Anyone ever asked a Biblical literalist what it means that the Bible doesn't forbid...

[DuaneBidoux]

women lying with women? At least not that I've ever found.

For all these thumpers that take everything in the Bible literally, including an Earth being created in seven days, I just wonder. It's gotta' be okay right?

As a straight male it would be hard on me to deal with the thought that the sexiest lesbian couple I have ever known of, Ellen and Portia, are going to hell.

Seriously.

[RandomThoughts]

1. If they go for that, then wouldn't everyone go for something or another?

And as far as I am concerned, someone of any amount of love and kindness, that is not perfect, like nobody is perfect, although not saying what might make them not perfect.

If someone is going to try to take them to hell, they are going to have to take me down also, since it would be no more fair for them to go, then anyone else, including me.

Becuase that makes sense.

So people should not go to hell.

[DuaneBidoux]

2. People don't go to hell. Hell is a bullshit invention of people trying to control everyone else.

In spite of my specific comment about Ellen and Portia I really do wonder if anyone has seriously pressed these people on this point.

There is no way out of this literal quandry other than to do cognitive gymnastics of Houdini proportions.

[kentauros]

3. You can certainly try,

but the narrow-focused will never yield. It will be exactly as you say, "cognitive gymnastics of Houdini proportions" ;)

[RandomThoughts]

5. The only argument for the existence of hell

would be a self created existence where by free will someone would not get out of it.

As long as you are willing to learn, and things change, hell becomes impossible.

[RandomThoughts]

4. The concept of coercion to get capitulation is wrong

First off, if someone was going to let you go to hell, then they would not deserve any devotion anyways, so what I think of as the better spirit of God does not allow that, so no reason to fear it, and once it is not feared it does not exist.

So the whole concept makes no sense. I understand it as a social idea to get compliance, but love can't come from a threat based on fear.

And everyone has something that makes them not perfect, so the idea that some should go and not others also does not make sense.

[Kat45]

6. IIRC, it is mentioned in there once.

Sorry, I have to get myself to bed now so I don't have time to look it up.

[jberryhill]

7. Thou shalt not lie

I always took that to mean that nobody should lie with anyone else.

That pretty much covers the waterfront, no?

[Manifestor_of_Light]

8. It's all control freak bullshit.

I like what Lin Yutang said in "The Importance of Living" published in 1936. He was the son of Christian missionary parents in China and became a Taoist. He asked the minister, 'How can they torture me in Hell if I don't have a body?"

They had no answer for that.


"The Importance of Living" is a fabulous book, and nobody knows about it now.