Someone just told me I'm going to hell

[Ladyhawk]

I was in a chat room and he was complaining about his fears of hell, so I offered to explain to him how I managed to deprogram my own fears. Then he hogged the conversation, explaining to me that all levels of consciousness were based on love and hate and that I'd reached my conclusions because I hate god. He also tried to drag the Shroud of Turin into the conversation as scientific proof of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, pointing me to a page that "debunked" the claims that it is a 14th-century forgery.

After I explained that I couldn't hate something that didn't exist, he started babbling about how he had to prove it to me because God loves me and he loved me and I was going to hell if I didn't believe it. Jesus loves you. Now flatter him or he'll send you to hell. :eyes:

His "reasonings" were so off-base that I kindly suggested that he was "fucked" and asked him to get some therapy. Yeah, it probably wasn't very nice of me, but hey! I tend to get angry when someone tells me I'm going to hell because I don't believe what they believe.

And yes, the guy came across as not-too-bright and a bit off his rocker.

[Jack_Dawson]

1. Did he have poor grammar and misspell alot of words?

[Ladyhawk]

17. Actually, most of them. :)

[Dookus]

2. anybody

who uses the Shroud of Turin as an argument of any sort deserves nothing but derision and scorn.

[izzie]

28. Did he have any new oil painting that had blood coming out of them?

Those are the best.Now Hell, well we are in the middle of it with Bush right now.

[FlaGranny]

35. I use

the Shroud of Turin as an argument - an argument that it is very well done, and I sort of agree with the theory that it is a Leonardo da Vinci self portrait.

[Ladyhawk]

41. LOL...this guy said art wasn't that good in the 14th Century.

I couldn't pull names out of a hat, but I knew this assertion seemed suspicious. Leonardo da Vinci lived between 1452-1519. That's about right, isn't it? Even if he didn't do it, there were plenty of talented artists during that time period, no doubt.

[Gung_Fu]

3. The kind of love Jesus had...

for everyone was unconditional, meaning that you didn't need to love him back. As for love of God well I don't know if he even exists.

[Az]

30. Um actually

there is a trangression that even Jesus condemned. Blaspheming the Holy Ghost is unforgivable.

[Gung_Fu]

33. Yeah but who told you that?

The church or the bible, did JC say that himself?

Of course by that same argument one could say Jesus didn't exist.

[Ladyhawk]

38. And exactly what does it mean to blaspheme the Holy Ghost?

I've never really seen it defined properly.

One could also say I'm hell-bound because I'm an apostate. That's in the bible, too.

[POed_Ex_Repub]

4. Well, if it's true I'll probably meet you there. :-)

:toast:

[everythingsxen]

5. You should have pointed out to him that...

The Christian mythos had no concept of "Hell" until they had to convert the Norse. THere they stumbled upon a most perculiar religios idea.. "Hel" a goddess who ruled over an afterlife of the same name where people who didn't die in battle went. (Warriors got to go to Valhalla) Presto chango... *poof* suddenly it is Christian idealogy!

What a neat religion.. so flexible!

[Ladyhawk]

20. I think that explanation would have been beyond his ability to understand.

He really wasn't very bright. :(

[Ladyhawk]

22. Question: How did ideas of hell get into the New Testament?

The OT Sheol isn't hell, obviously, but the concept of hell is in the New Testament. Do the earliest NT writings contain mention of hell? Or were they added later to reflect theological changes?

[regnaD kciN]

47. Once again, your historical knowledge is pathetic....

Although much of the medieval notion of "hell" was derived from Nordic mythology, Revelation itself contains references to the "lake of fire" into which the forces of evil would be thrown at the end of time. In addition, the Gospels contained warnings from Jesus about not being cast into "Gehenna" (the Jerusalem garbage dump where fires burned continuously). Both those sources came long before any missionary efforts toward Scandinavia.

I know you already have an animus against Christianity, but you might do well to get your history from a somewhat-more-balanced set of sources than just a bunch of books or websites dedicated to debunking it, where rhetoric is more important than the marshalling of all the facts.

[Ladyhawk]

51. Thank you for clarifying that for me.

But I don't think calling someone else's historical knowledge "pathetic" is a good way to point out misconceptions. That was an ad hominem attack and I'm sure the recipient didn't appreciate it.

[regnaD kciN]

53. Actually, an ad hominem...

...would be criticizing someone's character, not their knowledge. Calling someone "stupid" would be an ad hominem, saying that someone's knowledge on a given topic is weak or even pathetic is not.

everythingsxen seems to be a nice guy (after all, anyone AlienGirl cares about must have a lot of good things about them), but he clearly has an intense dislike of Christianity and has said a number of things about it that are simply not true or that, IMHO, qualify as "cheap shots." I reserve the right to call him on such behavior when I see it happening.

