Such cruelty. For the love of god, let them consummate their love! Drill a hole in that plastic bird!

what a profoundly sad thread this has become.

i am not referring to the most excellent posts by @Chairman_woo and his discourse with @shinyblurry.

no.

it is the ignore function use i am talking about.
what an intellectually weak and vapid excuse to not engage with those who you may disagree with or (gasp) not actually like.

are your tender sensibilities so fragile as to not survive scrutiny of one who may disagree? or is it the manner in which they disagree?
is THAT the measure of how you judge anothers ideas?
words?
and you find this to be a valid reason?
this makes sense in your world?

well allow me to point out that without the dissenting voice challenging your preconceptions and only allowing those that parrot the same homogenized,pastuerized vanilla-same cloned vomit will only serve to create a stagnant pond of lifeless banality.

but as long as you are safe in your little bubble world in which you are always right and the circle-jerk perpetuates a lackluster and flaccid worldview.then thats ok right? as long as the echo chamber reflects how RIGHT you are.

@chingalera offends you?
good! because maybe you needed to be offended.

@VoodooV we have to apologize to @bareboards2 for derailing her thread?
no we fucking dont.
human discourse is by its very nature an ugly evolving creature.so get over yourself.love your commentary,hate your high horse..so get the fuck off it.

@bareboards2 is a very nice and sweet woman,and sometimes can be sensitive but she is a big girl and i dont think we will find her weeping in a dark,curtains drawn room.in fact i am willing to bet she loves the fact her video got such a great discussion going.so who are you to judge? or tell us what we should or should not do for that matter?

this brings me all back to my main point.
the sift used to have a vibrant community that discussed,argued and debated.the arguments were legendary and we still see old skool sifters refer to these people with fondness,even if they disagreed with them vehemently.
they were passionate and had something to say.
the list reads like a funeral march to those great voices who have passed and no longer engage in the sift:@MINK,@rougy,@choggie,@thinker247,@joedirt

what do we have now?
bunch of panty waist pussies who will only jump on the band wagon because other people join in the carnage.jumping on @BoBknight,@shinyblurry,@Lantern.
its like a bully convention with free crystal meth.
these folks might as well be black living in mississippi in the 1800's.
look! a chrsitan fundamentalist!
a conservative right winger!
lets lynch em......

and those tired pussies dont even have the courage to choke on their own hypocrisy.
wont even acknowledge that those in the minority have some serious balls to post comments on a secular left site.
this hasnt become a self-masturbatory thread.
its one big circle jerk.

so to those old skool peeps that i know still lurk here on the sift.
please come back.
for the love of god come back.
because these pussies are to busy sucking each others dicks.

im going to get some fresh air because you fuckers have sucked all the vibrance out of the air and left it stale with your own hubris.

and for the love of christ.get the fuck over yourself.

For the love of god. Bias is a noun. Biased is the word you're looking for. Bias is a thing you have. Biased is a thing you are. Type it with me. Biased.

BIASED.

For the love of god, just let him on the couch, preferably before the cenobites arrive.

The Funniest Human Being...who has ever tried to systematically destroy their face ever. I love Joan Rivers, she's goddamn hilarious. For the love of god get a good surgeon to fucking FIX YOU!

OH and Glee sucks! Burned every fucking story by season 2, no idea how to build characters, no idea what long term payoff is. One of the worst written shows fucking EVER.

My ability to ignore the infinitesimal possibility of a malfunctioning gravity well is entirely a result of me having bigger fish to fry. It is not rigorously justified, it is merely a practical concession to my finite mind. It is indeed technically fallacious and yet it has been completely accurate so far. That may very well be the limited scope us humans have to deal with.

I'm glad you can admit it. That's real progress.

You have not demonstrated that there must be absolute knowledge provided to us, because you have not provided an example of anything in this world that is inconsistent with an uncertain universe, nor have you shown an instance of us relying on reasonable assumptions failing in some unexpected manner.

The argument is intended to show that we all treat it as absolute knowledge in reality, and that without absolute knowledge, you don't know anything. Therefore, you live in contradiction to what you actually believe, and what you experience, and that God is the only actual way to make sense of your reality. You say you do just fine by assuming what is contrary to reason, because it works for you. Well, that's what you accuse me of doing, isn't it?

