my atheist great aunt used to say: “I can understand why someone would want to believe in heaven if they could… but why on earth would anyone want to believe in hell?”
rebecca:
People believe in hell, as a place to send _other_ people to. But that desire is itself irrational, unjust, wrathful, and prideful, and therefore itself deserves any hell that it would send other people to.
The worst justification for Hell that I’ve heard — and it’s held seriously by certain sects — is that without Hell life would have no meaning. I.e., if it weren’t possible to loose really really bad, then winning (i.e., heaven) would be cheapened. As if existence had to be like some sort of video game….
If you were to design an optimal post-life experience for “souls”, whatever that is, hell should be a place of healing for souls which have developed flaws. Not a punishment. Once the flaws were repaired, the soul should be transferred to whatever heaven is.
Presumably there might be an irreparable soul, which could be discarded, or recycled, or whatever Ms Deity wants to do with it. However if Mr Deity was a good universe engineer, that should be a very rare occurrence. It would have designed a bug-free post-vitam, hence no irreparable souls.
The stories about gods in ancient books indicate wasteful deities that just aren’t good at it, whether he, she, they, them, or Yahu. 😀
Laripu: Why don’t you invent a religion meeting your criteria, and put it on the market? Lots of other people have done so, and made lots of money out of it. I am sure you could invent a far better one than Joseph Smith or L Ron Hubbard did. You could call it something like The One True Gospel Of Laripu. You could offer a special introductory post-life deal for a limited number of converts, say the first 144,000, on a first-come, first-saved basis. And of course offer full refund of all offerings if not 100% satisfied with all post-life arrangements.
I think it was J P Barnum that said there was a sucker born every minute or something similar, but he ran a three-ring circus rather than selling a religion. I don’t know if there’s that much difference between those.
Laripu: to paraphrase George Carlin: For an entity purporting go be omniscient and omnipotent, this is not very good work at all. The human condition is not something you would suppose to be the master work of a supreme being. It’s more like a rushed piece of crap churned out by an under-assistant west coast sales manager being on a Friday afternoon so he could leave a few minutes early and get to the pub while there were still some chairs available.
Son of Glenner, I could probably design a pretty good fake religion. I’ve joked about it often enough.
When I was 20, 46 years ago, I thought there should be a store called Wooden Gods that sold idols (of the kind Abraham reportedly destroyed). In the front there would be the less expensive wooden idols, accompanied by a pamphlet explaining the reasons for worship and the required rituals. The pamphlet would be attached to the god with a small black elastic going through a hole in the god’s elbow.
As you moved toward the rear of the shop, the gods would get larger and more ornate with handsomely bound and more intricate scripture. More expensive too.
Outdoors in the back there would be a separate section called Stone Idols. Those would be very large and ornate, with a beautifully printed and illustrated set of liturgical books, documents, scrolls, and saintly relics. They would be very expensive. Rich people could place them on their lawns, and they might even be indistinguishable from the houses they lived in.
Unfortunately I suffer from scruplosis, a psychological ailment that manifests as unwillingness to spread untruths for mere personal benefit. Prey for me. (Prey, not pray. Go hunting. Eat venison. Venison is very deer to the god.)
Son of Glenner, I forgot to mention: your description with the special introductory offer and the refund if you’re not happy with the afterlife… made me giggle a bit.
But I’m as happy as a mortal can be in the time of Trump and of the dissolution of the moral underpinnings of society. Getting called reverend or rabbi wouldn’t improve my life.
Christians are more ambivalent than they used to be about Hell. There’s a lot of double talk and widely varying stories. According to wikipedia
The Roman Catholic Church defines hell as “a state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed”.
A fair number of Christian churches believe your soul is sort of temporarily extinct until The Resurrection, at which point I suppose there might be some consequences.
The Buddhist deal is more like Laripu’s place of healing, because they reuse souls via reincarnation. Egyptians who were naughty come to an unpleasant end, involving a lake of fire (presumably this is where the Christian lake of fire comes from), but it isn’t eternal punishment.
