I think comedy legend George Meyer is credited with this exchange, which concludes with a top 20 all-time punch line.

Marge:  So, what did you children learn about today?
Bart:  Hell.
Homer:  Bart!
Bart:  But that’s what we learned about. I sure as HELL can’t tell you we learned about HELL unless I say HELL, can’t I?
Homer:  Well, the lad has a point.
Bart:  Hell, yes!
Marge:  Bart!
Bart:  [singing] Hell, Hell, Hell, Hell, ...
Marge:  Bart, you’re no longer in Sunday School.  Don’t swear.

This post also reminds me of the History International program: Angels.. Good or Evil? Inspired by this well-chosen subject-matter, I am currently self-producing my own program, Purple Unicorns on the Dark Side of the Moon: Benign or Malignant?

I’ve been following the Bell controversy elsewhere, but their idea of a “debate” involves five journalists from two religions, none of whom apparently is a member of a Universalist or Evangelical church where this debate is actually happening?

I’ll just leave this here then…

(I wonder if Matthews would’ve allowed Carlin on that panel?  Probably not.)

Tangentally related, this chart shows just how unrepresented people who don’t have religion are in the House of Representatives:

http://awesome.good.is/transparency/web/1104/congress/flat.html

Only women are worse off, but at least there are a few women.

The old “hell is just the absence of God” argument. The evangelical God is seriously an abusive husband. The reason you have to put up with all his bullshit, according to him, is because you’d be even worse off without him.

I don’t think your average Christian really gets what “hell” truly means.  Largely because your average Christian doesn’t really get what the word “eternal” means.  It isn’t a large number like a million dollars, or even some nearly incomprehensible but still limited figure like the number of atoms in the universe.  It’s eternity, next to which all real numbers vanish into insignificance. 

And in every moment of that eternity the vast majority of humanity would suffer for whatever transgressions were committed (including the heinous sin of not believing in some specific theology) during our all too brief existence on a tiny speck of dirt circling a somewhat less tiny ball of flaming gas.

Hell is a monstrous concept that thankfully has no grounding in reality.

I don’t think your average Christian really gets what “hell” truly means.  Largely because your average Christian doesn’t really get what the word “eternal” means.  It isn’t a large number like a million dollars, or even some nearly incomprehensible but still limited figure like the number of atoms in the universe.  It’s eternity, next to which all real numbers vanish into insignificance.

And in every moment of that eternity the vast majority of humanity would suffer for whatever transgressions were committed (including the heinous sin of not believing in some specific theology) during our all too brief existence on a tiny speck of dirt circling a somewhat less tiny ball of flaming gas.

Hell is a monstrous concept that thankfully has no grounding in reality.

What Triplanetary said. And since we atheists don’t know anything about what it might be like to be in the presence of god (oh, sure we don’t), we’re not hurt because we don’t know what we’re missing.

Except no, I think the evangelical god is more like an abusive dad (albeit the distinction is small). The basic “I’m punishing you because you broke these rules I set up knowing that you wouldn’t keep to them” and “I’m killing tens of thousands of children to show how powerful I am after your boss agreed to all my demands” thing is pretty much the essence of power-drunk patriarch.

This post also reminds me of the History International program: Angels.. Good or Evil?

Dude, they’re Good, ok?

Says so right there in the Monster Manual.

CBrach, since it’s all made up anyway, if the debate’s going to happen, I see no reason to exclude anyone.  We are all free to make up our own bullshit; we shouldn’t have arbitrary gatekeeping.

When I saw the question on the Time magazine cover, I saw a magazine that wasn’t even considering whether any of its readers came from atheism or a religious tradition that doesn’t include “Hell.” And so it spoke only to a limited audience. Well, the newsweeklies’ audiences *are* old and dwindling, but perhaps it’s also a sign of how the media doesn’t represent its own society, just like that Congressional seating chart I was going to post—James at #4 beat me to it! Click on it and look how many religiously “unaffiliated” people suddenly become congresspeople in a Congress that truly reflects our society!

http://awesome.good.is/transparency/web/1104/congress/flat.html

CBrach, since it’s all made up anyway, if the debate’s going to happen, I see no reason to exclude anyone.  We are all free to make up our own bullshit; we shouldn’t have arbitrary gatekeeping.