Unless, of course, you would like to provide me an example or two. Sorry, but "obviously better in every conceivable way" just doesn't cut it. You have to give examples. Come on, with "every conceivable way" available to chose from, you should be able to come up with at least one, no?

You don't see how knowing that God exists would be better than not knowing? If God exists and you don't know it, it means you are ignorant of everything that matters. It means you don't know why you're here, what you're supposed to do, and how you can achieve your greatest potential. It means that you will never have any lasting peace because you have no peace with God. It means you'll have never known the love of God, or all of the blessings that He has provisioned for you. It also means, that you'll have missed your chance for eternal life with Him. I think the benefits as well as the consequences are self-evident.

For the rest of you, here's some quotes from shinyblurry from another thread, just so you know where he's coming from.

----------------------------------

shinyblurry says...

Since you asked, I'll tell you why I believe in God. Up until 8 years ago I was agnostic. I was raised agnostic, without any religion. We celebrated Christmas and Easter, but that was about it. I wasn't raised to like or dislike religion, I was simply left free to decide what I believed.

At the time I became a theist, I didn't believe in a spiritual reality, or any God I had ever heard of, because like most of the people here I saw no evidence for it at all. I actually used to go into christian chat rooms and debate christians on what I saw to be inconsistances in the bible. A lot of what people have said in this thread are thoughts that I once had and arguments I used to use myself.

Then one day it all changed. I guess you could say my third eye was opened. I had something akin to a kundalini awakening, spontaneously out of nowhere. When it was over, I could suddenly perceive the spiritual reality. I didn't quite know what I was looking at, at the time..didn't truly understand what had happened to me (though through intuition i understood the great potential of it). It was only after researching it online and finding out about the chakras did I start to understand.

It's an amazing, truly truly amazing thing to find out everything you know is wrong. It is really utterly mind blowing. This however, was the conclusion I was forced to immediately reach however, because the evidence for it was right in front of my face. Everything that I had known up until the point I could perceive the spiritual was missing so many essential elements that I may as well have been just born.

I started to receive signs..little miracles, I would call them..like stepping in front of a vast panarama of nature and suddenly seeing it at an angle impossible to human sight, where everything is in focus at the same time, that produced such startling beauty it filled me to overflowing with estatic joy. I started to perceive there was a higher beauty, a higher love that had always been there but I had somehow missed it. I started to get the point, that there was something more. That there was a God.

When I conceded it was possible, to myself, it was then that I started to hear from Him directly. He let me know a couple of things, and proved to me that I wasn't just imagining Him. He showed me that He had been there my entire life, teaching me and guiding me as a child on, only I had been totally unaware of it. He showed me how we "shared space", and that not only could He read my mind, but in some essential way that He was what my mind is. That He is mind itself. He showed me how my thought process was more of a cooperative than a solitary thing.

Now before you say I just jumped at all of this because everyone wants to imagine a loving God, etc etc..untrue in my case. When I first found out He was definitely real, i was scared shitless. Up until that point, my thoughts about God were all negative. I figured if He did exist He probably hated me. You see, that is what I had gleaned growing up in a Christian society without actually knowing anything about it.

At this point I became a theist. I thought of God as a He because He seemed masculine rather than feminine, and also I thought of Him as the Creator. I didn't know anything about the bible, or the Holy Trinity, or what a messiah was, or any of that. I thought the God I knew must not be generally known because I had never seen anything out there that pointed to a loving God.

For the next 6 yeears I was on a spiritual journey. I studied all the various belief systems, spiritual or otherwise, all the religious history..east and west, north and south. I studied philosophy and esoteric wisdom, gurus and prophets. The one I really hadn't studied though, was Christianity. The reason being I didn't believe Jesus actually ever existed so I dismissed it out of hand.