[AlienGirl]

6. There is no hell

When bad people die they go to Florida until they have repented.

Tucker

[everythingsxen]

7. Preach it sista!

:loveya:

[AlienGirl]

12. You have repented and done your time in Florida

That's why they let you out!

[everythingsxen]

13. Yeah..

Florida is Hell!

[MSchreader]

8. Sounds like a plant

Some fundie types send people into chatrooms to act like "tortured souls", so they can rope unsuspecting people into their cults. Sounds like you ran into one of them.

Martin

[Ladyhawk]

18. Actually, I think he was a tortured soul.

He said he wanted to kill himself, but that if he did he would go to hell. I suggested that his fundamentalism might be part of what was making him depressed (it certainly was/is for me) and offered to let him in on what helped me get over my fear of hell. Then he hogged the conversation and started in on how love and hate alters perceptions--only he didn't put it that eloquently. He said I didn't accept the proof of the Shroud because I hated god.

I knew then that the conversation was going nowhere. :) I became a non-fundy because I felt fundamentalism was morally repugnant and emotionally harmful. I became an atheist to maintain intellectual integrity. The whole process was a combination of reason, emotion and moral growth.

And I haven't "arrived" yet.

[AmyStrange]

9. I'm scheduled to be bartender...

would you like to put in an advanced order. You won't find this kind of service in heaven,

d

[Ladyhawk]

40. Because of my diabetes, I can't drink here on earth.

And because of my fundy upbringing I never learned much about booze. I've only had beer, wine and wine coolers after I turned 21, much to my mother's dismay.

I think I'd like to try everything once I'm in hell, since my health won't be affected. :) What would you suggest?

[AmyStrange]

55. Extra Dry Martini...

my Mom taught me real well:

Cold mixing glass, swirl in some cracked ice, stop swirling, and slowly pour in a double four count of "Bombay Sapphire" Extra Dry Gin, a squeeze of a lemon peel, wave the dry vermoth near the mixing glass, stir (not shaken), and strain into a frozen Martini glass already decorated with a couple cocktail onions.

Life doesn't get any better,

d

[AmyStrange]

10. They're just repeating...

what their preacher told them - word for word,

d

[punpirate]

11. Ummm, spend less time trying to change the minds...

... of people without inclination to do so. You'll be far better off, LadyH, especially in matters of religion.

Fanaticism is not responsive to logic.

Cheers.

[Ladyhawk]

16. I noticed. That's why I left. :)

[WillParkinson]

14. I'll probably get there first...

I'll have a nice glass of ice water waiting for you.

[Ladyhawk]

21. Thanks...make it an iced tea if the devil has something good in stock.

[Lexingtonian]

15. His God

probably has horns, a tail, a hoof, and smells kinda funny. And wanted him to sign some piece of paper with gobs of fine print in blood.

At least that's the thought that tempts me every time I run into one of these non-geniuses.

The way out of fire-and-brimstone Christianity is the realization that Jesus and the rest didn't concern themselves with sin as much as these merchants of oppressive guilt would have you imagine, by far. The deeds and changes, inward and outward, to atone for wrongs done and good, even creative, deeds for their own sake are far more important emphases in the Gospels.

But these bozos never get that second part.

[Ladyhawk]

19. Yeah, fundies are pretty whacky.

Reason doesn't appeal to them very much.

Liberal Christians are fine by me, even though I consider myself an atheist. People who buy into dogma of any kind tend to be dangerous. I don't see liberal Christians doing that (for the most part).

Even some fundies I know don't seem comfortable in the role of accuser. My friend John recently told me I had "no hope" without Jesus. Later he apologized, but denied ever saying the things he said. I know he said them. I was there. But I honestly believe he doesn't remember. Either that or he can't retract his statement due to personal beliefs, but still wants to maintain our friendship. I think it's the former. Poor John seems to forget a lot of things. I've wondered if he's in the early stages of Alzheimer's.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

23. I think we sometimes have heaven and hell on earth

When people can get along with respect and tolerance of one another, forgiving each other's shortcomings, the feeling is wonderful, and what I equate with heaven.

When people are selfish and judgemental and intolerant, the feeling changes to that of hellishness.

We can create our own heaven or hell right here on earth.

BTW, have you heard this story about what heaven and hell are like?

In hell, everyone is at a banquet table, crying and starving because they have long handled spoons attached to their arms, and the spoons are too long to be able to reach their mouths.

In hell, same scenario-except everyone is fine, because they are using the spoons to feed one another.

[ellie]

27. My father used to say

that there is no hell in the afterlife. Hell was on earth because of all the suffering and struggle. He did believe in God though. Because of his influence, I don't believe in hell and further, I am not sure I believe in God. This after years of Catholic school!