Passed by a newsstand this afternoon. Seeing Time’s article about “What if Hell Is Fake” next to Newsweek’s cover story “What about the Menz?” made me wonder if popular political discourse in this country has always been so obviously ridiculous.

Sometimes I wonder if my notion that there was once a more serious time in American discourse is just one of those half-remembered nostalgia things, like how conservatives always remember want to reverse social policy to when they were seven years old.

If god did exist, he would be the most grotesque tyrant imaginable.

Conversely, it’s really remarkable how overrepresented Protestants, Catholics, Jews and even Mormons are in Congress. Only the 3 Buddhists and 3 “Other Christian” stay the same on both sides of the chart James and I linked to.

For some strange reason, the two Muslims (Ellison and Carson) are listed as “Other Faiths”. This goes up to 3 on the right side.

I think the real question is that, if the devil exists, and if he can travel outside of hell, and if in doing so he occasionally wagers with people for their immortal souls, and if after doing so he tends to feel hungry, and if he is doing this in the Northern California East Bay Area, where does he go for dinner tonight?

Passed by a newsstand this afternoon. Seeing Time’s article about “What if Hell Is Fake” next to Newsweek’s cover story “What about the Menz?” made me wonder if popular political discourse in this country has always been so obviously ridiculous.

Yes.

Hmm - question to the atheists out there:

Do you think the Buddhist Eightfold Path and Daoism have merit stripped of religious elements?

There’s no difference between a bunch of theologians sitting around debating scripture than a bunch of D&D nerds sitting around debating which version of the Player’s Handbook to use.

It’s worse than that even, as this video demonstrates: it’s a bunch of people sitting around discussing what the various fan-fiction writers of their favorite fantasy novels think about a given topic.

And I say this as a GIANT sci-fi/fantasy geek.

It’s all bullshit, like who would win in a fight: Darth Vader or Batman.

(the answer: Batman, of course).

Thank you Amanda for your succinct summary, because I am pretty sure that I cannot actually endure listening to them blather incessantly. Their supposed spirituality and biblical expertise is overwhelmed by their bottomless ignorance of what actually is contained in the text. (That being said, I’ll probably go watch it anyway when I feel like hurting myself for no good reason…)

For fuck’s sake.  If they’re going to waste the time arguing about whether or not there’s a Hell, why don’t they call in any actual, you know, theology scholars or clergy?  I don’t watch Chris Matthews’s show - is it supposed to be a journalistic circle-jerk?

Sure, it’s bullshit. But this kind of bullshit ends up shaping politics, so at the very least I want to understand why Evangelicals are fighting over a book published last month, to the point of firing people for heresy.

  I don’t watch Chris Matthews’s show - is it supposed to be a journalistic circle-jerk?

Absolutely.

(the answer: Batman, of course).

As a rule of thumb, always put your money on the side with telekinesis.

Do you think the Buddhist Eightfold Path and Daoism have merit stripped of religious elements?

Quick-like, ‘cause I need to get to the gym before it closes: sure. Same thing for Christianity and what I know of Judaism and Islam. Most religions seem to boil down to fairly basic, worthwhile tenets once the folk history and light show are stripped away. To wit, don’t be an asshole, lighten up, and don’t worry so much as it’s all out of your control anyway.

As a rule of thumb, always put your money on the side with telekinesis.

The power of prep-time is nothing before the power of the Force.

Batman vs Darth Vader is also a much more relevant question to the modern world than what happens if there’s no hell.

I recall Atrios saying at one point last decade that since religion was being brought in as a centerpiece of politics, the theology should be openly debated. This of course would cause the sectarian breakdown you’re seeing over these books dismissing the existence of hell in Christianity. Politically speaking, an examination of theology can shatter the unanimity of the religious right.

Fred Clark at Slacktivist has been following this story closely, with the sobriquets of “Team Love” and “Team Hell” representing the viewpoints. He demolishes the scriptural basis for most of the attendant myths about hell: http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2011/02/team-hell-gets-loud.html Since hell is a very important tool of compliance on the right, it’s dismissal from Christianity would leave them with much less authority to sow fear.

I think this has been noticed by the MSM and hence we get newspeople nattering instead of clergymen. It’s an attempt to defuse the time bomb that always blows up religious extremists’ power.

