Priest says Hell is an invention of the church to control people with fear

Mott the Hoople said:
Catholicism certainly needs to reform or it will become a dying religion of the third world.
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religion isn't a hand holding club where you change thousand year old doctrine to fit in with the hip crowd. To suggest otherwise is absolutely perverse, pathetic, and disgusting. You either believe you have the holy word of an all powerful being or you fucking don't.

As much as I despise religion, I actually respect those that truly believe in what they believe more than the kumbaya fence sitters. They are the absolute worst. They have the intellectual capacity to reject foolish religious dogma while continuing to be a religious enabler. They lend credibility to irrational thinking and the mass embracing of delusions in a modern world where religion has no place.

If one has the intellectual fortitude to denounce all the ridiculous notions of religion, one should work to continue to abolish it from this world, not prop up a bastardized, castrated shell of that religion. It's the equivalent of giving every 7 year old tee-ball player a trophy for participation.
 
C
Damocles said:
Actually if you study what I wrote here you would fully understand that Christ himself spoke of it as a destination.
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Actually, if you read The majority of Biblical scholars, the word was mistranslated, a I stated. Jesus spoke of Gehenna and Hades, but never of hell which is a concept formulated after Jesus.
 
Damocles said:
Actually if you study what I wrote here you would fully understand that Christ himself spoke of it as a destination.
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Hell was also not discussed in the Old Testament, either, except or a few vague references because the Jews did not believe in the afterlife. They peak of the grave Sheol, but not hell as an eternal punishment.
 
They had a very Greek concept. Christ's teaching of the Kingdom was a new concept to everyone. Part of the reason why the Jewish people have always emphasized success and achievement is because they viewed their reward as being here on Earth, rather than with God in eternity. There was some trepidation about Sheol. Eden was the only paradise in the OT, and as Milton once noted, it had been lost.
 
Damocles said:
I am asking questions of a Christian. If we use this as the standard, why have you ever spoken of Christianity? Seriously, that is a silly question. I speak of it because I am interested in what these people believe, why they pick and choose what they do. It is easy to understand the New Covenant and why it is no longer required you not wear clothing made from two different types of material, and why somebody would ignore the old purity strictures that are specifically spoken of as no longer required in Romans... It is less easy to me to understand why a Christian would ignore the words of their own Deity.

Basically, I am using the knowledge gained in a youth forced to study this particular religion in the original languages because I was bold enough to tell them I didn't believe... I've spoken about it several times on the site.

That I understand that the actual person of Christ is quoted using the actual word used to speak of the place, and speaking of it as a destination gives me pause and makes me wonder why one would profess to believe the religion at all if the words of their own Deity are a portion they choose to ignore. At that point, how can you think you believe?
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The Pope is supposed to be infallible and God's agent on Earth. Yet many Catholics choose to ignore his edict on contraception.
 
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Rana said:
C

Actually, if you read The majority of Biblical scholars, the word was mistranslated, a I stated. Jesus spoke of Gehenna and Hades, but never of hell which is a concept formulated after Jesus.
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????.....what do you think Jesus was referring to in this parable?.....
19 “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. 20 At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores 21 and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

22 “The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. 24 So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’

25 “But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. 26 And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’

27 “He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, 28 for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’

29 “Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’

30 “‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’

31 “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”
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Jesus generally used parables to help his audience understand things clearly.......do you think his audience was stumped by his references to a place of comfort separated from a place of torment?......
 
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PostmodernProphet said:
????.....what do you think Jesus was referring to in this parable?.....


Jesus generally used parables to help his audience understand things clearly.......do you think his audience was stumped by his references to a place of comfort separated from a place of torment?......
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Jesus chastised his apostles for not understanding his parables at times, so, the understanding of his parables was not clear to all. Also, PMP you will have to do better than this because even Luther believed this parable was not about hell, but Jesus is referencing the grave, just as the bosom of Abraham is not heaven, but is a reference to the care of Yaheweh for his people. The word aion is also mistranslated. There are many things in this parable that don't agree with Christian tenets,like Lazarus beingyorken up to heaven while Jesus was still on Earth.

You will have to find another parable to defend the fundamentalist idea that the Bible supports the concept of eternal suffering in hell.
 
Rana said:
Jesus chastised his apostles for not understanding his parables at times, so, the understanding of his parables was not clear to all. Also, PMP you will have to do better than this because even Luther believed this parable was not about hell, but Jesus is referencing the grave, just as the bosom of Abraham is not heaven, but is a reference to the care of Yaheweh for his people. The word aion is also mistranslated. There are many things in this parable that don't agree with Christian tenets,like Lazarus beingyorken up to heaven while Jesus was still on Earth.