As I’ve mentioned before, for me the soul thing is the core of religious belief. Existence of God is a silly question, because anyone intelligent enough to conceive a reasonably sophisticated theology can make God into something you’re fundamentally unable to comprehend. So you can’t really address the question.
Souls, however, every religion has, and it’s fairly easy to define if not comprehend. And of course, once you have this attribute that might survive after your physical body, it’s a perfect toy for religious games.
The only (almost) decent I know for Hell is to persuade small boys, Vikings and other violent barbarians to believe in it, and tell them that they need to behave a lot better to avoid this horrific punishment.
There are actually better ways of persuading boys to behave.
I am currently in hell.I have got an infection of the prostate and the pain on passing water was staight out of satans torture book. The Ciprofloxacin is starting 2 kick in 2 days into a 14 day course. I have had four days in bed and have been delerious with fever and I.am just able walk to.the bathroom. Never had hallucinations before without the aid of LSD….Peace brothers…
M27Holts: My condolences re your little problem “down there”. Hope it clears up soon.
A friend of mine has been having radiotherapy for prostate cancer. He mentioned that he had lost twelve pounds (weight). I commented I didn’t realise a prostate was that heavy.
SOG. Thanks. I got out of bed this morning and had a glorious shower. The strong antibiotics are kicking the shit out of the pathogen fooker. And I thank the cosmic joker that I was born into an age where chemical technology will save my life because I reckon that without the drugs I would almost cerrainly be dead. Peace brother…
Oh. And I am sending out positive vibes to your friend. One of my wifes friends husband has just been diagnosed with bladder cancer…so all of you out there, live every fooking minute as if it was your last…peace
Thanks all. I’m feeling considerably better and will be joining my family on a walk down the swinton greenway to Monton Village. Incidentally if you go om the Swinton Greenway website you will find a picture of me and my lady wife strolling through the woods….peace
I had a look for that picture of Mr & Mrs Holts. The only one I could find showed a distant view of a tall man in shorts and a shorter woman in trousers walking away from the camera, apparently handcuffed together, on a path through pleasant-looking woodland. A nice enough picture, but no faces.
So I still would not recognise M27 if I saw him. Maybe no bad thing?
Dark forces are at work. My prostate has exploded, the shower in the main bathroom has conked out and tbis morning I was pulling up the kitchen blind and the damn thing fell off breaking a glass that missed gashing my groin by cms….hmmmmm
In philosophy what sort of intentionality does a religious spunk nugget think in when they are in delusion knobhead mode? Is their imaginary friend first, 2nd,3rd or nth level? Does.anybody know, it’shurting my head thinking about it…
SOG. I was lying in bed and didn’t have the energy nor inclination to move. So I was exercising my grey matter….I remembered philosophy lectures where nth level intentionality was discussed it used to stretch my intelllect then too…
M27, the intentionality of a religious spunk nugget is of a variegated nature, that is, it has cockwomble, shitflute wankpuffin, knob socket, and spunk trumpet aspects. Variegated, of course, because of the many colorful ways it can be described. Especially those prostrated rug bumpers with their prayer calluses. Note well; there is yet another form of rug bumpers, and they are not the same thing as aforesaid rug bumpers. If I had a choice of which kind of rug bumper to be I would prostate myself before the almighty to be a better one.
postdoggerel: When I tried to follow your link, I was informed that it was not available outside the USA. A pity, if the cartoon was in The New Yorker, it would be a good one.
M27Holts: You could always try watching grass grow.
I hope your prostate trouble is improving. You are about halfway through your course of medication, don’t make the mistake of not completing it if you should feel much better before finishing it!
Aye. SOG. I know how antibiotics work. I will be seeing my doctor after the course has finished. The finger up my arse is an inevitability…however she has small hands…I am suffering from dry orgasm. Not unusual with prostate trouble ejaculate into bladder….
SoG, a married couple in heaven telling another angel that they are visiting his parents in hell this August. The link gives the full caption. It doesn’t show the wings on the angels backs as they stand on a cloud speaking to a bald-headed angel. You don’t get your hair back in paradise? I can imagine a dog in heaven (an absolute certainty) saying “Would it be asking too much to get my testicles back?”
