If you are an atheist, or agnostic, and you die and discover there really is an afterlife, really is a God, do you suppose you're going to hell?

No, because I doubt such an all-powerful, omniscient being is really all that concerned with whether I love it or pay lip service to it.

Revelation 21:8

But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

I’m also guilty of blasphemy against the holy spirit, which is an unforgivable sin.

I’ll save you a seat next to the snow cone machine.

Now we come to God & justice. The problem, as I see it is that an omnipotent and all knowing God has seen fit to entrust the duties of imparting His wishes for us to vain, flawed and often bejeweled men.

No, because I don’t believe in Hell, either.

Or perhaps I should more clearly state: “Hell doesn’t exist any more than God or gods do.”

If I don’t believe in God, where does the concept of hell come from? Hell is a religious construct.

Neither Heaven nor Hell exists to a rational person.

Nope. Unless you are specifically referring to one of the few theistic systems that teaches a hell punishment for not expressing belief in such a narrow fashion.

This question reveals the problems of an immature religionist view of a punishing God.

But really, a true redemptive God that fulfills the promise of a loving God would not condemn anyone to a punishing hell. For God if he is anything is the manifestation of forgiving love.

It’s adorable how many of you are unfamiliar with fundamental Christianity.

If God turns out to be that fickle, then fuck him/her/that.

No, I don’t.

Although, if it is 700 Club Heaven, full of TV evangelist wackos, that sounds pretty hellish to me.

@Seek / “God” wrote:

Revelation 21:8

But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

So, like most religious texts, the supernatural stuff is, in its full understanding and core intent, metaphorical, not literal. In the original spiritual traditions, from whence the real-universe actual historical Bible “borrowed” almost all the stories and symbols and messages, there is a cycle of life and death and rebirth for everything, and death and fire are cleansing stages / forces. So one way of reading this might be something like:

People who lived complex lives full of fear and doubt and awful things, and guilt and indulgence and arcane beliefs and tangles of lies, [when they die] all that gets burned away [not necessarily in a painful corporeal way, since after all their bodies are dead], and the ego identity and attachments and all that shit dissolves, and that identity ends for those people’s souls.

It doesn’t have to be read like a literal threat.

@Seek : Do you mean “fundamental” as the general use adjective here (basic, underlying) or as the word interchangeable with “fundamentalist” when specifically referring (usually in a somewhat derogatory way) to hard-core, science denying, take-the-Bible-literally Christians?

The Pope recently said good people who don’t believe may still go to Heaven, though that flies in the face of John 14:6: Jesus replied, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me”

Assuming the Christian God is real and is as described in the Bible, then yeah I’d be fucked. Good works don’t count, only faith.

@Mariah 14 What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him?

15 If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food,

16 And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?

17 Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.

18 Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.

Fundamentalist. As in, the hell I’ve already lived through.

It’d be nice to be able to accept Christianity Lite – the “it’s all metaphorical!” version – as a thing, but frankly I know too much of the Bible to do it.

Anyone who doesn’t think non-believers and even most believers are condemned to eternal torture by the teachings of the apostles isn’t paying attention, or has a heavily redacted Bible.

If there is a God, and if He sends good people to Hell, then he is either stupid or evil. But if God is stupid or evil, then (1) it is hard to understand why we would count Him as being God (as opposed to some other type of powerful overlord) and (2) it is unlikely that being a member of any particular religion is going to save one’s soul either (stupid and evil beings aren’t exactly big on doctrinal consistency). So if there really is a God worth calling “God,” then I expect Him not to punish good people whom he failed to convince of His existence.

@Seek Maybe the Bible was written by men, not God. Or maybe it isn’t to be taken literally. One could agree that Christian Fundamentalism would send everyone to Hell while disagreeing that Christian Fundamentalism is true or even the best interpretation of Christianity.

please see my bicycle metaphor, conveniently located on the “favorite quotes” thread.

I honestly don’t give a flying shit about fundamental Christianity. I apologize to those who feel insulted, but I really could not be bothered.

@filmfann ”“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me”
– is also metaphorical, not literal. Later humans have perverted that into a literal threat of Old Testament eternal torment if people don’t submit and join their churches, but that’s not Jesus’ meaning. Jesus is talking about the path to enlightenment and self-fulfilment, not threatening people who don’t join a cult.

@Seek There’s something like a hundred “favorite quotes” questions floating around on Fluther.

As an apostate, I actually had to come to terms with the idea that I would be condemning myself to a literal hell before I could leave the church. It took years.

The premise of the question doesn’t give room for interpretation or negotiation or metaphor. If all we actually know about the Christian god is the Bible, and the thing you fear is hell, you damned well better straighten up and fly right because all the nice works in the world aren’t enough for the God who killed thousands of his own tribe for breaking the commandments they hadn’t even been told about yet.

