Issue 142
News: The Problem of Hell.
One of the biggest problems that led me to leave Christianity is the big contradiction between the idea of the all-good and loving God and the idea that he sends people to eternal punishment in Hell. The biggest problem lies in the fact that the whole point behind hell is eternal and infinite punishment of people. However, people can only commit a finite amount of sin. Even the evils of the Holocaust and other significant genocides were finite, and were supposed to be finite, however large they were. James Joyce explained exactly the implications of infinite punishment in the sermon Father Arnall gives in Section 2 of Chapter 3 of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man where he states that if one counts the grains of a seashore and counts each as a million years, not even an instant of that eternity would have passed (the protagonist Stephen Dedalus ends up leaving the church later). And this gets even more disturbing when, as a Protestant, it was explained to me that ultimately it wasn't even a matter of Good and Evil that led to God deciding who went to where, but ultimately, whether one believed in Jesus the right way. The only way this could possibly be right would be if all those who believed lived Good lives, and if all those who lived good lives ended up believing by their deaths. Of course, taking two case studies shows exactly how wrong this is: Bertrand Russell, an agnostic/atheist who was campaigning for peace and against racism since before Martin Luther King was born, or at least, was a small child; and John List (a Missourah Synod Lutheran, like I was) who killed his family and originally claimed that he did so because he wanted them to send them to heaven. You should see the problem. One particular reply to this problem by a Catholic apologist interested me, as the argument itself, as, before it went into a spiel about how great it is to have a personal God who is willing to mete out infinite punishment for finite sin, the reply boiled down to simply (to quote Woody Harrelson in Natural Born Killers) "Who's innocent? Are You innocent?" OF course, the Catholic view of hell has evolved since the days of Fr. Arnall. At the Catholic High school I went to, it was stated that it was believed that Hell was just a place which was ultimately just grim and joyless, and I actually once decided to ask one teacher, "so, basically, it's just like life on Earth?" And, shockingly enough, he actually noted that C.S. Lewis states as such in one of his books. The implication seemed to be that life sucked so much that God couldn't think of any worse punishment than living through it over again. That ultimately life is a negative experience can be understood in a Buddhist context, as they don't have any all-powerful and all-good beings who should be able to stop it completely. However, in a religion which prides itself on having an all-powerful and all-good being in charge, the existence of evil and certainly Hell would be inexcusable. Then one thing led to another, particularly in the department of critical thinking, and I left the church.
Band Name of the Day: Nothing this week.
Film Idea of the Day: Hrafnkel's saga. If I can somehow adapt this to be redone in modern-day America, I think it could be very well done. There's a link to this saga below in several languages (English is, fortunately one of them). A Freya-worshipping warrior ends up losing everything, including his faith, but ends up as a better person, especially after rebuilding his power base and achieving revenge.
Film Review of the Day: 27 Dresses. Once again, I break from reviewing a film I watched recently which I liked to reviewing one which I hate. When watching the trailers before the DVD for Juno, I saw one for this movie, and I thought, by the awkward dialogue, that this could possibly be a cheesy movie that I could laugh at solely for being a crappy movie (like Teen Witch or Princess Diaries or Bratz). However, I recently decided to watch it, and I found I could not even really find it good in a cheesy sense. From dialogue like that would make even Ed Wood cringe, like "Love is patient, love is kind, love is slowly going out of your mind", or "I feel like I just found out my favorite love song was written about a sandwich," to unrealistic plot developments like the protagonist humiliating her sister and making up in less than five minutes' (screen) time, a Gone With the Wind themed wedding, and getting married with 27 bridesmaids, I could only find one line which could pass for funny in this "comedy" (it is quoted below). Please avoid this movie at all costs, especially if you're sober.
Quote of the Day: "She Likes Caulk."
______________James Marsden.
Link of the Day: I have recently gotten interested in Norse Sagas. I'm not quite sure how.
One of the biggest problems that led me to leave Christianity is the big contradiction between the idea of the all-good and loving God and the idea that he sends people to eternal punishment in Hell. The biggest problem lies in the fact that the whole point behind hell is eternal and infinite punishment of people. However, people can only commit a finite amount of sin. Even the evils of the Holocaust and other significant genocides were finite, and were supposed to be finite, however large they were. James Joyce explained exactly the implications of infinite punishment in the sermon Father Arnall gives in Section 2 of Chapter 3 of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man where he states that if one counts the grains of a seashore and counts each as a million years, not even an instant of that eternity would have passed (the protagonist Stephen Dedalus ends up leaving the church later). And this gets even more disturbing when, as a Protestant, it was explained to me that ultimately it wasn't even a matter of Good and Evil that led to God deciding who went to where, but ultimately, whether one believed in Jesus the right way. The only way this could possibly be right would be if all those who believed lived Good lives, and if all those who lived good lives ended up believing by their deaths. Of course, taking two case studies shows exactly how wrong this is: Bertrand Russell, an agnostic/atheist who was campaigning for peace and against racism since before Martin Luther King was born, or at least, was a small child; and John List (a Missourah Synod Lutheran, like I was) who killed his family and originally claimed that he did so because he wanted them to send them to heaven. You should see the problem. One particular reply to this problem by a Catholic apologist interested me, as the argument itself, as, before it went into a spiel about how great it is to have a personal God who is willing to mete out infinite punishment for finite sin, the reply boiled down to simply (to quote Woody Harrelson in Natural Born Killers) "Who's innocent? Are You innocent?" OF course, the Catholic view of hell has evolved since the days of Fr. Arnall. At the Catholic High school I went to, it was stated that it was believed that Hell was just a place which was ultimately just grim and joyless, and I actually once decided to ask one teacher, "so, basically, it's just like life on Earth?" And, shockingly enough, he actually noted that C.S. Lewis states as such in one of his books. The implication seemed to be that life sucked so much that God couldn't think of any worse punishment than living through it over again. That ultimately life is a negative experience can be understood in a Buddhist context, as they don't have any all-powerful and all-good beings who should be able to stop it completely. However, in a religion which prides itself on having an all-powerful and all-good being in charge, the existence of evil and certainly Hell would be inexcusable. Then one thing led to another, particularly in the department of critical thinking, and I left the church.
Band Name of the Day: Nothing this week.
Film Idea of the Day: Hrafnkel's saga. If I can somehow adapt this to be redone in modern-day America, I think it could be very well done. There's a link to this saga below in several languages (English is, fortunately one of them). A Freya-worshipping warrior ends up losing everything, including his faith, but ends up as a better person, especially after rebuilding his power base and achieving revenge.
Film Review of the Day: 27 Dresses. Once again, I break from reviewing a film I watched recently which I liked to reviewing one which I hate. When watching the trailers before the DVD for Juno, I saw one for this movie, and I thought, by the awkward dialogue, that this could possibly be a cheesy movie that I could laugh at solely for being a crappy movie (like Teen Witch or Princess Diaries or Bratz). However, I recently decided to watch it, and I found I could not even really find it good in a cheesy sense. From dialogue like that would make even Ed Wood cringe, like "Love is patient, love is kind, love is slowly going out of your mind", or "I feel like I just found out my favorite love song was written about a sandwich," to unrealistic plot developments like the protagonist humiliating her sister and making up in less than five minutes' (screen) time, a Gone With the Wind themed wedding, and getting married with 27 bridesmaids, I could only find one line which could pass for funny in this "comedy" (it is quoted below). Please avoid this movie at all costs, especially if you're sober.
Quote of the Day: "She Likes Caulk."
______________James Marsden.
Link of the Day: I have recently gotten interested in Norse Sagas. I'm not quite sure how.
Labels: Religious Right, The Damn Bible
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