M27, wiping of arses… In the western United States there are the indigenous peoples known as Miwok and Pomo. They developed immunity from poison oak. When the white settlers came they observed the habits of the indigenous and saw them wiping their behinds with the leaves of a certain three lobed leaf plant, i.e. poison oak. Thinking they could do the same resulted in a carnage the likes of which has yet to be seen.
Jesus & Mo (the characters) are absurd, blinkered, and oddly very sweet. J&M (the cartoon) is brilliant: sharp, delicious, irresistible. Salman Rushdie
Jesus and Mo cartoons are wonderfully funny and true. Richard Dawkins
Jesus and Mo make the world a better place, bless their little hearts. Ophelia Benson
In a world defined by outrage and offence and liberal spinelessness, Jesus and Mo is a treasure, whose value we should never fail to recognize. Read them. Laugh. And think. Kenan Malik
The brilliant, celebrated, freaking hilarious atheist comic strip ... Greta Christina
...rays of sanity in a befuddled world. Keri Hulme
The liveliest depictions of Muhammad currently available... Malise Ruthven
J & Mo is the funniest and most consistently thought-provoking cartoon strip on the Net. In a saner world, it would run in a major newspaper. Nelson Jones, Heresy Corner
Consistently amusing, frequently thought-provoking and often heart-warming. New Humanist
Jesus & Mo is one of the most wonderful things on the internet.. JT Eberhard
Wittily captures much of the absurdity of religious apologetics. Mano Singham
I love jesusandmo.net cartoons - witty and sharp! Katha Pollitt
Often hilarious, frequently wry, these cartoons do what all the best cartoons do: they tell the truth through humour. Terry Sanderson, NSS President
...a wonderfully acid British cartoonist... Nick Cohen
I love the scrappy mockery of Jesus and Mo. Freedom of speech
includes the freedom to mock any person, any thing, any activity, and
any belief -- and J&M stands up for this unflinchingly Richard Stallman
...empowering, important and deeply progressive, not to mention hilarious... Council of Ex-Muslims
June 26, 2024
Imagine!
Hell will.be safe now. Satan has had to turn off his ovens due to the cost of wholesale gas….every cloud…
Those things aside, the barmaid might still be in a cult: maybe she is a member of the Conservative party.
Maybe she’s a member of the Wheel-Tappers ans Shunters Club?
my atheist great aunt used to say: “I can understand why someone would want to believe in heaven if they could… but why on earth would anyone want to believe in hell?”
rebecca:
People believe in hell, as a place to send _other_ people to. But that desire is itself irrational, unjust, wrathful, and prideful, and therefore itself deserves any hell that it would send other people to.
The worst justification for Hell that I’ve heard — and it’s held seriously by certain sects — is that without Hell life would have no meaning. I.e., if it weren’t possible to loose really really bad, then winning (i.e., heaven) would be cheapened. As if existence had to be like some sort of video game….
You have to remember that the religious tend to struggle tying their shoe laces or even wiping their arses…
jb: Is this the same crowd that believes that whoever has the most toys in the end is the winner?
Toys? Is my chain-saw a toy? I thought it was a tool?
It’s the rationality cult.
I’m in…
cjsm has just Vulcanized M27Holts. it doesn’t take much time to join. Really, the whole process is rubber-stamped.
If you were to design an optimal post-life experience for “souls”, whatever that is, hell should be a place of healing for souls which have developed flaws. Not a punishment. Once the flaws were repaired, the soul should be transferred to whatever heaven is.
Presumably there might be an irreparable soul, which could be discarded, or recycled, or whatever Ms Deity wants to do with it. However if Mr Deity was a good universe engineer, that should be a very rare occurrence. It would have designed a bug-free post-vitam, hence no irreparable souls.
The stories about gods in ancient books indicate wasteful deities that just aren’t good at it, whether he, she, they, them, or Yahu. 😀
Laripu: Why don’t you invent a religion meeting your criteria, and put it on the market? Lots of other people have done so, and made lots of money out of it. I am sure you could invent a far better one than Joseph Smith or L Ron Hubbard did. You could call it something like The One True Gospel Of Laripu. You could offer a special introductory post-life deal for a limited number of converts, say the first 144,000, on a first-come, first-saved basis. And of course offer full refund of all offerings if not 100% satisfied with all post-life arrangements.
