• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Question for the Non-Muslims

Copernicus

Copernicus

Industrial Strength Linguist
Muffled said:
The difference is that India was ruled by the British for years and they inculcated democracy. Unless you wish to say that Christianity had something to do with it. I tend to doubt that since kings ruled under Christianity for a long time. The same can be said for Hinduism. However even democracy has its shortcomings because a government will only be as good as the people running it.
Click to expand...

Muffled, read some more about the history of India. India and Pakistan were both part of the British Raj. They split over religious differences after independence from the British, although India still has a gigantic Muslim population.
 
YmirGF

YmirGF

Bodhisattva in Recovery
eselam said:
correct, but unlike the angels we humans have free will, we question an order, that is a human thing, so if god created you and put you straight to hell won't you ever feel that he is unjust without ever giving you a chance? i would feel that he is unjust, if he has given me the option to choose for myself but then he says i know everything so i know the outcome and this is it i would call that injustice. wouldn't you?
Click to expand...
What you just don't seem to be able to grasp, Eselam is that when there is a huge reward for one behavior and a huge penalty for another behavior, saying that people are free to choose between them relies on paper thin reasoning. IF indeed people are punished for eternity for some actions, then they are NOT free to commit those actions because of the huge penalty. If there was NO PENALTY at all, THEN there would be free will.

Undoubtedly you will say that I am free to go off and kill the nearest person. Truthfully, if I chose to there is little to physically stop me. In that sense, I am free to go kill anyone I choose. This is regardless of the fact that I find killing to be a repugnant action to begin with, but for the purposes of this discussion I'll just let that fact slide. The thing is, I know that if I am caught for killing another person I will incur a great penalty, so in that regard, I am NOT free to chose to kill someone as there will most surely be a cost.

This rule applies doubly, if not more so, to a deity that I cannot fool. If he says that I will burn forever for doing such and such an act then I am NOT FREE TO DO SO because there is a penalty. The entire premise conflicts with the concept of free will.

In the simplest terms possible, if I tell you I have a FREE gift for you and then you later find out there is a small transaction fee or shipping charge to receive the gift, then it is not really FREE, is it?
 
Last edited:
McBell

McBell

Admiral Obvious
eselam said:
right back at you
Click to expand...
Fat lot you know.

But then we are not talking about my beliefs, we are talking about yours.
Unlike you, I do not ignore facts that show how ridiculous my beliefs are.
You go to great lengths to protect the straws with which you cling.
Thus you are unable and unwilling to expand your knowledge.
you prefer the comforting feeling of ignorance that you think you must maintain in order to remain faithful to picture you paint of your god.

A picture I readily reject with no qualms, no fear.
I understand that you can not understand how it is possible.
I understand that you have limited yourself to your comfortable little box.
I even understand your transference.
But it only adds credence to my point, not yours.
 
Copernicus

Copernicus

Industrial Strength Linguist
YmirGF said:
This rule applies doubly, if not more so, to a deity that I cannot fool. If he says that I will burn forever for doing such and such an act then I am NOT FREE TO DO SO because there is a penalty. The entire premise conflicts with the concept of free will.
Click to expand...

And this fact is one of the things that makes me shudder when I contemplate what it is like to be a Christian or Islamic religious fundamentalist. They literally live in the totalitarian nightmare that George Orwell described in 1984. Only it is worse, because all the protagonist, Winston Smith, had to fear were cameras behind pictures. Big Brother could not actually read his mind.

The Abrahamic god knows what you are thinking, so thought crime is an even bigger deal for true believers in that version of God. In the end, Winston Smith was completely brainwashed into loving Big Brother, even as he was executed by the tyrant. Orwell's point was that the mind could be so twisted by terror as to abandon even the deepest sense of true love or value. "Love" comes to mean its opposite for those terrorized by hell, and that is why some religious fanatics really do feel love for their god and will commit any crime, no matter how heinous, if they imagine it to be their god's will.
 
Riverwolf

Riverwolf

Amateur Rambler / Proud Ergi
Premium Member
Copernicus said:
And this fact is one of the things that makes me shudder when I contemplate what it is like to be a Christian or Islamic religious fundamentalist. They literally live in the totalitarian nightmare that George Orwell described in 1984. Only it is worse, because all the protagonist, Winston Smith, had to fear were cameras behind pictures. Big Brother could not actually read his mind.

The Abrahamic god knows what you are thinking, so thought crime is an even bigger deal for true believers in that version of God. In the end, Winston Smith was completely brainwashed into loving Big Brother, even as he was executed by the tyrant. Orwell's point was that the mind could be so twisted by terror as to abandon even the deepest sense of true love or value. "Love" comes to mean its opposite for those terrorized by hell, and that is why some religious fanatics really do feel love for their god and will commit any crime, no matter how heinous, if they imagine it to be their god's will.
Click to expand...