Batman vs Darth Vader is also a much more relevant question to the modern world than what happens if there

Comment #27: scrumby  on  04/19  at  09:51 PM

and don’t worry so much as it’s all out of your control anyway.
Comment #24: Matt T.  on 04/19 at 08:19 PM

And I think I’d have a bit of a problem with that last one, Matt.  It puts a lot of folks on the no responsibility, outer locus of control path.  Not saying that we should beat ourselves over the head with guilt for everything, but a happy medium is probably good.

Superheroes are modern myths and serve the same purposes. But unlike stories about Troy or The Garden, the superhero is a creation of our own time and culture.

you have no idea how right you are.

Like when Batman shot the god of tyranny with the idea of “gun.” a Platonic-gun, if you will. and in his death throws the evil god unmade batman, casting him back through reality into nonexistence, the mantle of the dynamic duo being taken up by his former protege and his only begotten son.

Then he got better from the power of preparedness and cast forth his gospel into the world: There will always be evil, and righteousness will always be there to fight it. And he will show the world the light.

it’s kind of like how Sikhs carry the Kirpan, to symbolize how they are always willing to arm themselves to defend the weak. Except instead of a ceremonial dagger, it’s a batarang.

This brings you up to speed if you haven’t read batman in the last 5 years or so.

phylosopher,
Well, that’s as maybe, but it’s still a facet of religion. The will of Allah. Part of God’s Divine Plan. The ineffability of the universe, thus the need to follow the path of Buddha. Hell, even Scientology, where the Thetans were grafted onto human souls millions of years ago. Note, I didn’t say anything about responsibility, but control. Religion gives plenty of responsibility. Hell, reincarnation to a lower level, bad E-meter readings, but nevertheless control’s out of mere mortals’ hands.

For an atheist, for me anyway, responsibility and control comes both from within (morals, ethics, etc.) and outside forces (social pressure, laws, etc.). Nihilism, best I can tell from what I’ve read of Schopenhauer, posits that although there’s no intrinsic “meaning” to existence, that doesn’t mean you can do just whatever you want to do. Of course, people are going to do what people do and use whatever justification helps then sleep at night, whether they’re “following God’s will” or what they think is Nietzsche’s “Will to Power”.

For what it’s worth, I take a bit of comfort in the thought there there’s, ultimately, no apparent guiding force or ultimate will behind the cosmos and, beyond what I make of it, life is more or less meaningless. It was a long, hard road, though.

karpad; that is the most awesome summation and cross-criticism between Batman and Sikhism I have ever read.

And if I had read more than one of them, I’m pretty sure that it’d still be the most awesome.  Because it is very, very awesome.

Leave unicorns out of this =(

Haha, the way the guy talks!  How could this ever… be… good… news.  I imagine he’s trying to get some sort of emotional draw out of punctuating like that.  I’m not sure what, but it sounds like he’s battle hiccoughs to me.

Um, weren’t there 9 circles of Hell in Dante’s Inferno? These people don’t even know the bullshit they’re citing.

Batman vs Darth Vader is also a much more relevant question to the modern world than what happens if there’s no hell.

As an example, Universalists who believe that Jesus will forgive and save everyone are substantially more likely to be accepting of gay marriage than the non-Universalists. Personally, I happen to suspect that most religious liberals engaged in any kind of interfaith activism are closet Universalists anyway.

Is there any scriptural discussion of hell outside of Revelations, which is a questionable addition to the canon to begin with?  My understanding is hell is a concept that was developed late in church history.  I could be wrong though.

And yes, there were nine circles.  That really annoyed me.

I really find it difficult to adequately express just how little interest I have in the moral and ethical opinions of people who are locked in psychologically abusive relationships with their imaginary friends.

speedbudget, the New Testament has Jesus mentioning Hell, as in the parable of Lazarus and Dives, and in several other passages in the NT.

One of the things I always liked about Buddha was this one quote, “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.” He was very much into thinking for yourself. So you can strip away as much of the religious froo-frah as you like and you are still left with a nice philisophical system.

Dunc’s comment @37 simply cannot be improved upon.