I think it was J P Barnum that said there was a sucker born every minute or something similar, but he ran a three-ring circus rather than selling a religion. I don’t know if there’s that much difference between those.
Laripu: to paraphrase George Carlin: For an entity purporting go be omniscient and omnipotent, this is not very good work at all. The human condition is not something you would suppose to be the master work of a supreme being. It’s more like a rushed piece of crap churned out by an under-assistant west coast sales manager being on a Friday afternoon so he could leave a few minutes early and get to the pub while there were still some chairs available.
Son of Glenner, I could probably design a pretty good fake religion. I’ve joked about it often enough.
When I was 20, 46 years ago, I thought there should be a store called Wooden Gods that sold idols (of the kind Abraham reportedly destroyed). In the front there would be the less expensive wooden idols, accompanied by a pamphlet explaining the reasons for worship and the required rituals. The pamphlet would be attached to the god with a small black elastic going through a hole in the god’s elbow.
As you moved toward the rear of the shop, the gods would get larger and more ornate with handsomely bound and more intricate scripture. More expensive too.
Outdoors in the back there would be a separate section called Stone Idols. Those would be very large and ornate, with a beautifully printed and illustrated set of liturgical books, documents, scrolls, and saintly relics. They would be very expensive. Rich people could place them on their lawns, and they might even be indistinguishable from the houses they lived in.
Unfortunately I suffer from scruplosis, a psychological ailment that manifests as unwillingness to spread untruths for mere personal benefit. Prey for me. (Prey, not pray. Go hunting. Eat venison. Venison is very deer to the god.)
😀
Son of Glenner, I forgot to mention: your description with the special introductory offer and the refund if you’re not happy with the afterlife… made me giggle a bit.
But I’m as happy as a mortal can be in the time of Trump and of the dissolution of the moral underpinnings of society. Getting called reverend or rabbi wouldn’t improve my life.
Christians are more ambivalent than they used to be about Hell. There’s a lot of double talk and widely varying stories. According to wikipedia
A fair number of Christian churches believe your soul is sort of temporarily extinct until The Resurrection, at which point I suppose there might be some consequences.
The Buddhist deal is more like Laripu’s place of healing, because they reuse souls via reincarnation. Egyptians who were naughty come to an unpleasant end, involving a lake of fire (presumably this is where the Christian lake of fire comes from), but it isn’t eternal punishment.
As I’ve mentioned before, for me the soul thing is the core of religious belief. Existence of God is a silly question, because anyone intelligent enough to conceive a reasonably sophisticated theology can make God into something you’re fundamentally unable to comprehend. So you can’t really address the question.
Souls, however, every religion has, and it’s fairly easy to define if not comprehend. And of course, once you have this attribute that might survive after your physical body, it’s a perfect toy for religious games.
Don’t Rabbi’s spend a lot of time looking at the knicker gussets of young ladies? Sounds well dodgy to me!
I remember reading quite a while ago that Rabbis got £100 a week plus tips.
On the subject of church and scruples, here’s an investigative report on the Morons and ‘charities’ https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/mormon-church-jesus-christ-latter-day-saints-funds-charity-1.6630190
The only (almost) decent I know for Hell is to persuade small boys, Vikings and other violent barbarians to believe in it, and tell them that they need to behave a lot better to avoid this horrific punishment.
There are actually better ways of persuading boys to behave.
I am currently in hell.I have got an infection of the prostate and the pain on passing water was staight out of satans torture book. The Ciprofloxacin is starting 2 kick in 2 days into a 14 day course. I have had four days in bed and have been delerious with fever and I.am just able walk to.the bathroom. Never had hallucinations before without the aid of LSD….Peace brothers…
We have 145000 morons in England…
M27Holts: My condolences re your little problem “down there”. Hope it clears up soon.
A friend of mine has been having radiotherapy for prostate cancer. He mentioned that he had lost twelve pounds (weight). I commented I didn’t realise a prostate was that heavy.
