Posted on 02/21/2014 8:46:17 PM PST by jxb7076
If you were given unquestionable proof that neither heaven nor hell existed – no rewards or punishment after death and no afterlife - how would you live your life? Would right or wrong really matter? Would morality be an issue or would amorality be the norm?
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Scientific viewpoint!? I like it. Thanks for the feedback.
Im sorry, you are a very intelligent person and I guess I expected more from you. You must either be tired on not really interested. :) nevertheless, thanks for the feedback.
I re-read your article. You clearly put some real effort into the piece and you did provide food for thought. If that was your intent, you did succeed.
Exhausted and out of sorts. Not your fault.
Admin mod, can you zot my posts 2, 4, 5 and 16 in this thread? I was overly harsh to jxb. Thanks! (Had a lousy couple days and am out of sorts. Posting while annoyed at certain people - not Freepers but business associates - is not good. Sigh.)
What if the fundamentalist viewpoint is true?
Whether or not God exists, we can observe the history of human behavior.
I would argue that the only thing suppressing the prevalence of evil acts is Christian morality. In other words if we didn’t have entire societies founded on Christian morals, the human condition—as determined by the way we treat one another—would be a lot worse than it is.
I think it’s extremely important to understand what is meant by the phrase “to live a full life,” or “to live life to the fullest.”
I would argue that this phrase is most often if not always used in ignorance of what it really means or what such a lifestyle entails relative to what it is assumed to entail.
The world is not amoral, it is totally immoral
One of the greatest failures in atheistic thinking is what appears to be an ignorance of the fact that worldly pleasures truly bring more misery than they bring “happiness.”
What is the suicide rate of multimillionaires? It’s not low. Interview a high-end real estate agent and ask him what he observes about the emotional and psychological state of his clients. He will tell you the lives of the super wealthy are at least, if not more, chaotic and miserable as those of the middle and lower classes.
What about pursuit of sexual pleasure? I would say the amount of disappointment, regret, emotional misery as well as physical suffering it brings is entirely contradictory to the assumptions within pop culture and from an areligious perspective.
And as for alcohol? Drugs?
A very strong case can be made that earthly pleasures—those equated with happiness—in truth bring great despair.
Let’s not forget: being labeled a Christian is not the same as abiding in Christ.
Here’s some cognitive dissonance for you.
Atheists very passionately desire to believe hell doesn’t exist. But I would assert that deep down they know such a belief is irrational.
An interesting—but more than anything, tragic—observation of atheist behavior is that they will speak of the afterlife in terms of heaven but rarely will they mention hell.
It makes a lot of sense to me that this is explainable by the fact that atheists don’t want to think about hell.
When they do speak of hell, it seems to me they almost always do so with a tone of sarcasm or ridicule—this is a psychological defense mechanism.
What if hell is real?
Yes, that was the intent - and nothing more. I do not claim to have any greater knowledge of biblical or spiritual matters than the next person. I just believe in challenging the status quo for a better understanding. In the proccess I found that Im right on some challenges but wrong on others. I just want the benefit of attempting to discover more about God begore my time in the flesh is up.
Thanks piytar for your request to admin however, I would encourage Admin to keep the posts as I truly appreciated the feedback - good, bad, indifferent! Its all good!
Without God I would live a very different life. The life I now live I live by faith in God. Living this life without Him would be impossible.
I'm very aware of the real world and of many of the paths others take. I have found that religion does not have as much of an affect on how people act as some would think. I've known some pretty vile and amoral/immoral Christians and some Atheists who acted more like you would expect a true Christian to act. I went through several phases before I became a Christian at age 50, and still had a working conscience.
Being a Christian who believes in the Bible and that Jesus is Lord and Savior, it pains me when really good people (bad people too, but especially good people) will not also accept Him as their Savior. While I know folks take other paths, the Bible is very clear that belief in Jesus is the ONLY path to eternal life in Heaven. Unlike other sources of doctrine/religiosity, it is the only divinely inspired and true Word of God. If, like me, you don't believe that religions have much to offer because they were designed by fallible mortals, then perhaps you might consider that the "alternate paths to Heaven" theories/doctrines were also devised by fallible humans just as much as any other church doctrine you might not agree with. I'm non-denominational because I have been through several religions and find that, as the Bible indicates, all the religions lay out their own "laws" that must be adhered to and trying to follow those laws is akin to falling from Grace by trying to be worthy via one's own "powers".
God Bless
If you attend church services and pay a tithe because you feel you will be blessed - you’re buying your way into heaven.
How about when I do the good deeds because I think the deeds, the ability to do them, the understanding to discern that they are good, and the desire to do good are themselves blessings? And I believe further that they will lead to further blessings. I do not barter this step that I may take the next step, do I? Is my lifting today a barter for more strength tomorrow?
Catherine of Siena, arguably the greatest lay Dominican, said something close to:
All the way to heaven is heaven, for Jesus said, I am the way.
That may help present the difficulty I have with the barter idea of virtues and good deeds. For one thing, they are not mine to begin with.
When, forty years ago, I hung with those tending in a "neo-Orthodox" and strict sola gratia view of things, the general opinion was that good works were blessings given rather than tokens of exchange. That way of thinking about it survived my becoming a Catholic.
And I think that approaches an answer to your question. It is hard for someone who's been a convinced Xtian monotheist for a long time to entertain the notion of good works without a good God. The question strikes me ALMOST as if you were asking, "Would you do good works if there were no goodness?" But I'd answer that if justice were the only good I saw or could think of, I would try to do justice.
(In this connection, it's probably good to point out that the Scholastic 'tag' for justice is "to render what is due to him to whom it is due." Therefore worship and those acts connected with it are just, because God is due praise at least as much as the sunset which seems to require of us that we invite others to come outdoors and say, with us, "Isn't it WONDERFUL?" Beauty, Justice, Goodness, when apparent, exact an eagerly paid tribute of praise.)
In any case, to say that
Christianity is a culture based on a single belief that doing good will be rewarded. This is what Jesus taught.MAY be true of a CULTURE influenced by Xtianity. But to attempt to make that, as expressed, a pillar of Xtiaity is like making the observation, "The sky is blue on fine days," a pillar of meteorology. It's not that it's false; but it seems superficial and it seems to have the whole question upside down and backwards.
There are two aspects that get my attention:(1) the goodness of the works themselves; (2) The place of good works in the "spiritual life."
The first is interesting because different approaches are related to different conceptions of reason. Monotheists who think that reason is essential to the nature of man and that it deal with truths and realities tend to think that God is Goodness itself, and what he commands is good. For support some might point to the existence of "God-fearing" gentiles and converts to Judaism in New Testament times. It is unlikely that they were drawn to Judaism by clothing, dietary laws, and rites of purification so much as by the chastity, justice, and integrity they saw in the Jews.
As for the "spiritual life," Aristotle says that virtue is a "habit." And just as the person who walks every day is healthier than the couch potato, so the person who is merciful, temperate, prudent, and brave every day will be happier and more "whole" than he who doesn't.
Many of us, though, who make even a half-hearted attempt at righteousness are amazed to find out how lousy we are at it! This realization prepares the ground, so to speak, for receiving the concept that good deeds are not things of our own that we can barter for heaven but are rather gifts and foretastes of heaven.
And this is why the notion expressed by Paul:
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
(Eph 2:10)
The deeds of justice are prepared for us, and we enjoy them by doing them. And these "walkings," this 'way' (Hebrew: "halakha") are, so to speak, morsels of the heaven toward which they lead.
GReat observation - thanks for sharing your thoughts on the subject.
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