Before I knew anything about Christianity, God taught me three important things about who He is. One, He taught me His nature is triune, that God is three. I didn't understand what that meant precisely, I just knew that was His nature. He also taught me that there was a Messiah. He taught me that there was someone whose job it was to save the world. The third thing and most important thing He taught me was about His love. That He loved everyone, and that He secretly took care of them whether they believed in Him or not. He showed me His perfect heart.

What led me to the bible was this: I asked Him who the Messiah was and He told me to look in a mirror. At the time I had been away from civilization for a few months and my beard had grown out for the first time in my life. I hadn't seen a mirror since I was clean shaven. I sought one out and when I saw my reflection I couldn't believe my eyes. I looked *exactly* like Jesus Christ. I mean to a T.

It was then I was forced to accept the possibility that Jesus was real. To be honest, I really didn't want to. I felt like I had a really special relationship with the Father and that Jesus could only get in the way of that. I didn't even feel like I could pay Him any real respect, because I knew the Father was greater than He was. But, I couldn't ignore what He was showing me, so I started to read the bible. To my surprise, I found out it was about the God I already knew.

Everything I read in the bible matched what I already knew about God . The Holy Trinity matched His triune nature. That there was a Messiah and Jesus was it. And most of all His love, His great and majestic love, for all people, was perfectly laid out in ways I had never before comprehended. The bible was the only information on Earth that accurately described what I already knew about God. That is how I knew it was true from the outset.

So that's when I became a Christian. I couldn't ignore the evidence. My journey to Christianity was based on rationality and logic, believe it or not, albiet with miracles and spirituality mixed in. Even the miracles themselves were logical, as God showed me how He worked from a meta-perspective, and that time and space didn't restrict Him at all. So there you have it..an interesting testimony to be sure.

I am unusual in that I didn't come to God on my own. God chose me, I didn't choose Him. I might never have come to God if He hadn't. I found out later that this means I was elected..in that, before God made the world He had already planned to create me to do His will. After He woke me up it never really took much faith to believe in God because He demonstrated to me His amazing power and ASTONISHING intellect in ways that were impossible to refute. Whatever brick wall I would put up, He would smash it down into oblivion. He favored me because I stayed hungry. I knew the truth was knowable, and I gunned for it 200 percent. I would have died for it.

So I empathize with the people here. Some of you might actually be elected too, it just is not your time to know. Some are probably angry/scared/rebelliious, while still others are intellectually incurious and swayed by hyperbole. I'm pretty sure not many people here have actually read the bible. I hadn't either..I was simply arrogant at the time.

So what I would say to people here is..there is far more going on than seems apparent..if you don't believe at least that there is a spiritual reality, you're practically rubbing two sticks together. God definitely exists and will prove it to you if you humble yourself, come to Him in sincerity, with your total heart and pray. Admit you're a sinner, and ask Him to be your Lord and Savior. Anyone can know God is real. I wish I had read it earlier..would have saved me a hardship. Save yourself the trouble and find out the truth for yourself, that God is real He loves you. God bless..

-------------------------------------

>> ^Sagemind:

I'm sorry Shinyblurry,
You seem like a genuine person who believes strongly what has been given to you.
BUT...
Really?
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities?
Those whom resist authority, will incur judgement from God?
That sounds a lot like Authority trying to rule over it's subjects.
Obey the government and all that it makes you do or you will incur the full wrath of our police force and military.
I have respect for myself and I have respect for others, but I don't need to respect authority that hasn't earned my respect. If we just comply with every command we are given, without question, then we condemn ourselves to be ruled and subjugated by the very power that is evil. Absolute Power is but Evil indeed.
If everyone bowed down and gave their power away, then there would be nothing left but mindless drones (sheep) serving the ruling class. This is something I WILL NEVER DO. No one person shall have power over me. Not one power should ever have power over any free mind.
Because you have bowed and given yourself away, (which I feel is a weak-minded action - sorry, no offense intended, that's just how I feel,) doesn't mean it's a good idea. This would only work if power didn't corrupt absolutely.
Antiquated rules by an antiquated idea of governance.
>> ^shinyblurry:
Romans 13:1
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.
Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.



