The only unforgivable sin in the bible is Blasphemy.

Mark 3:28 & 29;
28 Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme:

29 But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation

Matthew 12:31 & 32;
31 Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.

32 And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.

The fact is, you can be the most vile baby rapist, killer, woman beater, slave owner, torturer - in short NOTHING you can do to another human is beyond forgiveness.

EXCEPT

Saying the Holy Ghost is a bollocks idea.

THAT will get you eternal torment.

Rape, kill and eat all the infants you want, kill millions, rip innocents limb from limb, just repent before your last breath and you'll be good.

Say the Holy Ghost is a bullshit idea? You're fucked.

Personally, I already have my lake-of-firefront property picked out.

It's pretty capricious, isn't it? Ted Bundy raped and murdered a bunch of women, but if he confessed his sins and pledged himself to Jesus five minutes before he was fried in the electric chair, he goes to heaven.

Yet if you say "Fuck the Holy Spirit", you've got an automatic ticket to Hell, and you're not allowed to say "I'm sorry!"

Don't you love the infinitely wise and just deity of the Christian faith?

Christianity is a seriously flawed philosophy.

not that it stopped me. eventually i had to resolve the cognitive dissonance somehow and.. here i am in the atheists group.

That men are so weak they cannot control themselves around us and that we must keep ourselves silent, covered up and hidden away so we won't tempt the poor dears.

That sex is sin and that sin belongs 100% to women, see above.

I can live with the dogmatic silliness, not my problem. I cannot live with the systematic oppression and often destruction of the female half of the human race.

You know, the one with male gods, male go betweens, and lots of stupid and inconvenient rules, mostly aimed at controlling women.

Last edited Wed Mar 6, 2013, 11:54 AM - Edit history (1)

Gotcha!

as the mysterious will of god, beyond our understanding,so we can't do anything but pray about it and accept it.

Not gonna be a bystander to evil shit.

I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. 16 So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.

I think this concept has caused more Christian extremism and death than any New Testament philosophy. It teaches that you are to be extreme in your view. I have heard a minister preach that God respects a whole hearted sinner more than a half hearted Christian. No middle path here folks. No room for debate, no questioning authority, no negotiation, no time to think or reason. Just their way or hell. Take no prisoners.

It's the kind of thinking that drives an extremism arms race.

"But Father, I hate the evildoers MORE than any of your other followers; look, I'll prove it..."

Maybe it's not toxic, but it sure as hell is dysfunctional.

"Love me or I'll hurt you forever" is pretty damned toxic.

When Kahn gets Lt. McGivers alone and then starts wrapping her around his finger enough so she mutinies against Kirk.

but particularly "wives should submit themselves to their husbands". I really tried to do the "right thing" but was never good at having my ex-husband tell me what to do. He was an evil, abusive bastard but it still took me 6 long years to figure out that Paul's bullshit wasn't for me (he would always tell me that I was supposed to submit to him and then knock me around when I didn't do it fast enough or well enough).

I know that's a really personal one for me, but I'm sure there have been lots of women who fell victim to Paul's misogyny.

Not that Jesus' teachings themselves were perfect...

Excepting that I don't believe there was every a real-life Jesus, some of his teachings, as laid out in the bible were pretty good (though yes, not perfect). "Blessed are the poor", "Blessed are the peacemakers"... those are values that I can certainly identify with and "get behind" - helping others and loving everyone as your brother (there would be a lot less fighting if we all treated others like our family)

But most Christian religions have twisted them into hateful messages and seem to often ignore the good in some of the messages in their own bible.

the absolute worst thing in religion. The sexism and misogyny.

Thanks, Thomas Aquinas!

But between the two, I'd have to go with Warpy's suggestion above. Blaming women for the sins of men, sentencing half the human race to an inferior and guilt-ridden status in order to oppress them, yeah, that's pretty damn low. And considering that unlike original sin, the poor treatment of women extends across the Abrahamic faiths, it gets my vote for worst.

What about Paul?

Except, I guess the rat is back to being a mere human.

Given the choice between a scientifically vetted theory backed by mountains of fossil, DNA and anatomic evidence, or a story made up by Bronze Age sheepherders about an invisible man in the sky, a woman made out of a rib, a talking snake, and a magic fruit, which one do they pick? Why the one in the religious book because it is Always Correct!

What I cannot understand is how modern day christianists can be anti-cloning and anti-stem cell research. WHAT ABOUT EVE? Isn't she a clone, simply altered with minor genetic manipulation?

Get a free pass into heaven. Poisoning a whole generation of susceptible kids.

for one it neatly ties into original sin. the ultimate solution for disobedient fruit munchers..

kill them all. except that guy.. and her, she kissed my ass good.. oh and him and 143,997 others but no more. the rest, and all nonhuman forms of life, can and should be extinguished according to this doctrine.

global warming is GOOD to these nuts, and war in the middle east, because it brings 'us' closer to self-fulfillment of that despicable doctrine. to them it would be worse if the bible turned out to be wrong about the end of all life on earth.

that's got my vote.

Also that the idea of justice just happens.... that it isn't a man-made idea that mankind must maintain.

And that you should suffer for what your ancestors might have done.

(I'm trying to be general here.... not Abrahamic)

Am I my brother's keeper?
That attitude is voiced by one of the bad guys in the Bible and yet it's the very same attitude that is furthered by believing in divine intervention.
(Jesus Christ proposed the exact opposite, but his teachings aren't very popular nowadays with extremist christians.)

What if we actually became our brother's keeper?
What if we didn't wait for or trust in God to take care?
What if humanity finally accepted the responsibility of its actions?