Except no, I think the evangelical god is more like an abusive dad (albeit the distinction is small). The basic “I’m punishing you because you broke these rules I set up knowing that you wouldn’t keep to them” and “I’m killing tens of thousands of children to show how powerful I am after your boss agreed to all my demands” thing is pretty much the essence of power-drunk patriarch.

This is actually more true than you think.  Historically, El/Yahweh was married to Asherah.  A large part of the Old Testament is about not worshiping other gods, but especially Asherah.  It’s like they went through a messy divorce and El/Yahweh is a jealous parent who is making the kids choose between Mom and Dad.  There are all kinds of rules in the Old Testament, but the biggest thing that El/Yahweh cares about is idolatry.  During the eras when those stories were invented, it was generally accepted that all those other gods existed, but that the Israelites were supposed to only worship Yahweh because they were his chosen people.  The entire book of judges is about the Israelites worshiping other gods, basically cheating on Yahweh, then Yahweh getting jealous and punishing them to bring them back into line.  The punishments for other sins aren’t emphasized nearly as much as worshiping other gods.  It really comes across as a strange mix of jealous husband and angry dad who is hurting the kids to get back at the mom.  There’s even a passage where Yahweh says that he regrets making the Israelites his chosen people and he knows they will always stray and cheat on him, but they’re stuck together now so they’ll keep straying and he’ll keep punishing them to keep them in line, even though he doesn’t really like them all that much.

wait wait wait wait, god was married? I haven’t read most of the bible (I only read revelations because I heard the imagery was awesome) but I grew catholic and they never mentioned he was married to some other god. Did that get retconned?

I am with alicefairy…how dare you question the existence of unicorns;?)

I don’t get TV signal up on this hill where I live now and so was kinda surprised that a broadcast would include the word “bullshit”....refreshing in its own right but even better for the species of toxic delusions at which it was aimed.  I was wondering if the quoted dialog was honest-to-disco-ball transcript or a send-up.  I should tune in more often.

agreed: Dunc put the whole debate in its place…who cares how many pinheads think they can dance with angels?

Who is Becky Quick?  did a scheduled panelist not show and they grabbed someone from the audience? Looking for instances or foreshadowings of the “hell” idea in the Pentateuch is mostly projecting your biases on widely interpretable hopelessly archaic text.  Judges are self-serving history written to shore up failing Hebrew monarchies of that era and Ketubim are the crazed desperation of a people who do not understand WTF is happening to them…kinda like your average modern american fundy.  Really, give Ezekiel’s merkaba passages to a psychiatrist and see what diagnosis you get!  Quick does not know shit from shinola and was not making the funny comments like Sullivan or Klien [niether of whom I tend to agree with much].

DOH! It was a send up.

Too bad. 

but I guess that means I am not missing a damned thing by not having a TV

wait wait wait wait, god was married? I haven’t read most of the bible (I only read revelations because I heard the imagery was awesome) but I grew catholic and they never mentioned he was married to some other god. Did that get retconned?

The Bible doesn’t mention anything about it.  But historically, El was one of many gods in the Canaanite pantheon.  The Biblical God is based on this character.  He was married to Asherah and even though he was the leader god, he was still just one of many.  Then for some reason, the earliest Israelites decided to worship only him and ignore the rest, and he got his own cult following.  If you read the Old Testament, it really makes more sense (which still isn’t much) if you realize that they accepted that plenty of other gods existed, just that they weren’t worthy of worship.  Modern Christians hear “Thou shall have no other gods before me” and wriggle around by pretending that “god” is supposed to be symbolic so you shouldn’t put things like money or sex above God.  But it was originally written to refer to all the other gods that they assumed actually existed.  You have to look at the text of the Bible in historical context.  It’s hard to determine anything from just the single text all by itself.

I’m almost certainly never going to read the whole bible let alone related historical texts but that’s highly amusing. Yahweh is like one of those mra guys who hates being responsible for his kids after his wife leaves him so he alternatively neglects and abuses them

thanks for that information

These days, I see myself as more or less religious (whatever I mean by that.)

I don’t mind G/god or Jesus so much.  (Their self-appointed earthly representatives are another story….)

What I DON’T believe in is television (or talking heads.)  I think they’re a myth, the real Opiate of the People.

I’m still on the fence about the blogosphere.