SOG. Thanks. I got out of bed this morning and had a glorious shower. The strong antibiotics are kicking the shit out of the pathogen fooker. And I thank the cosmic joker that I was born into an age where chemical technology will save my life because I reckon that without the drugs I would almost cerrainly be dead. Peace brother…
Oh. And I am sending out positive vibes to your friend. One of my wifes friends husband has just been diagnosed with bladder cancer…so all of you out there, live every fooking minute as if it was your last…peace
M27, it’s good to read that you’re getting well.
Yes, M27, do keep getting well, and then well-er and well-er 🙂
Thanks all. I’m feeling considerably better and will be joining my family on a walk down the swinton greenway to Monton Village. Incidentally if you go om the Swinton Greenway website you will find a picture of me and my lady wife strolling through the woods….peace
I had a look for that picture of Mr & Mrs Holts. The only one I could find showed a distant view of a tall man in shorts and a shorter woman in trousers walking away from the camera, apparently handcuffed together, on a path through pleasant-looking woodland. A nice enough picture, but no faces.
So I still would not recognise M27 if I saw him. Maybe no bad thing?
Aye thats me that is…
Dark forces are at work. My prostate has exploded, the shower in the main bathroom has conked out and tbis morning I was pulling up the kitchen blind and the damn thing fell off breaking a glass that missed gashing my groin by cms….hmmmmm
In philosophy what sort of intentionality does a religious spunk nugget think in when they are in delusion knobhead mode? Is their imaginary friend first, 2nd,3rd or nth level? Does.anybody know, it’shurting my head thinking about it…
“…it’s hurting my head thinking about it…”
So don’t think about it!
And just get on with your life.
SOG. I was lying in bed and didn’t have the energy nor inclination to move. So I was exercising my grey matter….I remembered philosophy lectures where nth level intentionality was discussed it used to stretch my intelllect then too…
Alzeimer deflection exercises….
Never forget to do your daily Alzheimer deflection exercises.
Did I say that yesterday?
M27, the intentionality of a religious spunk nugget is of a variegated nature, that is, it has cockwomble, shitflute wankpuffin, knob socket, and spunk trumpet aspects. Variegated, of course, because of the many colorful ways it can be described. Especially those prostrated rug bumpers with their prayer calluses. Note well; there is yet another form of rug bumpers, and they are not the same thing as aforesaid rug bumpers. If I had a choice of which kind of rug bumper to be I would prostate myself before the almighty to be a better one.
Just wondering… if you go to heaven and don’t like the people there, can you choose to go to hell instead?
LD50, https://www.art.com/products/p42640190825-sa-i10118240/we-re-spending-august-with-his-parents-in-hell-new-yorker-cartoon.htm
postdoggerel: When I tried to follow your link, I was informed that it was not available outside the USA. A pity, if the cartoon was in The New Yorker, it would be a good one.
Aye. I got that message too. Oh well. Any interesting subject to stretch the old intellect today.?
M27Holts: You could always try watching grass grow.
I hope your prostate trouble is improving. You are about halfway through your course of medication, don’t make the mistake of not completing it if you should feel much better before finishing it!
Aye. SOG. I know how antibiotics work. I will be seeing my doctor after the course has finished. The finger up my arse is an inevitability…however she has small hands…I am suffering from dry orgasm. Not unusual with prostate trouble ejaculate into bladder….
SoG, a married couple in heaven telling another angel that they are visiting his parents in hell this August. The link gives the full caption. It doesn’t show the wings on the angels backs as they stand on a cloud speaking to a bald-headed angel. You don’t get your hair back in paradise? I can imagine a dog in heaven (an absolute certainty) saying “Would it be asking too much to get my testicles back?”
M27, wiping of arses… In the western United States there are the indigenous peoples known as Miwok and Pomo. They developed immunity from poison oak. When the white settlers came they observed the habits of the indigenous and saw them wiping their behinds with the leaves of a certain three lobed leaf plant, i.e. poison oak. Thinking they could do the same resulted in a carnage the likes of which has yet to be seen.