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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Greg or e who wrote (40122)	8/7/2013 4:18:19 AM
From: Solon	1 Recommendation Recommended By average joe Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69300

" they will find that they are sinners and that Jesus..." No. They will find they are people and that they can think and judge and that it is right to think and to judge. They will begin to understand what great men and women have known for centuries. infidels.org "...The doctrine of eternal punishment is in perfect harmony with the savagery of the men who made the orthodox creeds. It is in harmony with torture, with flaying alive and with burnings. The men who burned their fellow-men for a moment, believed that God would burn his enemies forever. No civilized men ever believed in this dogma. The belief in eternal punishment has driven millions from the church. It was easy enough for people to imagine that the children of others had gone to hell; that foreigners had been doomed to eternal pain; but when it was brought home when fathers and mothers bent above their dead who had died in their sins -- when wives shed their tears on the faces of husbands who had been born but once -- love suggested doubts and love fought the dogma of eternal revenge. This doctrine is as cruel as the hunger of hyenas, and is infamous beyond the power of any language to express -- yet a creed with this doctrine has been called "the glad tidings of great joy" -- a consolation to the weeping world. It is a source of great pleasure to me to know that all intelligent people are ashamed to admit that they believe it -- that no intelligent clergyman now preaches it, except with a preface to the effect that it is probably untrue. I have been blamed for taking this consolation from the world -- for putting out, or trying to put out, the fires of hell; and many orthodox people have wondered how I could be so wicked as to deprive the world of this hope. The church clung to the doctrine because it seemed a necessary excuse for the existence of the church. The ministers said: "No hell, no atonement; no atonement, no fall of man; no fall of man, no inspired book; no inspired book, no preachers; no preachers, no salary; no hell, no missionaries; no sulphur, no salvation." At last, the people are becoming enlightened enough to ask for a better philosophy. The doctrine of hell is now only for the poor, the ragged, the ignorant. Well-dressed people won't have it. Nobody goes to hell in a carriage -- they foot it. Hell is for strangers and tramps. No soul leaves a brown-stone front for hell -- they start from the tenements, from jails and reformatories. In other words, hell is for the poor. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a poor man to get into heaven, or for a rich man to get into hell. The ministers stand by their supporters. Their salaries are paid by the well-to-do, and they can hardly afford to send the subscribers to hell. Every creed in which is the dogma of eternal pain is doomed. Every church teaching the infinite lie must fall, and the sooner the better. -- The Twentieth Century, N. Y., April 24, 1890.