No, I’m not worried about that. If there really is a God, It knows why I don’t believe in It, and what I do believe.

@Seek The question doesn’t specify the Christian God. It uses Christian ethics as a convenient shorthand for something like “what a good person is like.” And for my own part, I think that fundamentalism is a bad interpretation of the Bible. So even if everything we know about the Christian God comes from the Bible, I don’t think that the conclusions fundamentalists draw from it actually follow (nor do I think their interpretive methodology is justified).

@Seek The question asked what we suppose, and what I write is what I suppose, based on research mainly by others into various religions. I don’t mean to describe what any particular Christian fundamentalists teach or believe. It’s clear to me that the Bible is not the word of God, but stories collected by various men, combined with the Old Testament, which is a lot different from the New Testament, and ALL of which is obviously mostly borrowed and adapted from other earlier religions, which I think should show to any person who believes the physical evidence and has critical thinking powers, that the Bible is not the word or God. The more ancient religions the Bible takes its material from, I find equal or superior in Christianity in their likelihood to be actual divine communications in any way, and I also find them more interesting, entertaining, and largely more sympathetic in many ways. Even within the Bible itself, I take the attempt to combine the Old and New Testaments as written by God to be an amazing creative effort, but a dangerous trap for literal-minded people, since you can end up deciding that God told you to wear hair shirts, beat up gay people, or commit genocide and own slaves. I suspect the actual Jesus wouldn’t approve of the Bible except for use by very wise learned women or men who could read it metaphorically and got the spiritual messages and were tuned into their own goodness and love, which is why God is Love and I think what Jesus meant when he said you needed to follow his way to get to his Father – in that part, he’s talking about something closer to Buddhism (which Jesus was familiar with) than Biblical Christianity.

It would be out of my control at that point, wouldn’t it? I’m dead. I had my chance. According to the Christian doctrine, yes, Pete would have me on the next bus to Hell after Resurrection. I’m not sure about the other religions.

I certainly hope I get sent to Hell. But only if it is full of banjos.

It is full of banjos, @Rarebear. Out of tune banjos being played by 50 cubits of drunken mice.

@Seek ”But the fearful…..shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.” Wow. I never realized it was a sin to be afraid sometimes. Shit!

I can imagine God’s scales of justice swaying slightly one way then the other then suddenly I remember a swear word I spoke in anger in 1962 and I am tipped over into Hell. Damn!

Even if there is a God, that doesn’t automatically mean there is going to be a hell or a heaven. If there is any afterlife at all, its morel likely to be some sort of reincarnation. I’m agnostic and deist. So I already believe in a God, just none of the miracles, heave and hell aspects.

If there is an afterlife I’ll be born again as either another animal species or as another human all over again. I probably won’t even remember anything about myself from this life.

If there is a god then the probability is so small that it is a religion as we know it god that I can’t say I’m too worried about hell. I think that the likelyhood of an “afterlife” is higher than most athiests or agnostics can deal with, non conventional after-life of course. Not that 72 virgins, or heaven-hell bullshit. For example: If at any single discrete point in a person’s life every bit of information can be captured and recorded: neural connections cellular placement etc,etc then that person can be completely reconstructed, “simulated“or “resurrected” That only really works if you believe consciousness is a material illusion. Can you prove then you are not being “played back” right now? What if it is not a material illusion?

http://www.banjohangout.org/archive/184775

I’m the guy in the upper left.

@NerdyKeith I wish! It’s surely comforting to think that. But…nah. No more reincarnation for us than for dogs and worms. Well, unless you have this idea that you are more important to the universe than a dog or a worm. I, personally, don’t.

LOLL @Rarebear! Indeed!

@Dutchess_III well maybe

@elbanditoroso the requirement for hell is readily understood once it is appreciated that wide eyed children soaking up these horrors are prone to ask “well where does the devil live?”

The other day a catholic former coworker posted that her four year old son said, “I don’t believe in monsters, only God and Jesus.”
That left me scratching my head on so many levels. And she’s supposed to be super intelligent (just ask her.)

Honestly, the whole idea is so preposterous, I couldn’t be arsed to imagine it. God wouldn’t pass my morality test, so if I found he actually existed, I certainly wouldn’t grovel at his feet in the hopes that he wouldn’t subject me to torture. There’s no winning with an evil bastard like that. One may as well keep one’s integrity.

@Rarebear

Speaking of hell and banjos, likely they’ll be singing this:

Perhaps you’re familiar with this little ditty by Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers but maybe others aren’t. It’s called “Atheists Don’t Have No Songs”

But now they do :)

“The he is always lower case.” Too funny for words.
Enjoy
..
..
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wogta8alHiU

I haven’t read any answers.

