Posted by baseball55 on October 15, 2014, at 19:41:13
In reply to Re: eternal damnation, posted by Angela2 on October 15, 2014, at 16:03:13
I believe when you're dead, you're dead. End of story. And it is sad. But life is sad. Death is sad. The human condition is sad.
I don't believe there is a thing called a soul that continues on in some sort of afterlife. I grew up being taught there was, but it never resonated for me and gave me no comfort. I never believed in heaven, hell, god at all, even when I was very young - 6, 7 years old.
The priest at the church we attended when I was small gave weekly sermons about hell and burning for eternity. It made no sense to me then and makes no sense to me now.
I read a few years ago, in either the NY Times or the New Yorker, about a fundamentalist preacher who decided that there could not be a hell. He came to believe that no loving god would create such an awful place and he began preaching this. He was hounded out of the church.
Instilling people with a fear of the horrors of hell is a great way to manipulate and control them.
Has anyone ever read the sermon from James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man? The most grisly fire and brimstone sermon. I used to hear things like it every Sunday morning as a child.
poster:baseball55
thread:1072273
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20141012/msgs/1072325.html