Wow, was Zack dictating that letter to someone to send to his friend as the Angels took him, or is he just talented at writing and multitasking while having his eternal torment meeted out?

That was horrible. If those are the kind of things that group of people comes up on lake trips, I sure would hate to see what kind of mental abuse they can inflict on Sundays. I am glad they didn't make Zack a bad guy, he just didn't know about Jesus(yeah right) and he thought he would end up in a fuzzy, foggy place...wtf? I like that they implied you could still be a decent person and burn eternally for not knowin about JC, too many apologetics are getting away from this serious mindfuck of a problem. God would knowingly send someone to hell that had no knowledge of his son, and then guilt his friend into believing it was his fault. Well...I'm sold, sign me up, this God sounds like a pretty tough club owner, and his thuggish Angel bouncers don't take any shit if your not on the list. Who knew Heaven was like an exclusive nightclub, where you have to know JC to get VIP access. I guess I better start networking.

Wasn't this posted before a while back? And I call epic bullshit on it not being a scare tactic.

The theology behind my own position is that you only get sent to hell if it's what you actually would prefer over submission to God.

That said... the video sucks. It's so over-done and emotive that it fails to even be a scare-tactic. It's just... theological vomit. (This coming from a Theist.)

Doom 3 was awesome (and could have been even better.) This... just...sucks....

I need to get in touch with these GodTube people. Christians have had been given a bad enough reputation in secular eyes already. We don't need PR this...hideous...circulating over the internet by over-zealous teens.

  Don't these poor  misguided christens know, the Jews are the chosen people  all others are going to hell in a hand cart.  So get kosher or get burnin'.

Yeah, so all those isolated indigenous people who have not yet been approached by Christian missionaries, all the babies who die before they're old enough to even know how to speak ... I guess they will burn in Hell for eternity because they did not know our loving, just, and merciful God. That must be a comforting thought for any Christian whose child died of SIDS.

How dead can a person be if they can feel their heart pounding in their chest?

How terrible can Hell be if this histrionic loser managed to find the time to compose this half-assed guilt trip?

I'm going to cry,

.

Whoah, deja vu.

It must have to do with the fact I never took the 'Hell' concept seriously.

Every video like this one makes me start into a fit of laughing. I think it's so fucking hilarious...

"What if your friend went to Hell!?"

They may was well be asking,

"What if your bed was sheltering a monster!?"

...Oh, man. Post more, please. I need the laughs tonight.

HAHAHA Ridicules , loved it XD. WTF Is the problem if god is going to send me to hell I’m going to commend god to obey me and send me to hell or I’m going to fucken kill him . Na what is going this god do obey me or send me into haven ?

I fail to see how God dictates who is lost and who is saved has anything to do with "religion falling on its face at a foundational level." Religion has very little to do with salvation per say, but rather truth and the assumption that with an understanding of that truth a salvation of some nature will follow.

PS: hambydammit, please note that Kevin R Brown's wording here indicates that he would take the insane option. Like I said, insanity is much more common than you'd think.

Obviously you are thinking much more specifically at Christianity than I am. The common thread between ALL religions isn't an assertion of salvation, it's an assertion that that specific religion holds the "truth." Salvation is almost invariably presented as a side-benefit of understanding that truth.

Confucianism, for example, asserts that it has the truth about how to live together in harmony. While it may tread the fine line between religion and philosophy, it is often dealt with as if it were a religion. Confucianism asserts no method of "salvation."

You could say similar (but markedly different) things about many other oriental religions.

EDIT: Why else would my pseudonym be "Sir Valiant for Truth? Why not "Sir Valiant for Salvation?

Besides, all things considered, it makes sense that a Theist would know more about religion than an Atheist would. Sadly, this is not always the case, but I am in a better position to speak about what religion is and isn't than you are.

...I must've missed the part where the primary goal of religion became something other than saving my soul.

And the last part of your argument remains flattened. We just established that the only important part is telling God that you'll kiss his feet - so how does 'truth' come into it at all?

As for my 'wording' and alleged insanity, I fail to see where I said I'd pick the Lake of Fire option. I don't like the idea of kissing a deity's ass, but if the two options were to brown my nose of burn forever, it's easy enough to say I'd pick the former.

Yes, I am Christian. However, you should be aware that I belong to a rare breed of them commonly referred to as "Calvinists" that hold many views that other Christian denominations think of as...divisive.

Regardless, my statement is still true -even true of Christianity. It just tends to get lost to secular ears against the voices of preachers in haste to make "Altar Calls" to meet their quotas. (Yes, as demented as it may seem, funding in some churches is based on the number of conversions. Does this explain a few things?)

I would agree...IF your community didn't have a "THEISM IS IRRATIONAL, VIEWS OF OUR COMMUNITY." sticky. As that it does it's pretty clear that there's an agenda being pushed here.

I despise that shit. I was raised to believe hell was a real place, and it scared me so bad it kept me awake at nights. That's child abuse. It makes me hate christians who believe it, which sucks because hate is a shitty emotion.

Life does piss everyone off .....  

Prove it. 

It's amazing how the armchair neurologists and psychologists come out of the woodwork every now and again.

I haven't been on the boards recently, been busy, but I found this little video that is in many ways as horrible of a propaganda tool than any "Jesus Camp" can ever be.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=nfh1qWhiLjU&feature=related

Questions hurt

                                                   Bullseye !!!

Wow.

God's a raving sociopath, and it's ALL YOUR FAULT, ZACK.

There are several ways to approach the claim that theism is a mental defect, and each has its advantages and flaws.  First, "mental defect" is pretty hard to define in the first place.  There are cultural and clinical definitions, and even those have varying shades of meaning depending on context.  I would suggest to you that without knowing the exact context of the statement, it's premature for you to say that it's wrong.

I don't think anyone here claims that theism is a chemical imbalance, although it would be hard to deny that many people with chemical imbalances are strongly religious, or see visions, or what-not.  However, various mental illnesses are not genetic or chemical in nature.  Depression, for example, can be caused by a real external situation.  It's still a mental disorder, though.

If you look up "Grandiose Delusional Disorder" in the DSM, you'll see an incredible resemblance to the behaviors and beliefs of many theists.  Granted, it's not as easy as just matching symptoms, but the resemblance is more than a passing one.

Furthermore, there are tons of examples of people who suffer from emotional problems because of religion.  Ask any gay man who's married to a woman because he believes he's actually under demonic influence, and is not really gay.

I'm not trying to argue the case that theism is a mental disorder or defect.  I'm trying to point out to you that there are a lot of ways to approach it.  If I simply say that by "mental defect," I mean a chronic inability to reason correctly, it's pretty hard to say I'm wrong.  If you guys are going to dicker about whether or not Louis is correct, you need to establish exactly what he means when he makes the claim.

I think they'll have already planned for that.
They'd split you up from the fellow free-thinkers and surround you with the rapists instead.
(But only the ones that didn't get round to repenting on their deathbed)

Dude, a devil who tried to use them to torture you would be nearly as incompetent as the God who clumsily condemned the ones he loved to eternal damnation!!