Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!bcm!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: lindborg@cs.washington.edu (Jeff Lindborg) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: A first cut at Tolerance (long - sorry) Message-ID: Date: 28 Feb 91 22:24:37 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: University of Washington Computer Science Lines: 82 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article psburns@lims01.lerc.nasa.gov (MAUREEN BURNS) writes: >[The original posting contained a couple of pages of quoted >discussion between Jeff Lindborg and Geoff Allen, whose subject >seems irrelevant to this response. It involved the truth of >Christianity. This response is to the signature: > >Jeff Lindborg > >On the Highway to Hell >--clh] >Jeff, >My heart breaks for you, even though you don't want it to. It greives me >that you sign yourself "On the Highway to Hell" as if hell is a place to >look forward to being sometime. Actualy, its a lyric from AC/DC (a rather ruckus heavy metal band for those of you not hip to such things). No, I don't believe hell is a place to look forward to... I don't believe in the existence of a hell or a heaven or a life after this one for that matter. The entire concept of a life after death didn't enter your monotheistic belief system till around 250 BCE. Its a Greco-Roman idea that was incorporated durring the Hellenistic period. I believe it to be a fabrication of the minds of men. Period. >I don't know what hell is like, but why >take a chance? What would you like me to do? Force myself into beleiving somehting I find, in a word, silly? If I told you you were doomed if you did not believe in flying pigs on planet endor, would you be able to force youself to buy into just so you "wouldn't take the chance"? I doubt it. What if Islam is right? What if Judaism is right? What if the Zoroansrians are right? What if the Romans were right (we're all doomed!). Are you not "taking a chance" by not believing in their religions? Yes, you are. You choose Christianity because you belive it to embody the truth. I choose to reject all organized religions because I believe them to all embody nothing but the imaginations of men... >I personally have chosen to not take that chance, and I >chose to live my life for Jesus, with the expectation of spending eternity >with him in Paradise. (I hope there's skiing there!) Wont skiing get boring after a few billion years? Jeff Lindborg "You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice. If you choose not to decide, you sill have made a choice. You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill. I will choose the path that's clear: I will choose freewill!" -RUSH [It's true that scholars believe that relatively concrete ideas about personal judgement after death were formulated fairly late in Judaism. However as far as I know those who ascribe them to outside influences believe it came from contact with Persians during the exile. Of course from early days there had been a confidence in God as a judge who would make things come out right, and it appears that there was at least some kind of survival in Sheol after death (though in the earlier books not much is said about it, and there is even a comment somewhere about not being able to praise God in Sheol). One of the changes in the prophets, e.g. Ezekiel, was an increasing personalization of the religion, so that for example it was no longer believed that children would be held responsible by God for the sins of their parents. It seems quite consistent with these developments that God's judgement should be seen as including people after their death, and not just the eventual triumph of the nation. My suspicion is that exposure to Persians during the exile may have in some ways catalyzed changes in concepts, but that those changes were consistent with the natural course of development of Judaism -- otherwise it's unlikely that Jews would have adopted them. I'll leave comments about Greek and Roman ideas to others that know more about that culture than I do. Commentaries I've seen have suggested that early Greek and Roman ideas about the afterlife were fairly similar to early Hebrew ideas, and so they wouldn't be the basis for any change in Jewish concepts. But I'm not going to say any more than that. --clh]