More people need therapy but don't get it and that fact frightened me.
Do you go to therapy?
How could a just and loving God condemn the entirety of non-human life to eternal punishment and damnation, simply for not having the cognitive ability to understand belief?
Seems like either: A. there is no god or hell and the argument is completely moot. B. There is a god and it really is an evil death cult bent on ending all life for some bizzaro sense of 'salvation' (God is not loving) C. There is a god and it is ambivalent to the suffering of everything but humans (god is not just) D. all dogs go to heaven. (God actually is just and loving)
Oh why did I stop here...
Indeed, why? I'm curious
Because God is a concept invented to bully the uneducated and the mentally vulnerable into submission.
Stop as in, stop at this post and engage this early in the morning. To be clear. This was a choice for certain.
Gotta say outright, a god that punishes people for not believing in the correct interpretation of him... is a God who's heaven I wouldn't want to go to. Just do the math on regional factors alone. Fact is if you believe in a god, if you are born in a heavily muslim area, there's a 75% chance you'd believe in the muslim interpretation. If you are born in a christian area, there's a 75% chance you'll have the christian belief, same for hinduism, bhudism etc...
Fact is no matter how you slice it, if there is a correct version of god to believe in, at most maybe 1/3rd of people are in the right place to believe in that version of him. Meaning 2/3rds of the world is at a cultural disadvantage to not correctly beleive in the right version of god, and thus would be doomed to hell. That's before factoring in hundreds of other factors like life circumstance etc...
Simple fact is if a god exists, and is good, and has an afterlife (none of which are facts I believe in). I don't think belief or knowledge is any sign of fairness for such a being to do, and certainly sending things to hell for something that they are literally incapable of even trying to think about... is just nonsense for anything but the most malicious and evil interpretations of a god.
And in this scenario, they are capable of spreading this knowledge to everyone, but choose not to, and allow or even directly cause people to be damned.
Seriously? Religion it's a mechanism to control the masses. Don't be one of them, I know, it's so cozy and easy to project all on that, but sadly you have to think for yourself and take responsibility for your life, alone, no "god" or religion can and will set you free of that and it's not a bad thing, just think positive of that fact and it's not that hard anymore. I don't say : don't search for spiritual fulfilment, just stay independent in your thinking, don't let anybody talk you into guilt, there is no hell, you decide, what you do or you don't do. And animals - please. Nature takes care of itself, far faaaar longer as any one ever invented a "god" to cope with reality. We all die, that doesn't make life any less precious. Since billions of years, everywhere in the universe. We are living on this insignificant pebble called earth and for thousands of years religion didn't contribute to peace, less wars or better distribution of wealth, actually it contributed to the opposite, because it's so simple to exploit for the powerful. Please, from one human being too the next, think for yourself, do good without the feeling you have to because someone or an old book says so, and very much not out of guilt.
Edit: everybody can vote something down or make a joke, how about sacrificing 5 minutes of your day for a little talk to maybe, just maybe, change something?
Religion is a lie
And even if one were correct, which one?.. There are many deities and even more interpretations of them. A lot of religions punish those who worship a false god more than those who believe in no god at all.
If I were to wager on the basis of fear of eternal damnation, my safe bet would be to refrain from choosing any god and bank on less likelihood of severe torment.
But fortunately I don't fear eternal damnation because I don't believe it exists. Non-existence doesn't sound so scary either when you consider your state of existence before you were born. You already haven't existed for billions of years. It'll be just like that.
Lay off the bath water
Well according to the church, animals don't have souls so they won't be going anywhere at all. Only souls move on to the afterlife, which includes hell. No soul means death is just not existing anymore.
Which is what will happen to humans, also, because the soul is a bullshit concept.
Do we really know ? Maybe they believe in our gods ? Maybe they believe in their god, and it's the true one ?
Maybe God is just entropy? The randomness of life and the probability of things happening?
I was rewatching footage from 9/11 the other day. And I saw one guy jump... It made me really sad. I thought, you know, if you'd only waited another 10minutes you'd have gone to heaven!
Screw that I'm jumping every time. If the choice is sit passively and wait to be burned and crushed to death or to go out with some agency and experience weightlessness before a very quick and hopefully painless death. Yeah, screw your bizzaro death cult moral justifications.
Technically that's not what weightlessness is, but I suppose experiencing freefall is good enough too.
The Catholic Church does not agree. According to the canon, animals don't have souls and therefore have no afterlife. And even if they did, the Church believes that you don't go to hell simply for not believing in God.
Look, I’m going to go straight from the Bible here, skip all the “god is real god is not real” stuff.
Look, if God is real and he created all of everything, why in the hell would he also decide that nearly every living thing would suffer forever? The only two reasonable explanations are that no animals go to heaven or hell and they don’t have souls and heaven is purely for humans, or they will be pardoned because one that doesn’t know good from evil cannot be damned. Not to mention, have you not read Genesis 2? It’s literally Adam and Eve who are perfectly fine but once they know good from evil, suddenly that knowledge allows them to be damned. If a dog or a cat can’t know good from evil, why would they ever be damned?
Please at least read the book you follow
You might enjoy this article about this very thing; apparently John Wesley had some thoughts about this. https://firebrandmag.com/articles/all-cats-and-dogs-go-to-heaven#:~:text=It's particularly interesting given Wesley's,It was paradisiacal%3B perfectly happy.
Ignoring that this is all made up nonsense...
Would heaven really be joyful if we didn't have animals there? No. So of course animals go to heaven. They have no sin so they don't need to believe in god to be saved.
