Is the need of salvation an evil lie from religions?

Discussion in 'Religion' started by Greatest I am, Apr 9, 2016.

  1. Greatest I am Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,740
    Is the need of salvation an evil lie from religions?

    Some religions like Christianity and Islam teach that people are condemned by God and that we have to work to gain salvation. God created us ill, and orders us to be well, on pain of tremendous eternal torture and eventual death. This teaching follows the one where we are told that God is unknowable, unfathomable and works in mysterious ways. This makes the notions of condemnation and the need for salvation obvious lies.
    Gnostic Christianity does not use this type of carrot and stick motivation in its theology. We are Universalists and only see a heaven, no hell. We think God too good a creator to ever have to condemn anyone. Our God is a winner, not the loser God that Christianity has invented. All the Gods are myths created to help us reach our highest human potential and are only tools to open our inner eye. Our single eye as Jesus calls it.

    How we can forgive ourselves is that as Universalists, we have tied righteousness to equality. The logic trail from there says that if God is to punish anyone, he would have to punish everyone as everyone contributes to what we all are.

    For instance. If God were to punish Hitler, he would have to revue what made Hitler what he ended up being. God would follow his time line and see perhaps that his parents spanked him and God would know what we know today, that spanking creates resentment and a delinquent attitude. That beginning would see Hitler's parents setting his mindset which eventually flowered into his tyrannical nature. So to be just, God would automatically have to punish Hitler's parents. That same logic would apply to everyone who contributed or facilitated Hitler's rise to infamy.

    So for you and me to blame just ourselves for what we are would be quite unjust. This is not to say that we hold no responsibility for our actions, just not all of them.

    Do you agree that the need of Salvation promoted by religions is an evil lie?

    Regards
    DL
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,089
    Sure. It's the hook inside the heaven worm. Don't eat that!
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. exchemist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    12,451
    No.
     
    ajanta likes this.
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,828
    Is humanity inherently "Good"?

    It would seem that humanity was recognized to be evil by nature, which might explain the need for salvation

    So you've created a god in your own image?

    Someone might encourage me to be a smoker, but having knowledge of it's consequence, I still make the conscious decision to smoke. Who should we blame for the cancer that may come from it?

    There may be some truth to that. To you suspect that Hitler didn't understand that killing other people is wrong, or did he choose to kill for his own purposes?


    I believe everyone is in need of improvement. Do we deserve eternal damnation? I don't believe so, but I'm not a god.

    As a side note, you might want to become ordained by the Universal Life Church. It's free...
    http://www.ulc.org/
     
  8. wellwisher Banned Banned

    Messages:
    5,160
    What would happen if one day we didn't require our children go to school, or have to learning anything? Could they function as well in our advanced culture, which achieved that status of advanced, through work and effort? The answer is no. The children would default to primitive and self gratifying behavior. The culture would decline, since they are not learning how to perpetuate the advanced state.

    To get there; which is salvation, the children will need to develop skills and tools. Advanced is not a default state, but takes it work. It takes very specific work.

    Liberalism, which dominates education, tends to believe in a socialist state, which thinks for you; big government. In this world, there is no cause and affect between the actions and reactions of individual people and the result, if the state has the final choice. Whether you work hard or hardly work you get the same result. In this world, working toward Salvation is an act of insubordination or a fool's errand. But in a free world, Salvation is connected to the cause and affect of action and reaction. In religion, paradise takes effort.
     
    Thantilaxath likes this.
  9. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,057
    Is there any other way to get one?
     
    Dr_Toad likes this.
  10. exchemist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    12,451
    BINGO!
     
  11. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,828
    I think everyone would choose a most forgiving, accommodating god.
     