You will have to find another parable to defend the fundamentalist idea that the Bible supports the concept of eternal suffering in hell.
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/grins.....so we should disregard the statements of suffering opposed to the comfort enjoyed by Lazarus, we should disregard the gist of the parable as saying, "if my brothers would know about this they would change their ways"......we should forget about the statement they wouldn't believe even if someone came back from the dead, just because someone argues about the translation of one word?......

is it your argument that the Jews in the day of Jesus didn't believe in an afterlife?......Doesn't it seem odd then that Jesus would have taught this parable, which certainly would have made no sense to a people who didn't believe in an afterlife?......
 
Aoxomoxoa said:
The Pope is supposed to be infallible and God's agent on Earth. Yet many Catholics choose to ignore his edict on contraception.
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catholicism has moprhed into much more of a cultural movement than a religious one. Kind of like how you can have atheist jews, you can have catholics that basically say "lol this stuff is all bullshit, I just go for traditions sake" Most catholics basically reject the entire dogma. At least in america.
 
PostmodernProphet said:
/grins.....so we should disregard the statements of suffering opposed to the comfort enjoyed by Lazarus, we should disregard the gist of the parable as saying, "if my brothers would know about this they would change their ways"......we should forget about the statement they wouldn't believe even if someone came back from the dead, just because someone argues about the translation of one word?......

is it your argument that the Jews in the day of Jesus didn't believe in an afterlife?......Doesn't it seem odd then that Jesus would have taught this parable, which certainly would have made no sense to a people who didn't believe in an afterlife?......
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It is probably why many Jews rejected his message, is one thought, the other is that the Jews did believe in Sheol which was the grave, but the concept if hell as an eternal punishment wasn't a belief to them and some scholars, more than ever, claim it is not what Jesus taught, either.

The concept of hell as an eternal punishment is also the reason why many reject certain sects of Christianity.
 
Rana said:
C

Actually, if you read The majority of Biblical scholars, the word was mistranslated, a I stated. Jesus spoke of Gehenna and Hades, but never of hell which is a concept formulated after Jesus.
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Absolutely incorrect. There were three words used in the New Testament to speak of Hell, two of which were metaphorical, one which spoke of a place. Christ used the one that spoke of a place and absolutely used it as a destination. See the part where he spoke about it being better to put out your eye than to have Hell as a destination (actually used the word meaning a destination with the noun destination...)

Seriously, just saying "If you read scholars" doesn't make it so I won't be able to provide you with facts. I've read those scholars. Again and again, many of them. I also read those books... again and again. You know the personal history, you've read it here before.

Fact: Christ, when speaking of Hell, used the word (of the three used in the New Testament that were translated to "Hell"...) that actually was the one that meant the hot place we think of as a destination when thinking of Hell...
 
christiefan915 said:
Many Catholics have problems with the concept of infallibility: "This doctrine was defined dogmatically in the First Vatican Council of 1869-1870."

It's pretty hard for me to take seriously a concept that didn't exist for the greatest part of church history.
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I think one reason for that is before then you didn't have to codify it, it was just understood as being the case as Copernicus and Galileo found out to their cost.
 
Aoxomoxoa said:
I think one reason for that is before then you didn't have to codify it, it was just understood as being the case as Copernicus and Galileo found out to their cost.
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I was brought up to believe in papal infallibility. Then I read Italian history in college and learned about the politics involved in the decision.

"In his book, “How the Pope Became Infallible: Pope Pius IX and Politics of Persuasion” (1981)”, Catholic historian Bernhard Hasler described the circumstances that faced the Catholic Church in Rome at the time of the First Vatican Council. It was in the year 1870 when the papacy lost the “Papal States” – the territories of central Italy over which the pope had sovereignty for more than a millennium from 756 to 1870. So the Council was faced with the burning question of how the papacy could still retain its power after the devastating loss of its papal states.


It was then when a group of conservative church leaders led by Pope Pius IX came up with the idea of an “infallible pope” which holds that when the pope formulates a doctrine, he is transmitting this dogma on God’s behalf so the pope’s teaching cannot possibly be in error. Therefore, even without the army of the Papal States, the pope’s word would still carry enormous power."
 
Rana said:
It is probably why many Jews rejected his message, is one thought, the other is that the Jews did believe in Sheol which was the grave, but the concept if hell as an eternal punishment wasn't a belief to them and some scholars, more than ever, claim it is not what Jesus taught, either.

.
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or, your understanding of Jewish theology at that time is simply inaccurate.....
 
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