[mopaul]

24. sounds like my brother

i myself am bonafide crazy, but my younger brother, is a lost and tortured soul for jesus. he's been that way for 33 years now. i can just barely stand to be around him, and rarely see him at all. just being in the same room with him is like wrestling, cause i have to constantly control the conversation AROUND anything religious. sometimes we have to talk about religion, but i keep it brief. it's a struggle.

for the last several years, he's gone to the mardi gras in N.O., and dragged a huge wooden cross up and down the street with about 50 friends. he sucked my mom and dad into this mindset too, and they've only recently begun to mellow out, but not nearly enough.

it's true, there is really no point in debating or reaching out to them. it'd be easier to explain astrophysics to a chicken than to knock all the useless dogma out of their heads. i will no longer suffer their arrogant super pious piffle, and give it right back to them. they helped make me a happy atheist decades ago, but they are still hypnotized.

i don't mind religious people, as long as they give me about 3 ft. of space and keep it to themselves. and my brother and mother always remind me, with voices quavering, that they really wish that i could join them in paradise, instead of being damned to hell for all of the rest of time. so they'll be sipping mint julips with the creator, giggling and watching my eternal suffering off in the distance, and of course while i'm frying, i'll be able to see them, enjoying their eternal reward for being smart enough to pick the right religion.

what a warped sense of reality

[FlaGranny]

36. I've never understood how someone can be happy

living in heaven while a loved one or loved ones were condemned to hell. It does not compute. Heaven would be a very unhappy place if your mother or son or husband were in hell and you had knowledge of it - unless your memory is wiped when you go to heaven. Having no memory is a cruelty also, because it would take away who you are and how you got to be who you are. Therefore, I don't believe in either place. Like I said - it just does not compute.

[Solomon]

42. But you just explained why they won't leave us the hell alone. My

family won't quit trying to get me involved. They can't stomach the thought that the entire family except for me, and by projection my daughter, will be in heaven. No matter what I say, they can't stop because their pastor told them they have a duty to make sure you save your family.

For republican fundies though, I don't think they would have a problem being in heaven with a loved one in hell, since their philosophy seems to be "I got mine, the hell with you".

[Ladyhawk]

45. I bet you're as sick of it as I am. :(

Really, I'd like to get away from my family and this fundy-saturated sub-culture. I took the red pill and can see they're still part of the matrix. For me, there's no going back. I see the whole charade for what it is. They can't understand why I don't just BELIEVE. I can't believe. The whole fundamentalist Christian construct is ridiculous.

[The Backlash Cometh]

25. Oh, this is precious.

This is a good line: God loves you and Jesus loves you and if you don't believe it, you're going to hell.

That's almost as good as: Jesus will come again, and his name shall be Roy.

[foreigncorrespondent]

26. OMG!

I am sorry you went through that Ladyhawk (your name is one of my favorite Michelle Pfieffer movies.)

I had this religious wacko chasing me all over AOL once. LOL He was stalking me online, and was really creepy. He said he could me straight, and that God would love me again and crap. IN the end I got Sapphocrat to deal with him. Never heard from him again, after Sappho had finished having words with him.

[Ladyhawk]

43. Because I am an "out-of-the-closet" atheist, I get persecuted a lot.

Funny...this never happened when I was a fundy conformist. But it happens all the time now that I talk freely about my atheism. So much for the fundy persecution complex.

Only a few months ago, my mother decided I was demon-possessed. That's happened to me before, too. When I was going through a rough patch in college, my "friends" decided the same thing and tried to cast a demon out of me. Then they told me, "Don't come back to us until you've trusted Jesus to take care of your problems." Such Christian love!

That was one of the first blows against fundamentalist dogma and it was an emotional one. I believed for several more years, became a non-Christian, then out of wishful thinking, hoped that a loving god and afterlife existed. After reviewing the evidence, I decided the whole thing was a load of crap.

[Az]

29. Welcome to the club

Now, when you get exorcised on line by a group of fundies, let me know. Nothing quite like a pack of chatters all typing the Power of Christ Compells you in unison.

Here's the way it works. You will not dislodge a believers beliefs unless you counter balance their emotional acceptance of it with an equal emotional force. This is because everything we believe derives from the emotional weighting our mind applies to it throughout our lives. This is simply the way the mind works.

Logic and reason will not typically topple a person's beliefs because there is not sufficient emotional weight to these tools to counter a lifetime of religious indoctrination. When an attempt at logical discourse is attempted they will play along until all their arguments are refuted and then because the refutation does not occlude their beliefs they will claim that it is a matter of faith. This is because they find themself still believing in their precepts and have no logical reason. It is not a retreat or an excuse. It is simply them reporting accurately that they still believe.

