Do You Believe in an Eternal Hell

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Well this was one of the biggest deceiving parts about this particular religion. The fact that Catholic priests, bishops and cardinals had to stay faithful to their church , with a promise of celibacy , made it extraordinarily difficult for them to be human , which unfortunately caused all kinds of problems.

These people had a lot of power and influence over others and took advantage of that. In fact , that is the very place pedophiles and homosexuals would flee to. The church protected them and kept them safe.


When I was really young, my family were really close friends to a family whose father volunteered at a church as a Sunday school teacher. It just happened to be that he had a thing for younger children. Coincidence? I think not. He knew he was not only trusted in his position , but safe.

So yes, priests, cardinals and bishops were regular people who , not only had the ability to become corrupt, but also had the power, the trust and the protection of the church.

Trying to create humans who have no sexual urges and giving them power over others , created all kinds of corruption. I completely agree with you there.
I know that you are not saying all Catholics are the "P" word but I can contribute some support to your story with three personal stories of my own:

* When I was in my early 20's I met an ex-priest at the barbershop in Albuquerque. He told me he had left the Church of his own free will because the Catholic Church was not interested in helping the poor. I thought it was interesting and so I agreed to his invitation to his apartment for coffee later that day. When I arrived he was decked out in his full priestly garb and his language was the foulest I'd ever heard in my life. I wasn't sure what to do or say but when he tried to put his hands on me I stood up and left.

* During the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia, we had thousands of refugees arriving here in Sweden. At the time, I was employed in a support capacity of the office of immigration. My boss was an ex-Catholic priest from Chicago. He had been defrocked of his priesthood but I don't think he ever told me why. I figured it out eventually. He was hot to trot for teenage boys and young men (not children anyway) and he used his position to grant special treatment for sexual "favours".

* Some years after that I met an Englishman who was here for a couple of years until he absconded with his employer's payroll and left the country. He was raised in the Anglican Church but had converted to Catholocism for some really flimsy reason that lacked any logic. When I met him he invited me up to his flat one day and when I arrived he had ooops! "accidentally" left a pornographic magazine depicting nude boys on the table. An obvious hint that was meant to entice me.


No, I'm not saying that all Catholic priests or Catholic converts are pedo-bent but it is noteworthy that so many do gravitate in that direction.
 

Maybe he could change molecular structure or maybe these stories are fabricated. I have no idea. Yes. I agree, I ask some tough questions but hey..... lighting more candles couldn’t hurt any. Lol.

I’m going to get myself in trouble with my silliness. 🤭
We'll go down together, I'm sure! Eternal hell?
 
Yes, seriously, Jesus was human. Anyone can walk on water, I walk on water every time it rains. Are you in a wheelchair? If so you can roll on water. But, yup, go ahead donate more, light more candles, see if it will help.
Not everyone agrees that Jesus was human. I think he was, personally, but others get befuddled by his mother's virginity. According to the scriptures, his conception was more akin to a "force majeure".
 

I know that you are not saying all Catholics are the "P" word but I can contribute some support to your story with three personal stories of my own:

* When I was in my early 20's I met an ex-priest at the barbershop in Albuquerque. He told me he had left the Church of his own free will because the Catholic Church was not interested in helping the poor. I thought it was interesting and so I agreed to his invitation to his apartment for coffee later that day. When I arrived he was decked out in his full priestly garb and his language was the foulest I'd ever heard in my life. I wasn't sure what to do or say but when he tried to put his hands on me I stood up and left.

* During the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia, we had thousands of refugees arriving here in Sweden. At the time, I was employed in a support capacity of the office of immigration. My boss was an ex-Catholic priest from Chicago. He had been defrocked of his priesthood but I don't think he ever told me why. I figured it out eventually. He was hot to trot for teenage boys and young men (not children anyway) and he used his position to grant special treatment for sexual "favours".

* Some years after that I met an Englishman who was here for a couple of years until he absconded with his employer's payroll and left the country. He was raised in the Anglican Church but had converted to Catholocism for some really flimsy reason that lacked any logic. When I met him he invited me up to his flat one day and when I arrived he had ooops! "accidentally" left a pornographic magazine depicting nude boys on the table. An obvious hint that was meant to entice me.


No, I'm not saying that all Catholic priests or Catholic converts are pedo-bent but it is noteworthy that so many do gravitate in that direction.
I would bet that if this post and others in this thread were about the Jewish Faith it would be labeled anti-Semitic.
If theses same posts were about the Muslim faith it would be anti Muslim or racist.
If these same posts were about the AME Baptist Church they would be racist.