Nope. I figure if there is a God He cares about us being good and doing good, and is not so worried about if we worshipped him or believed in Him. If I were invisible watching a bunch of children I created being kind to each other I would be insanely happy. Why would God be any different?

I agree with some of the points above.
God’s existence, and the existence of hell, may or may not be mutually dependent.
Plus, if God is responsible for our existence, he would know right up front that some of us would use our reasoning power that he gave us, and conclude He was not there. Seems sort of capricious and petty to punish someone for acting according to their nature. Sort of like punishing an infant for shitting in his diaper.
I would find it tough to be respectful of such God. Eternity is a long time to pretend to be a suck up.
Anyway, I think I have seen hell on Earth, and I believe I could probably survive the imaginary one.

IF there was a “God,” and he (or she) was that trivial, I would opt for non-existence. But if any “God” was so wise, and good, he (or she) would understand my POV and judge me on how I treated my fellow man, not just send me to hell because I didn’t believe in “Him.” (Or “Her.”) And if believing in “Him” (or “Her”) was so important, wouldn’t one of the Ten Commandments have been ‘Thou shalt believe in the Lord your God??’

@Buttonstc I almost went to see them when they were playing local, but tickets were something ridiculous like $120.

I don’t know, but if a God punishes me solely for not believing in him, he isn’t someone worth worshipping.

“Hell is other people.”

agnostic here

If Jesus, as written in the bible is correct — then I’m toast (maybe literally).

If the pope’s interpretation is accurate — then I’d be on cloud nine (maybe literally).

Either way, I’d be surprised.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut116mBuPpg

Like many others have said, I can’t fathom any god-like entity that would punish people simply for believing something that wound up being not true. So, I don’t expect to. But either way, I think I’d be upset just for having to exist, unceasingly, for an eternity. It’s an awful long time…

But if I am—it’s not for anything terrible or sinful I’ve done. It’s for being an atheist, which doesn’t make me a bad person. And that gives me hope for hell. Because while there would be a bunch of rather scary people down there, there would also be a lot of good people down there, too.

In a way, hell might be a more interesting place to spend an eternity… sure, painful, but I imagine I’d get used to that at some point. And also—what better long-term project than trying to make hell a better place? With all the good people down there, and nothing but time, I imagine we can make some headway, present some arguments about change to Lucifer, pass legislation (or some such thing) to spruce things up, etc. I mean, why not?

I’d insist upon it. I would rather be with, and the enjoy the company of, the 99.9% of humanity who lived before the concept heaven and hell were invented. The conversations would be far more interesting.

I’d quickly get bored only talking to Mother Teresa and Mahatma Gandhi for eternity. All they’d yak about is peace, sacrifice, love, and abstinence – a given. And I’d get so sick and tired of them polishing their Peace Prizes.

I guess it depends if the DMT that gets released in my brain when I die gives me a good trip or bad trip.

Glad you guys got the point. If the only “downfall” you had was not worshiping god, he’d have to be a pretty mean spirited and petty god to send you to hell for it.

Mother Teresa dies and goes to heaven. While God is showing her around he gives her a tuna sandwich for lunch. While touring she looks down and sees others eating at a huge buffet, but, being Mother Teresa, says nothing.
The next day, again, she is given a tuna sandwich for lunch while the people below enjoy a fabulous 7 course meal. She asks who they are and God tells her they’re the ones banished to hell.
When she’s given a tuna sandwich on the third day she finally asks: “God, Why are all the people in hell getting such good food while I am given a tuna sandwich every day?”.
And God replies:
“For just two people, a nice meal is too much trouble.”

“But if I go to Hell
Well then I hope I burn well
I’ll spend my days with JFK, Marvin Gaye, Martha Ray and Lawrence Welk,
And Kurt Cobain, Kojack, Mark Twain, and Jimi Hendrix’s poltergeist
And Webster, yeah, Emmanuel Lewis, ‘cause he’s the Antichrist”

Lawrence Welk? How does he end up in hell ? The guy went to Mass every single day of his life ha ha.

Really, that’s true. People who knew him well attested to it.

Of course, I don’t believe there is such a thing as an eternal hell, so it’s kind of a moot point. But I’m just curious what your thought process was on that one. Or do you just want to make sure there’s some decent music in hell?

Lawrence Welk supported drug culture, that’s how he ends up in Hell. Besides, don’t blame me. I’m not making the call, I’m merely passing along the verdict.

Stuck forever in an unbearably hot, humid, crowded venue with only Lawrence Welk performing would be my definition of Hell. I just might get born again to avoid that. What a nightmare.

@Darth

That is freakin’ Hilarious with a capital H. They sure don’t play that one in the current PBS weekly reruns of Welk shows.