I heard a piece several years ago on NPR about the shitstorm stirred up by another established evangelical pastor decided that hell was inconsistent with the doctrine of a loving God.  Made sense to me.  If for the sake of argument, you believe in an all-knowing, all-loving God, the idea of putting his own creation into eternal (ETERNAL) torture (TORTURE) should be anathema. 

Well, the response to this from the evangelical/fundy community to this was an eye-opener to me, and I’ve never been a fan.  Calling this guy a “heretic.”  The necessity of hell in this world-view instantly confirmed for me the perverted truth that this entire structure is built on fear, and a basically hostile view of humanity.  Taking hell away from these people was like kicking the entire structure out from under them.

Two of my favorite observations about theologians:

1.  The person who invented the water heater has brought more good to more people than all of the theologians who ever lived.

2.  We have had professional theologians for something like 6000 years, and they have not settled one single issue in all of that time.  If after 6000 years, they can’t reach consensus on whether it’s OK to eat pork, what the hell good are they on really important issues?

I’ve been on various edges of the theological map, and I’m a fan of Rob Bell’s work, although I haven’t read his newest. That being said, this is one of my favorite religion posts I’ve seen on here, because it really frames the infantile bullshit that constitutes our public discussion of religion—and this from someone who, unlike the author and most of the commenters, isn’t convinced that theology is an inherently infantile pursuit.

In short: a) Theology and apologetics are not synonymous. The raw assertion of some kind of deity does not constitute theology. Demagogues and mass-murderers, perhaps, but theologians aren’t in the advertising wing. b) Asserting that things would be bad if people stopped believing A isn’t even an argument from fear. It’s not an argument at all. This is one of the things I love about Dennis Praeger: he seems entirely unaware that there might be a meaningful distinction between arguments for the existence of God as a factual entity and arguments for the social utility of everyone collectively acting as if[/if] God existed.

Wow, managed to truncate my own post, AND fuck up the tags. Sorry, folks.

I wonder if this entire thing could be explained by the whole is/ought fallacy that you’re supposed to deal with in the first ten minutes of studying philosophy.

To me, the genesis of the biblical stories is even more interesting when balanced against current theories based on fairly recent archaeology discoveries.

Basically, the earliest parts of the bible supported by actual evidence are kings David and Solomon.  Anything earlier than that, as the current theory goes, was invented by Canaanite slaves that escaped Egypt, passed through a city whose patron god was (I kid you not) named Yahu (guess what his wife

To me, the genesis of the biblical stories are even more interesting when balanced against current theories based on fairly recent archaeology discoveries.

Basically, the earliest parts of the bible supported by actual evidence are kings David and Solomon.  Anything earlier than that, as the current theory goes, was invented by Canaanite slaves that escaped Egypt, passed through a city whose patron god was (I kid you not) named Yahu (guess what his wife

passed through a city whose patron god was (I kid you not) named Yahu (guess what his wife

Comment #55: Dr. Shrinker  on  04/20  at  12:08 PM

Asherah, in various iterations, may also have been Yahweh’s mother or sister. Considering royal marriage habits of that place and time, she might have been both and his wife, too. Likely, since we are discussing a great length of time, the myth cycles morphed over generations and across tribes, in a very unlinear fashion.

I like this postulation by Dr. George Leonard. It seems to fit the attitudes of its period well: Is Yahweh a Boy?

For some basic background on the ancient texts believed to be revised into the Torah as we know it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis

Thanks Amanda for an entertaining read.  And thanks to schism at #3 for the link to the classic George Carlin routine/rant on religion.  I don’t have anything to add, just wanted to say on the board that I don’t always disagree with Amanda’s views.  I ordinarily only post when something someone says strikes me wrong.

On the current political front, do have a look at the Fred Clark link I left a #26.

Trying to say Asherah is God to American fundies just lets them label you as (their concept of) satanist, since her stuff is either excised or labelled as idolatrous. The text as it now stands is their foundation, their “fundamental” rock.

But the Love Wins challenge is truly a strike at this. If hell is unimportant—or indeed important only to those who do not assist the less fortunate—then much of their political wind will evaporate. If the Bible is unchallengeable, then social behaviour cannot be divorced from faith.