People do not generally understand how they come to believe things. Most are under the impression that we choose what we believe. Try it. You cannot choose to believe something you currently believe to be untrue. Belief is the result of a continuous struggle within your mind countering the emotional weighting of your life's experiences. The continiously shifting balance of this struggle is the current set of beliefs you possess.

The only way to topple a belief is to counter balance it at an emotional level. This can occurr in a number of ways. A powerful event in ones life that stands in opposition to their beliefs can trigger a crisis of faith. This is not a pleasant route. It should not be sought as a means of changing people. The trama can be lasting and detrimental.

The other way to topple beliefs is by means of a slow build up of trust in information and logic and reason. Eventually the person will initiate their own internal struggle and the two vying sides will battle it out. A smaller more controlled crisis of faith will take hold and depending on their environment they may either break out of the old beliefs or reject the new ideas.

Any way you cut it such a shift in beliefs is going to come with an emotional cost. This should be taken into consideration when any such journey is undertaken. The shifting of belief systems unseats a persons entire understanding of the universe around them. Their reliance on this has been developed over a lifetime. A sudden shift can leave them with no means of knowing how to deal with stress and conflicts in their life. This is not necissarily the only outcome. Most seem to see the world in a new light and see them self as freed from a world of darkness and shadow. It all depends on the environment and the path they are on when the shift occurrs.

[Ladyhawk]

39. I paid an enormous emotional price for my world view shift.

I also paid an enormous emotional price just by being a fundy, but giving all that up meant strife with friends and family: emotional, intellectual and physical isolation. I've had no luck finding like-minded people in this mostly fundy/freeper county.

I was never persecuted for being a fundy, but since I "came out" as an atheist, my family, friends and complete strangers seem to go out of their way to re-convert me. In the past six months, my mother told me I was demon-possessed; my friend John told me I had no hope without Jesus; my mother tried to reel me in by suggesting I attend a fundy sing-along; now some asswipe on the Internet insists I'm hell-bound. If he's an example of the type going to heaven, count me out!

[Solomon]

44. Ladyhawk. I'm with you there. Going through the same phenomenon

with my family. The only difference is that I can't call myself an atheist. I just don't believe in an anthropormorphic god. A boogeyman in the sky. Doesn't matter though, because I don't believe that "Jesus" was born from a virgin, I might as well be an atheist to them.

[Ladyhawk]

46. Yes, that's the dogmatic part that is so scary.

People that believe you're going to hell because you don't believe exactly what they believe are dangerous! If they're caring, it will lead to repeated attempts to drag you back into the same toxic religion you worked so hard to escape. If they don't care, they'll call you infidel and burn you at the stake. I think a belief in hell eventually leads most believers to justify the actions of their god. They end up becoming less loving and more judgmental--like their god.

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."-- Carey Goldberg. "Why Are We Here?" International Herald Tribune, Paris ed., no. 36,125; Monday, Apr. 26, 1999; p. 10.

Fundamentalists have to buy into the idea that hell is "just" and that turns them into monsters.

[Az]

49. Seperation of identity from the body

The notion of projection has a further implication. People begin to see identities as seperate things from the bodies they have projected them onto (as well as their own identity). Along with beliefs of gods and spirits the notion of a soul as a seperate thing creeps into these belief systems.

Once you seperate the identity from the body a dogmatic belief system can become truly dangerous. History has shown that good intentioned people have been able to do all manner of horrible actions in the name of saving these disconnected identities from believed damnation. If the body is just a shell then it is discardable. If they are willing to discard the shell to save the projected identity there is nothing they cannot be convinced to do in the name of love of that identity.

[SarahB]

31. If a person believes in God

And is a practicing Christian, this guy should realize it not for him to judge, but for God alone. How are we to know, as unomnipotent, flawed individuals, what the afterlife is going to be for ourselves, let alone another person?
Besides, the guy IS fucked. Why worry about being "nice" all the time? Nice doesn't always get you far even within yourself. Neither does worrying about whether everyone else likes you. We're human and that's okay. :)

spelling edit

[Brewman_Jax]

32. My reservations have been confirmed...

but I'll be so busy greeting old friends, I won't realize that I'm in hell. :toast:

[Westegg]

34. More than "a bit" off his rocker, I should say!

[ScreamingMeemie]

37. I guess it will be crowded then.

;)

[regnaD kciN]

48. Someone told me the same thing...!

But I intend to continue my support for People For Change, anyway!

;-)

[arcane1]

50. and God so loved the world....

that he created Hell to burn them in :silly:

[Doctor_J]

52. I usually say,

when someone tells me I'm going to hell, "just so long as I don't have to sit next to Jerry Falwell".

[Vernunft II]

54. People like him are why I´ll gladly go to Hell

Nothing Satan can come up with can be worse than having to spend eternity with retards like this.