Talk about clueless. He calls it a “spiritual” ha ha.

This is just too funny for words.

Most of the interesting people will be in hell

@Buttonstc

The best part is Myron Floren noticeably choking back laughter as he’s introducing the song.

The more I thought about this, the more surprised I am that nobody thought to drop poor Lawrence a clue BEFORE this song was aired.

I get that he wouldn’t be familiar with toking but the majority of the rest of the people in the broadcast were all professional musicians and there’s no way that, regardless of whether they partook or not, they had to know what was going on. MJ was rife throughout the music industry as far back as one can remember starting with the jazz clubs and spreading from there.

You couldn’t possibly have been a working professional musician and not know what toking was.

(Regardless of whether you like his particular style of music, it has to be recognized that he did hire excellent musicians who could hold their own with the best of that day.)

And they all had pre-Welk experience working the circuit so they had to know.

I’m still amazed that nobody dropped him a clue. What the hell were they thinking?

I mean, even tho it was a one hit wonder, the duo who had originally written and performed it were called out by VP Spiro Agnew and they made Nixon’s enemies list.

If for no other reason than job preservation you would have thought that one of those musicians would have told Welk the truth.

I forget…was Lawrence Welk live?

Yes. For years it was on live (or live to tape later on when technology advanced. But he hated stopping tape for any reason so they just kept going.) He insisted on meticulous rehearsals and it shows in the quality of the shows.

There’s one Halloween show where the guy playing Frankenstein accidently splits his pants. So he just grabbed a curtain or tablecloth and tied it around his waist. They all knew Welk wouldn’t stop tape for anything :)

Nowadays, of course, they’re packaged into reruns by PBS with wrap-around interviews and reminiscences with former cast members. My local station has it every Saturday.

He was on just last night. So weird. I always thought he was an old guy….but he’s younger than me.

@Buttonstc “If for no other reason than job preservation you would have thought that one of those musicians would have told Welk the truth.”

Actually I get the impression that if you wished to remain employed you didn’t say shit to Lawrence other than “yes sir”.

@Dutchess

If you’re referring to Welk, those are all reruns packaged by PBS and if you listen to the intro, they’ll tell you which year the show was first broadcast.

So, naturally if the program is older, he will look young even tho he’s been dead and buried for quite a while now :)

But interestungly, it does speak to the quality of those shows that they hold up so well. Sure, it’s music from another era but it’s music done very skillfully and very well.

The same is true of a lot of the big band era stuff that is still enjoyed today. Good music done well is good music regardless of when heard. It’s timeless.

@Buttonstc sigh. I know. I’m saying, in a roundabout way, that I grew up listening to him. I was just a kid. He was an old guy, like my dad was.

@Darth

If someone was relatively new, then yes. But Myron could surely have dropped him a hint. He was with him for ages. I can’t imagine Welk firing him.

Plus, even tho they both played Accordion, Myron was clearly the better player, by a long shot, and Welk did respect excellence.

No, he wasn’t the only one who could have clued him in but he was in the best position to do so. So, I’m still curious why he chose not to.

@Dutchess

Sorry for misunderstanding. My bad :)

@Buttonstc

Whether Welk respected them or not, the fact is anyone on that show not named Lawrence Welk was disposable. Even Myron Florin. And, well, maybe privately Myron got some personal amusement from Lawrence’s cluelessness in selecting that song. He certainly seems to in that introduction.

As an aside, I have to say that I’m a little surprised by the lengthy turn this thread has taken simply from my posting some dumb lyrics from a sophomoric late 90s song. Gotta love Social.

Wait…this was MY thread @Darth_Algar! And it’s about God and Heaven and Hell. Of course, Lawrence Welk fits right in, doesn’t he. Thinking…thinking…

@Darth

While it’s true in the strictest definition of the word “disposable” If you fire people capriciously, pretty soon you don’t have much of a band left.

And according to all accounts, he just wasn’t like that. I mean most of the same people were with him for 10–20 or more years.

If people are constantly quaking in their boots and in fear of losing their jobs they tend to not stick around waiting for the axe to fall. As soon as another good opportunity comes along, they’re outta there.

(There was one incident where one of the young lady background singers was fired because she was apparently showing too much skin, but it turned out to be a giant misunderstanding and he tried getting her back. I don’t recall all the details. But that’s really the only incident of someone being fired that I know of. Not bad for a 30 or more year run.

If he had a dictatorship there, it was certainly a benign one. However, i will say that he vetted people very carefully beforehand asking the type of questions not typically asked for show biz hires. (This is info from some of the reminiscences that accompany current showings) That may be part of why there was not a high level of dissatisfaction in that organization. People knew ahead of time what they were signing up for.