Short form: Prove they are acting against the Bible, and their hearts will shatter.

Counterintuitive for realists, I know. But let the liberal Christians wail on them: It has proved very effective in the past.

Yamara, I never said that Asheraha is God, and everything I said has nothing to do with fundies or how they will perceive me, or how to shatter their hearts.

I was discussing the interesting history of how a religion developed within the context of a different religion that it came from.  I don’t really know why you are giving this little lecture, unless you assume I’m trying to deconvert fundies or something.

What atheists hear when people “debate” theology

I am irresistably reminded of this Far Side cartoon (substitute “Jesus” or “Hell” for Ginger).

http://www.baddog.com/blog/uploaded_images/Ginger3.gif

Personally, as an atheist, when people “debate” theology all I generally hear is the sound you get from the adults in one of those Peanuts television specials.  The gobbledygook is too incoherent to be able to sift out bullshittery, delusion, or anything else from it.  If you want to understand a person’s religion you have to ignore his or her ostensible religious claims entirely and examine actual behavior.

If you want to understand a person’s religion you have to ignore his or her ostensible religious claims entirely and examine actual behavior.

So many right-wing Christoids think behavior doesn’t matter—unless you are a homosexual or need an abortion, or summat, of course. Faith is all that is required for eternal bliss.

My apologies, catgirl, I was unclear. I wasn’t trying to associate your statements with my example. I.e. I should have said “if someone were to claim Asherah was part of the godhead to these people”, etc.

Also, I split my posts with the intent that one would contain my elaboration on Asherah & Yahweh would address that conversation in the thread, and the other discuss the political ramifications that this debate will have in the real world.

Amanda is entirely right that this is what atheists hear when debates like this come up. But others are hearing a 7.0+ quake beginning on the fundie right. I just felt it expedient to point out the political significance for those who might overlook that, being used to tuning out anything with a mythological story attached.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/bibles-buried-secrets.html 

“The Shasu were a people who lived in the deserts of southern Canaan, now Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia, around the same time as the Israelites emerged.

Egyptian texts say one of the places where the Shasu lived is called “Y.H.W.,” probably pronounced Yahu, likely the name of their patron god. That name Yahu is strangely similar to Yahweh, the name of the Israelite god.

In the Bible, the place where the Shasu lived is referred to as Midian. It is here, before the Exodus, the Bible tells us, Moses first encounters Yahweh, in the form of a burning bush.”

and:

“Executed in clear eighth-century script, it’s a tomb inscription, and it gives the name of the deceased, and it says, “Blessed may X be by Yahweh”

I was taught that Jews were basically Catholics who didn’t believe Jesus was the messiah and didn’t eat ham.  This view evaporated when I met actual Jews, but by the time I knew enough to have been interested in in Jewish theology, I was already an atheist and couldn’t muster the motivation.  It is interesting, though.

Short form: Prove they are acting against the Bible, and their hearts will shatter.

Counterintuitive for realists, I know. But let the liberal Christians wail on them: It has proved very effective in the past.

Why would that be counterintuitive?  It’s just a matter of cranking up the cognitive dissonance until they break.

If you read the Old Testament, it really makes more sense (which still isn’t much) if you realize that they accepted that plenty of other gods existed, just that they weren’t worthy of worship.  Modern Christians hear “Thou shall have no other gods before me” and wriggle around by pretending that “god” is supposed to be symbolic so you shouldn’t put things like money or sex above God.  But it was originally written to refer to all the other gods that they assumed actually existed.

Among other references, there’s the “Let us create man in our image” (unless the deity was using the Royal We).

“And against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment.”
“Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods?”
“Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods. “
“Thou shalt not revile the gods. “
“Upon their gods also the Lord executed judgments.”
“Ye shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the people which are round about you;”
“Wilt not thou possess that which Chemosh thy god giveth thee to possess?”
“The Lord ... is to be feared above all gods. “
“Among the gods there is none like unto thee, O Lord. “
“The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, even they shall perish from the earth, and from under these heavens. “

The argument most monotheists will make is that these are references to false/imaginary deities, so that the sentence “And against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment” really means that Yahweh is going to prove that those other gods don’t exist (or somesuch).

