to weed out the stupid and gullible from the smarter and rational. One group falls miserably short of their potential, while the other lives up to the potential god gave them.
But that still leaves the question: what group does this god want to surround himself with for eternity?
Or is each group the day shift, and the other the night shift?
Why would he though? I mean he could just create the perfect beings to start with. No need for an experiment.
That would be boring.
This game of life - way more interesting 
a fucking galactic reality show!
He has his angels and satans demons fighting each other for entertainment. Everybody loves a good war movie.
Cart before the horse I think.
What with being an atheist and all, I don’t believe any religious mythology, whether from the Torah, Gospels ,Quran or the Rig Veda, to mention a few.
Catholics at least believe in the resurrection of the body on the last day. In terms of fuel; god can do literally anything. In any case, the church invented an eternal hell, so poo to them…
Jesus himself is reported as saying Matthew 16:28 “Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.”
It is my understanding that Jesus says he will return ‘soon’ several times in the gospels.
When Jesus failed to turn up, the early church changed his return to some indeterminate time in the future and quietly dropped it as a core belief…
I envy your ability to be able to choose what you believe. I did not choose to be an atheist. This was an inevitable conclusion to a long journey. From not being able to believing God to being unable to believe in anything unsupported by empirical evidence wasn’t much of a leap. However, it has never been a matter if choice for me…
If the God of the Bible is real, then life is a sick and twisted, sad joke. It’s like we were thrown into a river full of shit without a paddle and then told to go upstream.
3 Likes
Which God of which bible?
YHWH of the Torah? He’s a monster ,invented by an illiterate tribe of nomadic bronze goat herders, initially as a petty war god. So of course he’s a nasty piece of work.
Gentle Jesus meek and and mild is the main god in the New Testament. Quite a contrast with the original YHWH. An explanation is that as societies evolve, so do their religions. Christians stopped burning heretics alive in the 16th century, which is about the same time they stopped murdering ‘witches’ on a large scale.
Christian churches today would be just about unrecognisable to first century Christians.
It’s a life time observation that all believers cherry pick their beliefs. That it’s just a matter of degree.
Hence the Buddhist saying “10,000 monks 10,000 religions” (trad)
1 Like
Always a good point. I’m replying from the OP’s perspective, for which I was detecting a Christian world view from the things they were talking about – so I was replying with that in mind.
Let’s not forget the theist acrobatics Christians often do to fit the God of the Old Testament into the frame of the one in the New Testament. Christians are very good at that.
There’s a case to be made that Jesus was not always so lovey-dubby. He’s also cursing figs trees, throwing over tables, and requiring that no one gets to God unless it’s through him. It’s not so peachy,
Hmmm… I didn’t know that. He’s always portrayed in movies as the good guy in the Bounty mutiny story. I once had a chat (via ham radio) with Tom Christian, a direct descendent of Fletcher, and he was a really nice guy.
Indeed. I was describing my late mother’s Jesus. Mum was what I call a small ‘c’ Christian. She practiced her faith in the way she lived her life, which was with kindness and compassion to others.
The Jesus of the New Testament is myth as far as I can tell. I doubt if if its authors were even Jews, with an understanding of Jewish law and customs. The other three gospels are heavily reliant on the Gospel according to the person we call Mark, who wrote the earliest Gospel .
1 Like
I’m relieved that hell is a poor attempt at fiction, but if it were not, and the god of the bible was real, then every person on the planet is screwed as it is not possible to comply with all the requirements of the bible to not go there.
LOL The hell you know is a late second century Christian invention that was developed over hundreds of years and can barely be attached to the Jewish place for the dead. Sheol. As is the God of the Christian bible. It’s all made up storytelling with the Christians playing “My God is bigger than your god.”
2 Likes
Hypothetically, would you want to spend eternity with a being that believed it was ok to torture anyone, let alone for eternity?
I wouldn’t accept that from an evolved ape, why would I condone it in a being with limitless power and knowledge? Who has hidden its existence from me my entire life, in some sick lottery.
Blaise Pascal seems to have surrendered all moral rectitude, when he came up with his ridiculous wager.
1 Like
What about heaven?
Saw this yesterday:
Dad: “Time for Church”
5 year old: sits silently.
Dad:" Don’t you want to go th heaven?"
5 Year old " Not if it’s like church"
Stephen Fry was on a tour in Salt Lake City. The guide was explaining the basic tenets of Mormonism. She explained that after you die you spend eternity with all of your dead relatives. Stephen asked " what happens if you’ve been good?" He was asked to leave the tour at that point.
The moral: Take care if you think you have a captive audience. 
Well there you go, a religion with no room for intelligence and witty sarcasm.
They can keep it…
The warning shouldn’t need stating, theists simply don’t have a sense of humour about their beliefs, which is a really wasted opportunity given how hilarious most of it is…
2 Likes
When I was a theist, one of my favorite sayings was “god must have a sense of humor, he created us”.
I know it was a rhetorical question, but no, absolutely not.
That would not be my go to answer. And I somewhat cringe at the answer above. It’s too common. It’s always “To which God?” Yes it is a point that can be made, but there could be better ones that revolve more around truly fundamental questions.
I would say something to the affect of that this is a textbook appeal to pascal’s wager which portrays argumentum ad baculum: an argument based on an appeal to fear or a threat. Not logical in the slightest. Just pure hucksterism, isn’t it. Believe in God on the off chance that maybe he’s real and you don’t want to end up in the bad place? Acting like you believe in God just to play it safe - wouldn’t fool God… would it. That wouldn’t actually make me believe in a god. It would only make me believe I would be better off if I believed in a god. Makes no sense. Would your God really be fooled by that? Doesn’t sound like a particularly smart deity. This attempt at the infamous gambit is just pathetic, I’m sorry to say.
There are many flaws with Pascal’s wager but the biggest is that you can’t believe in something unless you truly believe in it, just because the odds are better doesn’t mean you can make yourself believe, that’s not how belief works. Once you start believing things because it benefits you to believe them your mind is permanently altered. You have become someone who believes, and acts as though he believes, in something the evidence contradicts. That has profound effects on how you live your life, whether you want it to or not.
This mentality is illogical as it is patronising and disgusting. Regardless of whether you believe in hell, this is a very unattractive thing to say. First, it implies a power/privilege imbalance (i.e, “I’m saved, but I’m guessing you’re not based on some assumptions I’m making about you), and it also leaps over the hurdle of personal investment and relationship, straight into the deep waters of personal faith.
Wouldn’t a truly omniscient, omnipotent, and moral god reward someone who did good for the sake of being good instead of someone who did god only for the sake of getting into heaven? I will take the risk that God does not exist because I believe myself to be a good person. If God does happen to exist and does not reward my good behavior than it is not a God I would have wanted to honor anyway and I will gladly take my punishment.
3 Likes
Welcome to Atheist republic HaroldJ. I Hope you find this place fun and stimulating.
As far as the previous post… umm, yea, total agreement.