Original Sin?

Quote: FrGamble

Can you imagine any other way in which we can have the capacity for true love and great kindness without having the potential to also have pure hate and awful selfishness? Wouldn't any restrictions or governors on our freedom to sin diminish our free choice to radically love each other?

Agent Smith agrees

Quote: FrGamble

Maybe I would say that Christianity is a guide for living on Earth like we were already in Heaven.

Terrifying thought, that..

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Can you imagine any other way in which we can have the capacity for true love and great kindness without having the potential to also have pure hate and awful selfishness?

How can good exist without evil? They're
concepts, they can't exist without each
other. They don't really exist anyway,
they're just labels, like right and wrong.

I know, you think god sits in a perfect place
and he sent us to this imperfect place so
we can earn our way back to the perfect place.
That's a fairy tale story for children that adults
co-opted and turned into a major religion.

Life is far more complicated than that.

Quote: FrGamble

Maybe I would say that Christianity is a guide for living on Earth like we were already in Heaven.

Hmm. I must admit I've never come across a detailed depiction of Heaven. But I'm surprised God would promise a vale of tears requiring sacrifice and abnegation.

Quote:

Can you imagine any other way in which we can have the capacity for true love and great kindness without having the potential to also have pure hate and awful selfishness? Wouldn't any restrictions or governors on our freedom to sin diminish our free choice to radically love each other?

What has choice got to do with capability?

I cannot work out Pi to seven million decimal places in my head. I cannot outrun a horse. I cannot outswim a dolphin. I cannot memorize the name of every person in the world. I cannot type two books at once. I cannot do any of a myriad things I and every other human being lacks the capability to do. How does that restrict my free will?

I've never bought the notion that for good to exist, it's necessary for evil to serve as a contrast. Good end evil simply exist. they are opposites, but they're not relative to one another.

These conversations are becoming depressing to
me. I don't know how Christians get out of bed
and face the world every day, with this appalling
religion hanging over their heads like a wet blanket.
Just talking about it is a downer, no wonder so
many Christians seem unhappy, it must be real
drudgery to do it every day.

Atheists suffer under no such illusions. I've never
met an atheist who wasn't smart, I wonder why that
is.

Quote: Evenbob

Atheists suffer under no such illusions. I've never
met an atheist who wasn't smart, I wonder why that
is.

Ah, ignorance is bliss.

Quote: Evenbob

Life is far more complicated than that.

So is the spiritual life.

Quote: Nareed

Hmm. I must admit I've never come across a detailed depiction of Heaven. But I'm surprised God would promise a vale of tears requiring sacrifice and abnegation.

Sometimes people think Heaven is a place where all our dreams come true. You loved to play golf then Heaven is a non stop perfect round of golf where you never get tired and the weather is perfect. That is crazy. This mindset is really the height of selfishness. "I've suffered through being nice to people on Earth and sacrificing so Heaven better be all about me." If that is what you are looking for you have a better chance finding it in the other place.

If God has given us moral laws to live on Earth in a way which prepares us for Heaven then shouldn't Heaven reflect the perfectness of these laws? We don't stop loving and giving ourselves in love to others in Heaven. This self donation and generosity is just perfected of the lingering selfishness that clings to us and holds us back on Earth. There is no fear or suffering only pure love in its greatest form in God's Kingdom.

Think about the time or times in your life when you were truly the most happy and deeply fulfilled. Odds are it involves someone else and something kind and loving you did for them or they did for you. Imagine that to the perfect extreme forever and multiply it by a million and you still can't even fathom how awesome Heaven will be. This is why I laugh when I hear Evenbob comment on how depressing Christianity is. The people in this world that are most unhappy and depressed are those who don't love or who feel they aren't loved. This is why love is our origin, love is our calling, and love is our fulfillment in Heaven.

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What has choice got to do with capability?

I cannot work out Pi to seven million decimal places in my head. I cannot outrun a horse. I cannot outswim a dolphin. I cannot memorize the name of every person in the world. I cannot type two books at once. I cannot do any of a myriad things I and every other human being lacks the capability to do. How does that restrict my free will?

Excellent point! However, none of these things come close to fulfilling what it means to be a human being. Your freedom is not given to you to swim like a dolphin or write two books at the same time. Your freedom is specifically given to you so that you can do something greater than all of those things, and that is to love. If a dolphin had to swim and there was no choice or option of it choosing to just sink to the bottom then the dolphin's freedom would be restricted. It would become a dolphin machine, forced to swim. If a human being is restricted from using her freedom to hate than she becomes a love machine - wait, that actually sounds pretty cool. No really, it would be bad. Our freedom revolves around our most essential characteristics and makes them truly valuable. We are forced to breathe, our hearts beat without us making a single choice, because ultimately there is something more important to our lives that defines who we are namely do we freely choose to love or not.

Quote: FrGamble

We don't stop loving and giving ourselves in love to others in Heaven. This self donation and generosity is just perfected of the lingering selfishness that clings to us and holds us back on Earth. There is no fear or suffering only pure love in its greatest form in God's Kingdom.

This leaves me none the wiser about what Heaven is supposed to be like. Quite seriously, what I can understand sounds incredibly boring.

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Think about the time or times in your life when you were truly the most happy and deeply fulfilled. Odds are it involves someone else and something kind and loving you did for them or they did for you.

Don't move the goalposts. While some, and I want to stress that it's only SOME, of these occasions did involve other people, and the doing of nice deeds, there were also payments involved and agreed upon beforehand. I won't share what that was, because it's personal, but if any such occasions had involved any sacrifice or suffering at all, I'd have been miserable rather than happy.

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Imagine that to the perfect extreme forever and multiply it by a million and you still can't even fathom how awesome Heaven will be.

So I'll either be helping people out of some gruesome situation, or viceversa? How is that happiness in any way?

Seriously, for all of me you can keep it.

But it's nice to know I've grown ever more impervious to the inadequate temptations offered by religion.

The problem that I see is that most of this religious doctrine is based on ancient writings, some quite fragmentary, made by people who claim God spoke to them in some manner.

Now we are all rather tolerant but it seems almost universal in urban areas that anyone claiming to see and hear God winds up in a rubber room. In a rural area things are a bit more tolerable because there is less harm and fewer funds available to build rubber rooms.

So why does time add to the stature of someone who "heard or saw God"? Didn't ancient societies have Thorazine?

Quote: Evenbob

Atheists suffer under no such illusions. I've never
met an atheist who wasn't smart, I wonder why that
is.

How about an atheist that smokes weed :-)
A lot of us are atheists :-)