But since Catholics are to blame for everything that is wrong in the world these days it's not only allowed and fair game, but encouraged on this forum.

Play Ball!
 
I would bet that if this post and others in this thread were about the Jewish Faith it would be labeled anti-Semitic.
If theses same posts were about the Muslim faith it would be anti Muslim or racist.
If these same posts were about the AME Baptist Church they would be racist.

But since Catholics are to blame for everything that is wrong in the world these days it's not only allowed and fair game, but encouraged on this forum.

Play Ball!

You're probably right about the first part but it would be really helpful if you can quote chapter and verse on the "Catholics are to blame for everything that is wrong in the world" because I never said it. I actually included an introduction and a "final word" dedicated to the contrary.
 
..... Who are the "scientists" who have come up with this "theory?" I have a feeling they are a bunch of high school kids, or college freshmen, who have read the Cliff Notes version of Jules Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth." ...
Don't scoff! Just remember that they knew that Paul McCartney was dead long before anyone else did.
 
You're probably right about the first part but it would be really helpful if you can quote chapter and verse on the "Catholics are to blame for everything that is wrong in the world" because I never said it. I actually included an introduction and a "final word" dedicated to the contrary.
I never said that you said that. Don't you recognize sarcasm when you read it?
 
I know that you are not saying all Catholics are the "P" word but I can contribute some support to your story with three personal stories of my own:

* When I was in my early 20's I met an ex-priest at the barbershop in Albuquerque. He told me he had left the Church of his own free will because the Catholic Church was not interested in helping the poor. I thought it was interesting and so I agreed to his invitation to his apartment for coffee later that day. When I arrived he was decked out in his full priestly garb and his language was the foulest I'd ever heard in my life. I wasn't sure what to do or say but when he tried to put his hands on me I stood up and left.

* During the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia, we had thousands of refugees arriving here in Sweden. At the time, I was employed in a support capacity of the office of immigration. My boss was an ex-Catholic priest from Chicago. He had been defrocked of his priesthood but I don't think he ever told me why. I figured it out eventually. He was hot to trot for teenage boys and young men (not children anyway) and he used his position to grant special treatment for sexual "favours".

* Some years after that I met an Englishman who was here for a couple of years until he absconded with his employer's payroll and left the country. He was raised in the Anglican Church but had converted to Catholocism for some really flimsy reason that lacked any logic. When I met him he invited me up to his flat one day and when I arrived he had ooops! "accidentally" left a pornographic magazine depicting nude boys on the table. An obvious hint that was meant to entice me.


No, I'm not saying that all Catholic priests or Catholic converts are pedo-bent but it is noteworthy that so many do gravitate in that direction.
As do teachers, scout leaders, summer camp workers, preachers, and on and on and on. Molesters get jobs were the children are. Has nothing to do with religion, and molesters are protected by those they work for because of possible law suits.
 
Not everyone agrees that Jesus was human. I think he was, personally, but others get befuddled by his mother's virginity. According to the scriptures, his conception was more akin to a "force majeure".
His mother was human, it says in the Bible he was human, he died like a human, -a rose by any other name. Oh, forgot to add, so edited, there are virgin births all over the world all the time. Not to be crass, but all you need is semen in a cup, a syringe (no needle 😊), and stick the syringe where it goes.

Virgin still? Yup. Baby possible? Yup. No befuddlement, none at all. There are also other ways where the syringe is not needed, just think about it.
 
I would bet that if this post and others in this thread were about the Jewish Faith it would be labeled anti-Semitic.
If theses same posts were about the Muslim faith it would be anti Muslim or racist.
If these same posts were about the AME Baptist Church they would be racist.

But since Catholics are to blame for everything that is wrong in the world these days it's not only allowed and fair game, but encouraged on this forum.

Play Ball!
I disagree. I am sure the AME Baptist Church is color blind, the Baptist’s will take anyone. 😂
 
Oh no. There couldn’t have been dinosaurs down in that volcanic crater because according to christians dinosaurs don’t exist, even though there’s clear evidence like dinosaur bones and dinosaurs prints in the earth.

Oddly enough some of them believe in dragons since the dragon is named in the Bible. Now I completely understand that believing in God is a matter of using blind faith but this goes beyond that. It’s like having blinders on with certain parts of history . I wonder what happens when children go home to do projects about dinosaurs.

Important note: I’m not anti religion. Some of the most beautiful people I’ve known and currently know are very religious. There are just parts that don’t add up, like evolution for one.
 