No offense taken and I appreciate your sincerity. I will elaborate here and say that to submit to the authorities doesn't mean unquestioning obedience. Anything commanded by the authorities which is contrary to what God has commanded should be disobeyed, because we should obey God rather than men. In general, though, it is to understand that God is the ruler of the nations, and He has established the authorities for His purposes, and that their authority ultimately derives from Him.

I won't bow down to corrupt human institutions, but I do give them the respect that they are due. You are right, in that we could never completely submit to an authority because they are all corrupt, but there is one authority that is not corrupt, which is God, and ultimately that is the authority we submit to when we obey the lesser authorities. I think you're hitting on the main issue that some have, which is that they don't want to give up total control to any authority; as you said, with humans it isn't warranted, but with God it is warranted, not only because He is worthy of it, but because in the context of His sovereignty the control we have is actually just an illusion.

To follow Jesus is not weak minded; if you look at American Christians, the rarest ones are those who are living sanctified lives which reveal the love of God. Rare, because following Jesus is not an easy thing, but a very difficult thing which takes a fullness of virtues, and this can only be done with Gods help. The weak Christians are the ones who are living as the world does and slandering His good name.

Matthew 7:14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

Yes He most certainly does, because we are one nation under God. We are all loved by God and He shows no partiality between persons, and He wants us to follow His example. Kudos to Chris for looking past partisan differences and giving credit to our President where it is due. I believe we should respect our leaders even if we disagree with them.

For the love of god, hold..the..camera..STILL.

Damn, I was hoping to be the first one to comment meaningfully about this subject: seems I came up short (zing!).

I am circumcised. My lady friend and I (who have been together more than five years) have discussed at length (oh! I'm too good) whether I would want a son of mine to be cut as well, so I have mulled this over quite a bit.

Being a nonsuperstitious man (read: nontheist), the only consideration on side of cutting my offspring is that moment in the shower when he is two years old and he asks, "Daddy, why are you different?" (Heading off those who do not yet have children in the close family, I should say that bathing at such a young age with the older crew is not uncommon no matter what your culture.) For a son to see that he is truly, physically different from his old man is probably quite a shock.

Here is the bottom line: I have ZERO PROBLEM WHATSOEVER telling my son that I was cut because of a superstition; that my penis looks the way it does because of a superstitious bond between my parents and their imaginary friend. I am in fact quite excited to tell my young man that there was a time when this kind of thing was necessary so that people could feel closer to whatever it was they thought made the universe. I am excited because it will engender in him the same cynicism that took me more than a decade to discover.

My own father was born and raised Catholic and went to Jesuit schools from pre-K to law school. As Jesus-loving and God-fearing as he was on the surface, he made sure to let me know the barbarism is barbarism. To imagine that genital mutilation is part of a legitimate religious commitment is so far out of whack with current legal and cultural norms. Fuck circumcision and all its superstitious implications.

About your perceived arrogance. I'm not judging anybody on the Sift. You alone are the one who came here with a single-purpose account to try and convert people to your faith. I'm telling you how you come off and how it's affecting your goal. Your spamming of what I consider nonsense into the middle of what I consider rational discussions and your indifference to the fact you're irritating people, in my mind, gives me licence to be blunt. You could accept it as honest criticism and go from there.

I think you, and many other people here, see me through a fun-house mirror made up of your preconceived notions about God and Christians in general. The reasons I am here are not so cut and dry, but I certainly feel that God wants me to talk to people here.

About evidence. You and your religion are the ones showing up uninvited and making incredible claims. If you're making the claim, it's to you to provide a way to prove it. The only way a claim has any meaning is if there's some way to falsify it. But your claim is designed in such a way that it is literally impossible to falsify it. That's the weakness that inspired the spoof deities like FSM and the Invisible Pink Unicorn, and Bertrand Russell's Teapot: in practice, one is exactly as falsifiable as the other. In theory, your faith has seemingly falsifiable statements, but in practice, every time one of them is falsified, theologians and apologists work endlessly to somehow "make" it still hold true, sometimes by changing the meaning of words retroactively, or claiming retroactively it was just a metaphor or whatever. Sometimes it's a legitimate save, but usually it's intellectually dishonest. When someone points that out, you come up with some other intellectually dishonest way of getting out of that too.

