Re: Hell II (Was: Rational thought etc.)

Andrew Lamb wrote:
> 
> On 5/05/2008 3:15:33 PM, misanthropic_curmudgeon wrote:
> > On May 3, 12:22 pm, Sean McHugh <se...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > [snip]
> >> ~ In 1999, Pope John Paul II made headlines by saying hell should be
> >> ~ seen not as a fiery underworld but as "the state of those who
> >> ~ freely and definitively separate themselves from God,
> >
> > That is hell? A life without any reference to gods, pixies, and
> > externally imposed absolutes, threats, or manipulation?  If you'll
> > excuse the pun, it sounds like heaven to me!!
> >
> 
> A life without any reference to gods? The world already has that, in
North
> Korea, where the even word "god" was banned decades ago - see
> http://creationontheweb.com/content/view/5393#saltmines
I encourage you
to
> emigrate to there Curmudgeon, then you would really get a taste of hell,
> oops, 'heaven' on earth.
> 
> In fact atheist regimes have a consistent record of producing hell on
earth -
> Stalin in the USSR and Mao in China, who murdered citizens by the tens
of
> millions. Pol Pot in Cambodia, and Robespierre in France, wannabees who
tried
> hard but just had far fewer citizens available to kill. See the
two-minute
> FoolsHeart clip http://www.foolsheart.com
for a brief overview of the
> hell-on-earth produced by atheists when they get into power.
> 


That's designed for the wilfully incompetent Christians who will
enthusiastically lap it up. Those listed leaders probably didn't
believe in pyramid power either but that too is not the reason they
murdered. Their wars were for political gain and were unlikely to have
been impelled by their unbelief in Zeus, Thor or the Rainbow Serpent.
Conversely one can point to many examples where religion has had a
_direct_ motivation (or justification) for atrocities. If one is to
believe the Old Testament, it abounds with atrocities over religious
disagreement, that were supposedly carried out with God's sanction. We
can then look at the Crusades, the Inquisitions, the Conquistadors and
the witch hunts. We can also look a long period in history call the
Dark Ages. It was a time of religious struggle and control and a time
when things went backwards. In more modern times, Hitler's Nazis had
on the belt buckles, "Gott mit uns". It means, "God is with us". They
too had religious justification for atrocities. Would anyone go into
battle wearing, "Unbelief is with us"? Today we can look at the
Islamic states (something your examples omit) where the religion is
also the Law. 'Sharia', 'Jihad' and 'infidel' are products of
religion. We don't want that sort of stupidity and that is why western
states have secular governments (already) in power. Secular is
essentially a-theistic. 


Best Regards,



Sean McHugh









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