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As do teachers, scout leaders, summer camp workers, preachers, and on and on and on. Molesters get jobs were the children are. Has nothing to do with religion, and molesters are protected by those they work for because of possible law suits.
I haven't met any teachers, scout leaders, summer camp workers, preachers, and on and on and on who were child molesters. I can only go by personal experience. I have had teachers, scout leaders, summer camp workers, preachers, and on and on and on but none of them were child molesters to my knowledge.
 
I was going to reply to a post by Sunny, I think it was Sunny, but it disappeared as if by magic or divine intervention 😂. Anyhow, the Romans thought Hades was in the center of the earth or somewhere down there anyway and there were passages you could take, if you could get past the hell hounds, to get there. The Christians did not invent Hades or Hell, IMO. Hell was around before the Roman as well, I think.
 
I haven't met any teachers, scout leaders, summer camp workers, preachers, and on and on and on who were child molesters. I can only go by personal experience. I have had teachers, scout leaders, summer camp workers, preachers, and on and on and on but none of them were child molesters to my knowledge.
Google how bankrupt the Boys Scouts of America are because of the lawsuits against them due to the boys that were molested. Same applies to any profession. I was kidnapped and raped by a local handman who worked on everyone’s houses in the neighborhood. He lived with his mother, raised rabbits for food, and was trusted by the community. No one knew this guy would rape a 7 year old, but he did.
 
His mother was human, it says in the Bible he was human, he died like a human, -a rose by any other name. Oh, forgot to add, so edited, there are virgin births all over the world all the time. Not to be crass, but all you need is semen in a cup, a syringe (no needle 😊), and stick the syringe where it goes.
We know that girls lose their virginity from horseback riding (for example) but it doesn't make them pregnant. So I am not buying the biblical fairytale. Jews (they were Jews you know) regard sexual intercourse as a wonderful event. They weren't (still aren't) prudish as Christians are. The story about Maria being a virgin does not incorporate any artificial insemination methods in the narrative nor would there be anything admirable in it. You and I know what they meant.
 
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Google how bankrupt the Boys Scouts of America are because of the lawsuits against them due to the boys that were molested. Same applies to any profession. I was kidnapped and raped by a local handman who worked on everyone’s houses in the neighborhood. He lived with his mother, raised rabbits for food, and was trusted by the community. No one knew this guy would rape a 7 year old, but he did.
This is disturbing news. I'm a sensitive guy and I wish you hadn't told me that.
 
His mother was human, it says in the Bible he was human, he died like a human, -a rose by any other name. Oh, forgot to add, so edited, there are virgin births all over the world all the time. Not to be crass, but all you need is semen in a cup, a syringe (no needle 😊), and stick the syringe where it goes.

Virgin still? Yup. Baby possible? Yup. No befuddlement, none at all. There are also other ways where the syringe is not needed, just think about it.
I'm pretty sure they didn't do in-vitro fertilization back in 4BC when Jesus was born ;)
 
My 12 year old Catholic friend was apoplectic when I told her I’d never been baptized. Guess she still would be today.
I guess maybe she was in Catholic school? LOL when I was in elementary Catholic school I decided to run around the neighborhood and help 'save' people by telling them if they did not believe in God they were going to hell. My parents were not too happy ..neigher were my meighbors :rolleyes:
 
Where my husband was born and raised was near a Christian orphanage. He has all kinds of stories of abuse these kids would put up with. Most of them were scared to tell a soul. Then one day the entire thing was busted and all kinds of religious clergyman were arrested.

I feel especially sorry for children who not only didn’t have parents to care for them but were left in the care of people who abused them.

For many men to confide these secrets was brutal . Many would rather commit suicide than confess what really happened to them. Years ago Oprah had a show on specifically for males who had been sexually abused as boys and it was heart breaking. Many of them cried for the first time while sharing.
 
Anyway here is some info I found on the subject of heaven , hell and purgatory.


In traditional Christian doctrine, hell was conceived as a place, generally beneath the earth, where the wicked would be punished for eternity. There would be both psychological torment – at our knowing we had lost the opportunity for salvation – and physical ones inflicted by the Devil and his demons. There were gnawing worms and unquenchable fires. No escape from hell or mitigation of eternal torment was possible.

God would laugh at the sufferings of the damned, said the English puritan Richard Baxter. “Is it not a terrible thing,” he asked, “to a wretched soul, when it shall lie roaring perpetually … in the flames of Hell, and the God of mercy himself shall laugh at them?”

The judgement

The decision as to whether we went to heaven or hell was made by God at the time of our deaths. (The general judgement of all the resurrected dead on the final Day of Judgement merely confirmed God’s previous one.) As the greatest Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas rather elegantly put it, “the soul will remain perpetually in whatever last end it is found to have set for itself at the time of death, desiring that state as the most suitable, whether it is good or evil”.