I still have to read that!

Yes, love out of fear of retribution is not true love.
 
Aquitaine

Aquitaine

Well-Known Member
I wouldn't be arsed about Hell, for two reasons:


1) Let's face it, if I'm not being condemned to one Hell then I'm surely going to be condemned to every other Hell that is apparently true according to a few other religions, so even if I'm a devout Muslim I'm going to Christian Hell, for example.

2) To go to Hell means to re-exist after Death, so it means I'd have different Sensory Organs and a different CNS, my biology will also be different, God knows how different I would be, and when did God say the the sufferring we'll recieve is detectable by our new Senses we're given?

Hell we might be "configured" to actually enjoy the sensation of fire burning etc, LOL! Or the forms of pain might not be recognisable by our senses.

Who knows. :shrug:


It's just like with the 72 Virgins, obviously it's inspired by sex-mad Men in order to enchant other sex-mad Men to "join the club" and try to get into Paradise, but who says I'd want that? If our bodies are destroyed during/after death then who says I'm even gonna still have Human Male instincts and Hormones along with a Sex-Drive, since my original body (and Hormones/Chemicals) were destroyed?
 
R

RamaRaksha

*banned*
YmirGF said:
What you just don't seem to be able to grasp, Eselam is that when there is a huge reward for one behavior and a huge penalty for another behavior, saying that people are free to choose between them relies on paper thin reasoning. IF indeed people are punished for eternity for some actions, then they are NOT free to commit those actions because of the huge penalty. If there was NO PENALTY at all, THEN there would be free will.

Undoubtedly you will say that I am free to go off and kill the nearest person. Truthfully, if I chose to there is little to physically stop me. In that sense, I am free to go kill anyone I choose. This is regardless of the fact that I find killing to be a repugnant action to begin with, but for the purposes of this discussion I'll just let that fact slide. The thing is, I know that if I am caught for killing another person I will incur a great penalty, so in that regard, I am NOT free to chose to kill someone as there will most surely be a cost.

This rule applies doubly, if not more so, to a deity that I cannot fool. If he says that I will burn forever for doing such and such an act then I am NOT FREE TO DO SO because there is a penalty. The entire premise conflicts with the concept of free will.

In the simplest terms possible, if I tell you I have a FREE gift for you and then you later find out there is a small transaction fee or shipping charge to receive the gift, then it is not really FREE, is it?
Click to expand...

Good post but you are trying to reason with a brain-washed person, she/he is beyond reach. There was this news sometime ago where the members of this cult in utah turned out their own teenaged sons because the church elders felt they were in competition with them for the young girls within the community. Imagine so brain-washed that you would turn out your own flesh-and-blood & and send your young underage daughter to bed with an old man.
 
R

RamaRaksha

*banned*
Copernicus said:
And this fact is one of the things that makes me shudder when I contemplate what it is like to be a Christian or Islamic religious fundamentalist. They literally live in the totalitarian nightmare that George Orwell described in 1984. Only it is worse, because all the protagonist, Winston Smith, had to fear were cameras behind pictures. Big Brother could not actually read his mind.

The Abrahamic god knows what you are thinking, so thought crime is an even bigger deal for true believers in that version of God. In the end, Winston Smith was completely brainwashed into loving Big Brother, even as he was executed by the tyrant. Orwell's point was that the mind could be so twisted by terror as to abandon even the deepest sense of true love or value. "Love" comes to mean its opposite for those terrorized by hell, and that is why some religious fanatics really do feel love for their god and will commit any crime, no matter how heinous, if they imagine it to be their god's will.
Click to expand...

There was an experiment sometime ago where voluntary members were put in cells and made to undergo abuse by other volunteer "police". The experiment was stopped when the abused stopped resisting and blindly started obeying orders. Are there some humans who are happy to live as slaves? It is chilling to think that the dominant religions of earth are those that reduce followers to slaves. Obey or else! i guess we haven't advanced much.
 
C

challupa

Well-Known Member
eselam said:
firtsly, can you please read about the islamic concept of hell here before answering the question, that would be very much appreciated.

Q: why do you care if Allah was to send you to hell?
Click to expand...
I do not believe in a creator God that judges. Therefore I cannot be threatened by something I do not believe in. I find most religions that teach that there is a heaven and a hell are quite simplistic. There has not been a lot of thought put into why there would be a heaven and a hell other than a need for God to get revenge or justice on it's creations. That does not make any sense however, not to me anyway.
 
Autodidact

Autodidact

Intentionally Blank
eselam said:
firtsly, can you please read about the islamic concept of hell here before answering the question, that would be very much appreciated.

Q: why do you care if Allah was to send you to hell?
Click to expand...

Why do I care about your threat that an imaginary being will send me to an imaginary place? I don't.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top