  12. Hapsburg Hellenistic polytheist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,224
    No wonder this looked familiar. You posted the literal same thread on Total War Center forums.
    I'll just reply with the same thing I said there:

    You have to look at the historical context of when Christianity and its early theology developed. The New Testament canon were almost all written within a century of Jesus of Nazareth's supposed death and therefore all fell within the cultural milieu of Late Second Temple Judaism. This was a time of immense crisis for Judaism and the Jews; their kings were Roman puppets, their religion was subject to foreign scrutiny, and their society had broken down in the face of civil war, political corruption, and foreign domination. The view of many Jewish preachers and sects was that God turned his back on them for some sinful or evil behaviour, and after death those who were abandoned by god would be punished eternally. Many scholars and preachers pointed to incidents in the Torah of man's unjust or rebellious behaviour as the source of this offense. Judaism already had a rich corpus of eschatology and prophetic texts, least of them the contents of the Old Testament itself, and these combined in such a culture of fear and despair to create a sense that the apocalypse was upon them and the messiah's arrival was imminent. The concept of "sin" and the "need" for salvation from it derives strongly from the political and social climate of a people under siege in their own home.

    Though, yes, Himster is right in that the specific conception of Original Sin and the rather severe dogma surrounding it and its implications is a peculiarly Western Christian notion. It is not present in Eastern Orthodoxy, nor in many other oriental and eastern churches. It derives, as he stated, from Augustine, who is given overwhelming deference in the Catholic tradition.

    In fact, most religions in the world lack the concept of "sin" in the sense used in Christianity. Sure, most have taboos and certain things are believed to be offensive to the gods or spirits. But such things can be cleansed through purification rites, and don't have an effect on one's outcome after death.
     
  13. timojin Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,252
     
  14. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,057
    They don't though, do they? The Judeo-Christian God certainly isn't very forgiving, he destroys whole worlds with floods and fire.
     
  15. timojin Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,252
    A little correction God is very forgiving provided we turn and repent from our evil doing. Yahshua teaching is He come not to condemn the world but to save. So the Judeo- Christian God is very forgiving. He just does not want us to go any worse in our action.
     
  16. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,828
    If his intention was to eradicate evil, what has come of the effort? Your assessment of things?
     
  17. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,057
    That's not what forgiveness means. That's, "Do as I say or else." When a creditor forgives a loan, it means you don't have to pay. It doesn't mean pay up and all will be forgotten.
     
  18. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,057
    The Flood was a colossal failure.

    And if His intention was to eradicate evil, why did He create it in the first place?
     
  19. billvon Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    21,634
    No.
    No.
     
    ajanta likes this.
  20. wellwisher Banned Banned

    Messages:
    5,160
    Free will offers us the ability to make choices, both good and evil. Free also will allows one to choose the truth or chose the lie.

    Consider AI in computers. This is where a computer becomes able to think on its own. Is an AI computer more or less advanced than current computer who are programed to do things like a robot? The answer is AI is more advanced.

    If you developed AI computers and it started to think in its own, there is no guarantee it will do your bidding. If anything AI means it will think outside its original programming. It may make choices that will cause you problems. What do you do?

    Do you gut its AI and return it to a programmed robot who always does what is expected, or do you allow it to evolve, even if this mean poor choices along the way? I would allow it to evolve, with the hope that someday it will chose to do what it right and be a useful tool.

    This appears to be what God thinks of human AI; free moral agents. Our free will AI is more important than a robot human who is programmed to alway do right within thought to choice. The free moral agent AI will make bad choices and even choose evil, but it is learning. Someday it will become compliant to the good, by choice. This happens when it figures out it best free choices, were already there.
     
  21. timojin Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,252
    HOW ABOUT THIS WAY Got have put me on the earth for a temporary time , to live in harmony with other human , but I decided due to my selfishness to exploit the other human which is wrong according to his rules , so He admonishes me , I will say I am sorry and I promise I will change my attitude , so He will forget my violation . Now if I continue violating , and the promise I give Him for changing my attitude, I amnot fulfilling , the next I have to face a stronger reprimand to encourage to change my attitude . And we keep on working util my attitude change.
     
  22. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,828
    I suppose we wouldn't know one from the other if one were missing. I've often wondered whether evil had no definition until man first took his first bite of knowledge
     
  23. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,057
    Obviously not. If an AI that I created ran amok, I'd pull the plug on that one AI. I wouldn't punish all AIs for the actions of a few. And I wouldn't pull the plug on every minor infraction.
     

Share This Page