Still, Christianity has never quite worked out whether heaven or hell is the consequence of righteous or wicked lives, or whether God is completely arbitrary in his decision making about our final destination.
The Australian Christian Lobby, however, follows the conservative Protestant tradition: so infected are we with the original sin of Adam and Eve, we are all doomed to hell from the moment of our birth and only Jesus can save us from it.

Purgatory

Amidst the gloom, there was one bright spot in the traditional Christian doctrine of hell. Our punishment there would be proportionate to our sins just as our rewards in heaven would be proportionate to our virtues.
This sense of proportionality led around the year 1000 CE to the invention of another place between heaven and hell – a place of purification of our sins. It arose from the recognition that while most of us were not sufficiently meritorious to deserve heaven instantly after death, most of us were also not sufficiently wicked to deserve eternal punishment.

ikimedia Commons
Purgatory was the place where those who were judged worthy of heaven eventually were purged, purified and punished for their sins before going on to their heavenly reward.
Purgatory thus became the default destination after death. Divine justice and mercy were better served by a place where souls, who, like most of us, were not really all that good at being really bad, could be both punished and perfected. Hell then was reserved only for the most incorrigible.
Even so, Purgatory was no holiday resort. The inhabitants were purified by fire. The heat was at times so intense, Dante tells us in his Purgatory, that “I could have flung myself … for coolness, in a vat of boiling glass.”

Purgatory purged

The Protestant reformers of the 16th century hated the idea of Purgatory and threw it out. They saw it as the root cause of corruption within the Church as people paid money on earth to the Church to try to lessen their time there.

Protestant Christianity therefore returned to the harsh either/or of heaven or hell, determined by God at the time of death (or birth). Humanity was again classified into only two classes – the saved and the damned.
Some Protestants from the 17th to 19th centuries attempted to mitigate this harsh idea of hell. Some argued that, after a period of time in hell, all souls would eventually be saved. Others suggested that souls would be annihilated after having done their time of punishment in hell.

By the 20th century, liberal Christians, Protestant and Catholic, were finding it difficult to square away belief in a God of love with the doctrine of eternal torments in the fires of hell. For them, “hell” has been rethought as a state (but no longer a place) of life after death in which we freely choose to stay alienated from God and from which we can eventually be saved if we so wish.

Today’s conservative Christians, however, remain unmoved by the possibility of eventual salvation from hell for everyone. The doctrine of eternal torments in hell has stayed on their theological agenda.
 
Where my husband was born and raised was near a Christian orphanage. He has all kinds of stories of abuse these kids would put up with. Most of them were scared to tell a soul. Then one day the entire thing was busted and all kinds of religious clergyman were arrested.

I feel especially sorry for children who not only didn’t have parents to care for them but were left in the care of people who abused them.

For many men to confide these secrets was brutal . Many would rather commit suicide than confess what really happened to them. Years ago Oprah had a show on specifically for males who had been sexually abused as boys and it was heart breaking. Many of them cried for the first time while sharing.
I saw that episode.
The men could hardly tell their stories without crying. It was hard to watch..

I have a hard time looking at priests the same way nowadays. I not a very religious person to begin with.
 
We know that girls lose their virginity from horseback riding (for example) but it doesn't make them pregnant. So I am not buying the biblical fairytale. Jews (they were Jews you know) regard sexual intercourse as a wonderful event. They weren't (still aren't) prudish as Christians are. The story about Maria being a virgin does not incorporate any artificial insemination methods in the narrative nor would there be anything admirable in it. You and I know what they meant.
Yes I know what they meant. Girls do not lose their virginity from horseback riding unless you are suggesting something strange. Girls can lose their hymen in many different ways, riding horses is one of them. Losing your hymen does not mean you are no longer a virgin.

Semen is necessary for pregnancy, sexual intercourse is not necessary for pregnancy. Since girls who became pregnant, out of wedlock, were stoned to death I am sure there are all kinds of stories about how pregnancy was achieved, without sex, throughout the ages.

All those teenage girls who claimed they never had sex, but ended up pregnant-possible and probably true. Not spelling it out here but when I was 19 a doctor explained the facts of life to me since my mother hadn’t.

As for Mary, how she became pregnant is not important. Her son is recognized as the Son of God by millions. Much like how the male child of a King sometimes died, and another male child substituted. The child grows up to be the Prince, and then the King. It is not who you are at your birth, it’s who you are throughout life.
 

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