If someone isn’t trying to claim Biblical inerrancy and literalism, it’s a perfectly fine interpretation to make. On the other hand, if someone is trying to claim that everything in the Bible is literally true with no interpretation allowed, those straightforward statements make a wonderful club to beat them around the theological head.

Michael, while I might be interested in looking at Haidt’s study, while watching the TED video, I couldn’t help but think of this scene from Donnie Darko: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q38N9QvsdzU

Emmett, cognitive dissonance allows them to dismiss arguments outside their belief-fortress, and how.

But the Bible “cannot” be argued against, and the examples found in scripture that deeds matter assaults their tribal foundation of punishment. 

(Fred Clark):

Who are the accursed “goats” on Jesus’ left hand who will be consigned to “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels”? Those who did not feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked or comfort the lonely. And why was the rich man in Luke’s gospel sent to Hades? Jesus never quite says, but he seems to suggest that the rich man went to Hades because he was rich just as the poor beggar Lazarus goes to Heaven just because he was a poor beggar.

Awkward, that.

Insurmountably awkward, I think, for those members of Team Hell who want to insist that these passages must be interpreted “literally” in support of a sadistic notion of eternity. Because if we read these passages in the “literal” manner that would allow us to regard them as teaching the existence of Dante’s Hell then we must also “literally” accept what they say about who that Hell is for. (And it clearly isn’t for Gandhi.)

Love Wins and efforts like it can indeed break through the cycle of denial and get fundies to question themselves in ways which have real world political implications.

Meh. Theological arguments are the very definition of pointless.

You may as well stick me and Stephenie Meyer in a room and let us argue whose version of vampire represents the One True Bloodsucker.  (Mine do, of course.)

Michael,

The Cunningham character is tangential to the scene, and pedophilia doesn’t enter into the clip. Not sure why that would distract you.

My comparison was with the binary concepts he claimed were evident in natal evo psych by way of interview questions. Just reminded me of the LOVE———- FEAR hokum from the movie.

But, as I said, willing to look at it more closely.

adobedragon: Lotta real blood spilled pointlessly over these arguments. This bears watching.

@49

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/304/heretics

One of my favorite This American Life episodes.

You don’t eat pigs
And we don’t eat pigs
Seems like it’s been that way forever
So if you don’t eat pigs
And we don’t eat pigs
Why not not eat pigs together?

Years ago the local PBS station had a “debate” with local religious leaders, including the lovely and talented Al Mohler, about who was, and was not, going to Hell.  No one even brought up the idea that Heaven and Hell might not exist, and no callers did either.  Even the Rabbi present didn’t do so, and I thought Jews didn’t believe in the afterlife or Hell (am I wrong there?).  It was amusing in a way, but also very distressing to see intelligent, educated, articulate people talking about mythological places without even pondering the possibility that they are non-existent.

I’m reminded of a conversation along these lines from my early days of college.  We were studying some text from 2000 years ago, and one of my classmates took issue with part of it, arguing against the point being made and repeating “I don’t believe that”.  This went on between him and the teacher until finally someone else broke in and pointed out, “But they DID.”  It didn’t matter if the point being made was right or not, because the validity of the statement had no bearing on understanding the text.

I think this is a trap many on both sides fall into.  I agree with Amanda’s final point, that life would be the same as it is, but not because Hell doesn’t exist.  It would be the same either way, because people currently act in accordance with their belief if Hell exists or not.  Those that do act out of fear for their (and possibly our) immortal souls—those that don’t base their morals on other things, but we all have reasons for behaving in the ways we do.  I don’t think a discussion like this is important because of the question itself, but for understanding the thought processes of other people.

I’m not sure about the value of beating self-styled bibilical literalists over the head with anything involving actual biblical passages or biblical history. They already pick and choose their passages randomly to support what they believe, especially when it comes to giving up some parts of the OT that are inconvenient while keeping others.

#78, Thanks, that’s it exactly.  Worth a listen.

[about angels] Dude, they’re Good, ok?

Says so right there in the Monster Manual.