This website is open to the public, is it not? If so, then in what sense am I uninvited?

My claim isn't "designed", it is simply the fact of what I believe. I don't modify it to escape someones inquiry. You like to make some bold claims about what it is, or isn't, but you never happen to back them up with evidence. As I told you earlier, it is falsifiable. You could prove it to be logically inconsistent. You could find the body of Jesus. You could disprove the major facts of the bible. You cannot claim it is unfalsifiable. The problem with your spoof deities is that they have no explanatory power. A flying teapot explains exactly nothing..

Here's an example of what I mean: You make the claim that God is all-loving. To me, if words have meaning, "all-loving" that means God will only do loving things. But he commits mass murder several times. Now, any human that even once had ever beat somebody up, even in the heat of passion, would be disqualified from the category of "all-loving". But for God, there's always an apologist loophole because you'd decided beforehand that God was all-loving and will stop at nothing to make sure that label sticks.

What the scripture says is that God is love. Not that He is loving, but that He is love itself. Yes, it is true that God took the lives of thousands of people in the Old Testament because of disobedience. That is indisputable. What you're claiming is that this was "mass murder". The fundamental question being posed here is, does God have the right to take a life? If He does, then there is nothing unjust about what He did, and therefore it is not inconsistent with His love.

Now, God is the author and sustainer of life. Meaning, that life is a gift and a privilege for human beings. There is no fundamental right to be alive. Neither is there anything we can do to continue our life a second longer than God ordains. When we are born and when we die is entirely in His hands. He is the one who is causing our lungs to receive breathe, who is maintaining the coherence in our atomic structure. So what life we do have is a tender mercy from God, especially considering the fact that all of us abuse His creation and spit in His face on a constant basis.

Further, God has ordained that the punishment for sin is death. The people you speak of in scripture were all sinners, and most of them grievous sinners at that. Why is God unjust for enforcing His law? What is wrong with God enforcing His law at His prerogative?

Considering that we live because of God, and that it is a gift which can be revoked at any time because of sin, why is it unjust for God to do so? If you're going to say I am being intellectually dishonest, then prove it and explain why. Where is the flaw in my reasoning here?

Or the claim of intercessory prayer. Of the rigorous studies that have been done, all have said there is no correlation between prayer and positive health effects, even when religious groups sponsor the study. To anybody using reason, this proves that prayer doesn't work. But you need so badly for it to be true that you ignore the statistical evidence, and rely instead on anecdotes or the studies (however rigorous) that showed a positive effect, or you dismiss all the studies because they are science, and science is a false religion, or whatever. Regardless, as the result, "Prayer doesn't work" is unacceptable, any results by any method you will invent fault with, even if you agreed to the method beforehand.

Some Christians may feel that way, but only because they don't understand scripture:

Luke 4:12

And Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

The Lord doesn't perform on camera for skeptics because He isn't a guinea pig subject to our experiments. Those who test the Lord will not get any results.

Hebrews 11:6

But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

>> ^messenger

Firstly, while Jesus was born a human being, He is the Son of God. He is eternal, and has always existed. Jesus was born sinless because that is His nature.

Secondly, Jesus voluntarily went to the cross. When Satan came to tempt Him, He was offered the choice to forgo the cross and assume kingship over the entire world. Instead, He chose to be obedient to His Father. He did what He did out of love, both for us, and for His Father. Not only this, but He went to the cross to destroy the work of the devil. He defeated Satan on the cross, by breaking the power of sin and death. The cross was a victory for Him, not a defeat. He bore our punishment willingly, and He fixed what human beings had broken in the process. What the cross demonstrates is the love of God, that even while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

>> ^xxovercastxx

In reply to this comment by dannym3141:
That blurry guy is a complete cunt. Don't care what religion you are, you discuss things with an open mind and try to see the other's point of view rather than seeing them as an opponent. I'd be said if you stopped providing your input. Ignoring him is a solution - a LOT of people do.


Thanks for your response I'll think on it.

