Looking for religious information, especially Christian

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Atheists sometimes have to deal with Christians telling them that they will go to Hell for disbelief. Of course, sometimes Christians who belong to a different denomination are told that as well. Perhaps negative experiences on either side of the coin can lead to intolerance.

I have never held the threat of hell in front of anyone, so their verbal abuse towards me was projection at best.

I didn't meant to imply that you threatened them with Hell! I just meant that they could've had previous negative experiences with that which could explain their behavior. It happens a lot, especially in religious areas. I do not talk openly about being an atheist offline because of the stigma.

Last edited by TwilightPrincess on 25 Dec 2023, 9:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Am I an atheist? I'm shaken, it sounds like what you mean by atheist is someone who believes God doesn't exist. I just don't care about him until he invades my life, fattens my pigs or sends me to hell.
Debate is the only way I recognize to change a person's mind
Directly asking others to believe or not believe is disgusting

Atheist typically means disbelief in God, yeah.
Agnostic means unsure if God exists.
There are other terms, like a Deist believes that God exists but basically that after He created the world and then left us alone. (My sister is more or less a Deist.)

Then you have a Misotheist which is somebody who hates God and believes he is pretty evil.

And you have Omnists who believe all Gods are real.

I lean towards Omnism.

And yes there's many more terms.

In fact, religious beliefs are like the color of underwear, I don’t care at all, and it would be weird for others to care about mine.

Some Christians do believe other gods exist, but they believe YHWH is the true god. What exactly is the origin stories for the other gods, I have no idea. It's certainly possible.

I think generally evangelical efforts are in regards to believing in hell, or for those who don't believe in it, just their god's will. Some, including a small amount of atheists, believe that Christians who don't evangelize must hate people, because if you believe hell exists, why would you passively let someone go there?

I honestly don't know what I believe about hell. I believe that there is probably something reserved for nonbelievers to go to, but it's not eternal torment in the sense of flames and burning and s**t. (Some say that imagery is metaphorical.) Or, perhaps they just cease to exist instead of meeting God (annihilationism)

To be hoenst I cannot reconcile a belief in a fiery hell with the God I know.

There's also the Catholic belief in purgatory, but that isn't hell, it's better described as the waiting room to heaven. You go there to let go of sin and mortal attachments, and once you are free of those, you go to heaven.

I already have a rough understanding of Christianity: spreading it objectively makes humans more peaceful and inclined to cooperate. As for hell, it is just a way to push believers to spread.
To use an analogy: a company uses a whip to whips up salespeople for selling underwear with antibacterial properties. In fact, this is what I know now about most faiths, whether terrorism, theism, atheism, capitalism, anarchism, communism. These salesmen sometimes carry guns.

Most of them have their origins in places lile Mesopotamia and their names and stories change over time as they were passed around.

For example the goddess Inanna/Ishtar is regarded as the Goddess of Love & War and was linked to the "Evening Star" (which is really the planet Venus). The Greco-Roman Aphrodite/Venus shares many traits with her as the Goddess of Love and Beauty and in some cases she was considered war-like too (there have been statues of Aphrodite found dressed in warrior garb plus given her close relationship to Ares the God of War it makes sense).

Then there is her sister Ereshkigal who shares many traits with Persephone as both Goddesses became Queens of the Underworld after they were abducted and dragged down to the realm of the dead. A Japanese Underworld Goddess named Izanami also strangely shares that trait. Like Persephone, Izanami was bound to the Underworld after she ate the food of the dead.

The Jewish Demon known as Lilith who has become a popular symbol of feminism and equality among neopagans (for some weird reason) actually appears to be a combination of many different evil Goddesses/Demons who liked to seduce men and murder pregnant mothers and their children like Lamashtu (whose origins also lie in Medopotamia she was actually the sworn enemy of another demon known as Pazuzu who was invoked to protect children from her) as well as Lamia the serpent-like woman who devoured children and preyed on young men because the Goddess Hera curses her for having an affair with her husband Zeus.

Then you have the 7 Gods of Luck in Japan known as the Shichifukujin who are actually a combination of Indian Hindu deities and Chinese Taoist Gods. Only Ebisu the God of Fishermen is unique to the Japanese religion of Shinto but for example Hotei is based heavily off the Laughing Buddha with the bald head and big belly that appears popular in China while the only Goddess of these 7 deities known as Benzaiten is actually based on the Indian Goddess Saraswati.

Then you have "God" aka Yahweh himself, who was a combition of two different Canaanite deities. One linked to war and the other linked to the heavens. They were eventually combined into one supreme deity.

This kind of stuff is why I don't question if the Gods all exist but rather how they exist by changing throughout time. They never really seem to go away no matter how hard some humans try to get rid of them.

Your understanding of religion is so objective and rational but you are still theistic, just for fun?

Well the fun part is that I thoroughly enjoy researching this kind of stuff for myself. But I really do like to believe there may be some truth to these things. Maybe not in a religious way though.

I guess im kinda like director Tim Burton. He seems to strongly dislike religion and yet he always portrays the supernatural things in his movies as real almost like he wants those things to be real despite the fact that he may or may not actually believe in those things.

I love Gutsick Gibbon.

I think cognitive dissonance is required, but at the same time I believe when someone's livelihood depends on it, people can ignore overwhelming cognitive dissonance which is why I still describe it as con-artistry. On some level it's a choice to engage in double-think, especially if one keeps being exposed to evidence that supports the wrongthink.

philosophical

No, especially when those sorts of anecdotes almost always have other potential, but less supernatural explanations that might be proposed. I can't speak to your specific experiences, but third-man factor seems like one of the more common ones that's relevant to a lot of cases that I've heard people describe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_man_factor

Based on how flawed human memory is, combined with how even without external triggers humans seems quite prone to altered states of consciousness, I personally find it very difficult to start with the premise of taking claims involving the supernatural at face value.

That doesn't mean the person is being deceptive or dishonest, only that the human experience is through a lens that can distort what we experience compared to what's objectively demonstrable. You weren't there works so well as a coping mechanism because it's true. Further, one can argue that the experience occurred for that person even if the experience didn't objectively happen in an objective way.