Obviously there's the clear reason that it is scientifically baseless and nonsensical, but also because it lays a foundation for the expectation of the family unit and how it should be. With a foolish naive woman, two sons, and the expectation of heterosexuality as to boot. Of course, I may be biased regarding the latter.

I remember in about 5th or 6th grade the nun telling us, with a certain relish, what would happen to us in hell if we were disobedient, disrespectful, lied about doing our homework, etc. etc. She said"think of when you touched a very hot stove. You couldn't withdraw your hand fast enough! Now imagine that pain, multiplied 100 fold, for eternity. You can't withdraw from hellfire. You're there FOREVER!

This was said to 9-10 year old children. If that's not child abuse, I don't know what is. For years Iwas terrified of death, because of course the nuns had made it clear where I'd end up!

Hell is certainly the nasty part, but to me it's only part of the larger answer to this question.

The idea of a system of eternal reward or punishment, in any form be it the fiery pitchforks or the eternal empty absence/removal of divine love, is perfectly adapted for two purposes:

1) it is a great advertising pitch to malcontents, outsiders, and hopeless cases, who naturally write themselves into the reward column and "they" - the ones "keeping them down" - into the punishment column. Who wouldn't want to think that a few decades of being lashed as a slave are paid back by watching the master roasted in eternal fire while you sip nectar on a golden throne for all time - just by wishing it so.

2) When you have attracted enough of these types to become a powerful force or, much worse, a majority in society, it inescapably creates an us vs. them dichotomy where anything at all can be believed about or imposed upon "them" because by definition after a fleeting nanosecond of life they are bound for trillions of aeons of punishment anyway. Whereas "us" becomes the chosen select group who can behave as they wish as long as they keep in the "us" column, and still be in everlasting paradise. Again the self-serving dilutions of "sophisticated" theology do nothing to change it as long as selective salvation is posited. It doesn't matter if Heaven is simply basking in love while Hell is simply knowledge of its absence, or whether they are the traditional (and scriptural) jewelled condominiums and unquenchable fire.

Nope - the evil here is the system that establishes everlasting reward or punishment. That doesn't so much allow a scornful smug superiority in believers - it mandates that. Even here the inherent hypocrisy of such a belief shines through. We are hideously cruel and bigoted and arrogant for saying they have childish beliefs. They on the other hand are simply disappointed but loving guides for saying we will spend eternity in a lesser, often horrifically tortured, position than they.

The "sophisticated" types have painted themselves in a corner here, as anyone above Hamm-level IQ can see the problems of selective salvation with its infinite punishments for finite "error" and its entry into the elect dependent on thought not deed. The last refuge of the fingernail-grasp theist is universal salvation, that God loves us all so much he will deny none of us Heaven. So far so good - here at least we have a putative God who has finally managed to achieve moral equivalency with the average human parent. It just means belief and religion are utterly fucking irrelevant and unnecessary.

"When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. 'I am innocent of this man’s blood,' he said. 'It is your responsibility!' All the people answered, 'His blood is on us and on our children!' "

It's the central tenet of Jews=Christ Killers belief.

Oswego "So many choices..." Atheist

I am not sure how this one continues based on the popularity of dying. It seems to me that "dead" is pretty "harmed," even in the calmest of circumstances.

Be they Islamic bombers who think 72 virgins are waiting for them, or the Christian equivalent, such as Scott Roeder, who shoots a doctor in the face during a church service, and think they've got a free Get Out Of Hell card, rhetoric like this is part of what gives them license to hurt and kill people while throwing their own lives away.

but the common notion of an afterlife that you will see your loved ones again promotes more suffering here on earth. Be it excuses for killing and torturing, or combining it with the notion of suicide being a sin, so you are encouraged to die soon to see your loved ones again, but if you take your own life you're going to another place, so just sit and suffer in silence, or make people kill you and repent before you die.

for a while I thought Budism might be less ridiculous for some reason then did some reading = it is very wacky .

It's internally consistent.

However, it does not have a god or gods if you don't want it to.
You can be an atheist and a buddhist. It's about the nature of reality and suffering. It's hard to understand but at least they aren't telling you you are a worthless POS due to original sin.

In fact, the Dalai Lama did not understand the concept of Westerners who had low self-esteem and felt bad about themselves.

Quote from Ed & Deb Shapiro at HuffPo:
The Dalai Lama met with a group of Western psychotherapists, and he asked them what was the most common issue that their patients came to see them about. They were unified in their response: a lack of self-esteem. Apparently the Dalai Lama found this quite hard to believe, as self-esteem is not a known problem in Tibet. We talked to one of his translators, now living with his wife and child in London. Tashi told us that children growing up in Tibet would be welcomed and loved by the whole village, which he found very different to the way children are raised in our more nuclear-oriented family culture.

We watched as an eager young television reporter from CNN asked the Dalai Lama what was the first thing he thought of when he awoke in the morning. We thought that the world's most famous meditator would say something deeply profound or insightful, something along the lines of vowing to save the world from its own ignorance. Instead, the Dalai Lama simply replied, "Shaping motivation." He said that we all, including himself, have to be vigilant so that our intentions are focused in the right direction, and how shaping his motivation on a daily basis reminds him to extend loving kindness and compassion to all others. Such motivation takes us beyond ourselves so that we are not limited by a lack of confidence or self-esteem.

================

I think the belief in marching bands ,guys dressed up like the spear patrol and all the weird pomp and ceremony yesterday pegs the
belief o meter ...no body with any self esteem was in that crowd in the square built on the backs of poor gullible people.

really does disgust me. According to the holy babble, god curses Eve for her sinfulness by making childbearing painful for her, and for all women thereafter.

To avoid defying god, do fundy women refuse pain relievers when they're having babies?