It seems like the two big issues are that our punishment is unfair and how can God substitute our punishment onto someone else (and really 3, how can god let evil in the world without being evil himself). Well, I trust God that my punishment will be fair or that he will have mercy on me so that is the ultimate answer for the 1st question. Yes there are verses that hell is bad but that doesnt mean that its the same badness for everyone. Original sin gives us the propensity to sin but that is not what we are paying for. We will pay for our own sins or let jesus pay for our sins. I don'think anyone has a major problem with owning up to what theyve done wrong. You dont have to believe in a literal eve to know that we have a propensity to sin.

Now, the substituion part is interesting. That is more difficult to accept. I look at it not quite like the video. Say youre raised by foster parents and theyre always telling you what to do so you tell your foster parents to fuck off and you move out of the house when youre 16. But they pay your college and deposit checks in your account every month for years and years. So you tell yourself, you didnt ask for it so if theyre stupid enough to keep sending you money its their problem. So not only are you not going to pay them back, you could care less about it.

So youve adjusted your spending accordingly over time and spend more and more and get into more and more debt. Then when you're 40 you get a note that you don't owe them anymore as long as you give them power of attorney to transfer the "real" money into your name so when they die soon you can have your biological parents money and its a lot. You're not about to give these crazy people that kind of authority. They could ruin your credit and empty you accounts. So you tell them to mail you a check. But they can't do that because it has to go from your bio parents name to yours. They're just intermediary. You ask what the catch is. The only catch is you have to give them power of attorney to do it. You don't trust them since you would rather be in debt than get scammed. Its your life not theirs. Theyre obviously crazy with really bad business sense for trusting you right?

The wiping your debt free was just to get your attention. That was really just about giving you a carrot to accept the big prize, your parents money. They know they are asking a lot but theyve been pretty consistent over the years so you will trust them and take it. God could cancel everones debt easily. But will that encourage them to give up that part of themselves that wants to sin so we can all be in heaven without sin. If not he'll find the best place for us that is not heaven. Heaven and hell are just continuations of what its like here. You can experience some of both. Its not going to be that different after death either way for most of us. So God is not evil for making us choose. He'll never give us worse than we deserve.

 

There is that verse that the sins of the father will be passed down 4 generations...but his blessings will go down 40 generations blah blah blah something like that...well I take it to mean we are not directly responsible for our parents sins but they will affect us...like alcoholism...and that can continue down a family line...

but God can cancel our debt to him through any means he wants...just like anyone can cancel your debt to them...Id like to think it was fair or better than fair...I dont get the feeling like Im paying for eves issues...its just the way it had to be having free will..if it wasnt eve it would have been the next guy...and I mean that figuratively. There doesnt have to even be a real eve...

Yes.

The above is just you making stuff up. You trust that God's punishment would be fair... why? That's not what it says in the Bible, is it? And yes, the bible certainly does describe Hell being the same punishment for everybody - so how can you justify your beliefs contradicting the scripture that they are based on?

Again, you're contradicting scripture.

the above is internally inconsistent. If Jesus is paying for my sins, I don't really have to own-up to them, do I?

This is a false analogy. As Jill has pointed-out, I have no debt; it wasn't me who ate the apple.

....JAB, I think perhaps you need to seriously reconsider what your 'faith' is really in. Again, you're just making stuff up at this point. There is absolutely no way you can justify the statements you're making - nowhere in Christian teachings is what you've described the afterlife to be.

 

 

I guess we are talking past each other. My mom was an alcoholic. I think her mom was an alcoholic. Its probably not a stretch to there was alcoholism and other abuse issues going back in my family line. That is not God punishing me. Its just the way things work. Sins get passed down to children who are affected and thereby affect their children and so on...

And I will say again. Adam and Eve is a parable. If there were two people who lived and had some kind of similar experiences, great. I don't care. What can we learn from the parable? With knowledge comes responsibility. You all here have cast off childish religious ways. Great! You are now responsible for your knowledge of good and evil more than the poor christian schmo who just takes it literally and tries to serve God. Thats what the parable means.

Kevin, you've said it before. How do I know the things I know? I am not taking the christian faith literally enough. I'm making stuff up. Of course I'm making stuff up. Its all made up. Who cares if my christianity is the same as someone elses. You don't believe in revealed knowledge anyway. No two peoples christianity is the same on the planet. So what. I never claimed to have absolute truth only approximate truth that I am currently satisfied with. Like I said, I don't claim to know anything. I'm the one responsible to God for me and what I know not for you and what you know.

But when I bash christianity I prefer to go after things that really bother me that I think might be true, not stuff that I don't believe anyway. I can always find someone with an interpretation I don't like. I don't think that means anything. Its all open to interpretation. I'm really not on purpose trying to build the worst straw arguments to bash. Which is what I think that video is doing not that there arent people on the planet who do take that literally. There are. Conversely Catholics stopped teaching that adam and eve were literal a while ago...they teach evolution....

  

Would you mind explaining this? How did you 'experience' God/Jesus?

So basically you're Christian because of the same things we all experience everyday. So then why aren't we all Christian? Are we stupid? cut off from your god in some magical way? To me this doesn't make much sense. Also, how do you attribute these things to one specific God, isn't it just as likely that allah or FSM are doing these things? they have both been attested to doing similar acts.

About the post you made on original sin. It is true that we suffer from the sins of our parents. If your father is an alcoholic you are statistically more likely to grow up to be an alcoholic, this much is true. But why would you have to be an alcoholic. If you never had a drink in your life would police come to your house and arrest you and put you on parole. Everyday you would be forced to report to a police officer and be breathalized. If you were found sober you would be put in the drunk tank. Forgive me for saying this but you make absolutely no sense. The great this about humans is that we can learn from our parents but at the same time we are capable of rational thinking so that we can choose what to emulate and what not to. There is no reason why we should have to do as our parents do if they were truly horrible people.

Whoa, that's nice, I see now where are you coming from. I don't like this phenomenon, when exactly these and similar things happens to a person, and he decides that this is an evidence for Christianity. Why do you think that any of this is an evidence for the evil Jahweh, and for everlasting punishment in the lake of fire in Hell? I know people like you, but they usually saw, that these experiences are positive and good. There is no reason to consider them as an evidence for the existence of Hell, Satan, and even worse, Jahweh. People of all faiths and none have such an experiences. Only the visions of continual fire, brimstone and pitchforks, lasting until the person gets Born again, that would be a sufficient evidence, but for that person only. There are other, much more intellectual and moral theories to explain your experiences, without a need to assume the Christianic dogma. Christianity is just so much soaked through our society, that when the dreams and visions speaks in symbolic language to our subconsciousness, most of the symbols we see are Christianic, and the people goes to a nearest church, not mosque, not synagogue and not ashram.
Well, that's Stosis' point, approximately.

Furthermore, there is no way how anyone (Christian, mainly) can differ Hell from Purgatory if they have a scary vision or dream. They're not having it for eternity, just for a while. Technically, they'd have to meet there with some sinful specimen of Homo Erectus, to be more sure that it's really an eternal stay in there. Even Jesus was there only for three days, right?