Quote Originally Posted by Breukelen advocaat
The idea of eternal damnation and burning forever, simply because a person cannot, or will not, believe in Christ is about the worst kind of violence ever imagined. Is this an example of your god's "peace and forgiveness" for the creatures he designed?
hah, well hey lets not start calling him 'my god' or anything now.

I don't think that the whole "believe in me or burn forever in hell" is really Jesus' message. Jesus used parables and metaphors to speak to the people because essentially people are dumb and were unable to grasp what he was talking about. What is in hell? Fire. What does fire do? turns things into ash, into nothing. Hell could just as well be a stat of mind, it could be being lost in the nothingness of existance, who knows.

I believe that whole puritan garbage about god torturing people in hell is a little far-fetched and better as an attention grabber than something to believe in. Its also useful to get those unfortunate people who have poor reasoning skills to blindly follow certain dogmas.