Not since fourth edition, my friend. Not since fourth edition. Angels are the servants of the gods, and they have the same alignment as their patron god. Meaning an angel of Bahamut is Lawful Good but an angel of Bane is Evil. In fact, a bunch of them decided to murder their patron god and the leader of those angels, Asmodus, took his spot in the pantheon. Of course, rebel angels aren’t expected to keep the alignment of their master, so that’s an exception…

Not sure about all the theology, but Batman totally beats Vader. Why?
1. One well placed electrified batarang, and Vader can kiss the respirator functions on his torso lite-brite goodbye
2. You can’t fight what you can’t find, and Batman regularly manages to sneak up on psychics and beings with hyperacute senses
3. Both exist in universes where “good triumphs over evil” is basically a law of nature
4. If all else fails, he can always call Superman and Wonder Woman for backup

“ANDREW SULLIVAN: I don’t like the idea of an actual hell, so I’m going to dismiss it without evidence. However, I still enjoy thinking about baseless religious bullshit, so I’m just going to claim…”

Oh, how this sums him up!

I’m a lifelong atheist who was raised Catholic, and one thing I’ve noticed about Catholics, and pretty much all people who are religious, is that they often cherry pick which parts of their religions’ tenets they will try to adhere to, and ignore those they prefer not to follow.

The most irritating thing about Sullivan-the-Catholic in particular is his anti-abortion stance.

It’s okay for him to go against Catholic edicts against homosexuality, because he is gay. He wants the legal right to be married and is outspoken about his own lack of equal rights and autonomy, and yet…

As a gay male who will most likely NEVER be faced with involvement in an unwanted or a nonviable
pregnancy, he somehow deems Catholic dogma on this issue to be correct, and sees no problematic contradiction in supporting the church in thwarting women and their particular private medical needs and decisions. It’s a total disconnect between the fact that the pope should stay out of his love life and stop impeding his freedom to marry, and the equally relevant fact that the pope should also stay the fuck out of women’s reproductive business.

He’s also outspoken against rapist priests, the most hideous abuse of religious powers in recent (and long term) Catholic history. Anyone who can still support Catholicism knowing what we know, and what we relearn every few weeks or months, is both stubborn and hypocritical, and it renders his opinions completely irrelevant to me.

I find a lot of interesting articles linked on his webpage that I may not come across otherwise, but I have to bypass a lot of his own posts because of the hurl factor of his bullshit.

If god did exist, he would be the most grotesque tyrant imaginable.

Correction.  That assumes you buy into the fundamentalist Christian viewpoint of God.  The truth is more like:  If God exists we have no way of knowing what kind of being he/she/it is.  Your confusion is understandable though.  We just happen to be awash is Christian crazies in the USA.  There are undoubtedly kinder, gentler versions of God/religion out there, but I’m not wasting my time examining them either.

Religion is one of the easier things to debunk IMHO, although the rightwing supports the lie with as much tenacity as they did with Bush’s imaginary Iraqi WMD’S.

And Andrew Sullivan is only really attractive when he is reminding everyone that Sarah hasn’t produced Trig’s birth certificate.  That proves he isn’t totally worthless.

Enjoy.

This all sounds like Iain M Banks most recent sci fi novel, in which the various civilisations of the far-future are having a virtual war over the whether the collective galactic civilisations should allow the existence of hells or not (“hell” here meaning virtual constructs into which dead people have their personalities transferred after the death of their bodies). 

It’s not one of his best novels, IMHO, althoughin still breathtakingly imaginative, and a heck of a lot interesting and amusing than the debate described here.  Has the decency to label itself science fiction too.

That assumes you buy into the fundamentalist Christian viewpoint of God.  The truth is more like:  If God exists we have no way of knowing what kind of being he/she/it is.

Eh wot now? Come on, the fundamentalist Christian version of God is much closer to the Biblical version than the liberal, new-age versions are. The Bible is very clear about Yahweh and his character. He’s a being that exists and intervenes and cares deeply about certain things and much less about others. He provides signs, send prophesies, and smites enemies. It’s only in recent years that this ineffable, nebulous. non-acting sort of being has come to stand in for God, as evidence has become clearer and clearer that no entity like the one described in the Bible actually exists.

Gogo, Andrew Sullivan is the epitome of the privileged gay cis man who doesn’t really give a shit about anyone’s rights except his own. His fatuous religious beliefs are just part and parcel of the whole shebang.

On a side note, it was nice to see this thread unwind without the usual whining and puling from butthurt liberal theists.