The other thing that usually drives me insane is that he'll ask questions about something I've JUST answered! BUT, his literal lack of knowledge (in this case general relativity and special relativity) is making him spout buffoon and sadly very uninformed statements or opinions, often aimed at me and my previous post (well-informed and standard--backed up with testing and experimentation); which as I said is hilarious as I already answered it in that post "right above" and he can't read between the lines to see that the answer is sitting the for all to see, he just doesn't understand the answer, nor do I think he ever will see it very soon to be VERY fair and blunt. His main issue is with telling himself the truth in the first place and he can't yet do that with simple children's stories--not to be a snob or complete snide remark, but it is merely a fact that he will not accept the truth--faith and platitudes are far more important to him in his life right now than are being able to build:

An arena that can fit 100,000 people at night and day with the top open and closed; elevators, cashiers, electricity, Wi-Fi, air-conditioning, heating, sound, seating, walk-paths and stairs, vendors--food and accessories, security, camera & video, HDTV and a HD-JUMBOTRON, housing for teams and workers/staff, office space, etc, etc, etc... Places that are amazing to behold in their construction and if you're part of the management of the construction at any level or you have to be THE manager that keeps the building going once it's done you will find out very soon that a lot of what he says is utter rubbish; especially if you are the engineer that designed this Behemoth with every life in mind so that they would NOT be die to some kind of mental lapse; this is a job (like no other really) that has a HUGE amount of pressure on it and ALL THAT you have to rely on is: Physics (and that little brain of yours + a good calculator and drafting tools ). Does he have even any idea of how incredibly smart these people are, then he comes in and mocks Einstein like he's just this buffoon that of course NEVER thought of the COMPLETELY OBVIOUS stuff. He would NEVER do that; Einstein made people that build the greatest structures on Earth look like idiot children! I'm guessing that was skipped in seminary!? That little thing he thinks is so utterly useless to talk about in the grand scheme of things is so vitally important to everything he does EVERY day (and I really wonder if he knows HOW MUCH we depend on Science and it's discoveries--I mean your whole house would basically disappear without the inventions, it's a complete joke and I really do think he takes it for granted.

It's hard to EVER have a conversation with someone that loves their God SO MUCH they have their OWN God complex! I refuse to talk to a brick wall I'm not a damn mad man!

Anyway, thanks again.

BLAARGH!!! It just gets frustrating, especially when they don't seem to be trolls--so ignore it is.

@shinyblurry

You mentioned a bunch of metaphysical rules of the universe above. I'm assuming that since God created the universe and everything and everything, that he created both the physical rules and these metaphysical rules too.

Here are the ones you mentioned --> with my paraphrasing of the metaphysical "rule" as I understand it:
* "sin" --> Rule: Sin exists and is defined by a particular set of actions/thoughts/etc.
* "death" --> Rule: Death exists
* "He created [Hell] for the devil and his angels" --> Rule: Hell exists and has those properties.
* "Their sin brought death into the world." --> Rule: When the first person sins, death will come to everyone.
* "He bore the punishment (death) for all sins so that through Him, we could be forgiven for our sins and be given eternal life." --> Rule: For humans to be forgiven for our sins and be released from death, someone had to be sacrificed.
* "What was required was a man who lived a perfect, sinless life in total obedience to God" --> Rule: The sacrifice had to be a perfect human to be effective.

The fact that these rules exist means that God decided they should exist, right? So, why did God invent these particular rules? Why did he invent the concept of sin in the first place? Why not let us rut around like the other animals doing whatever occurs to us without the need for judgement? Why did he invent death if he loved us so much? Why did he create the rule that when one person sinned, the whole of creation would die (especially after he created humans such that they would sin all the bloody time)? Why did God create such a horrible place as Hell? Why not just love Satan and Satan's angels (all his creations) enough so that they would be good again as he expects from you and me? Why would God create such an impossible condition for the forgiveness of sins that he would have to create and send his son to be killed by his fallen creation?

This all sounds like plot-driving fantasy writing to me (Rule: the one ring can only be destroyed by being dropped into the fires of Mount Doom; Rule: Fairy dust and happy thoughts will give you the ability to fly; Rule: Walking into the special closet without thinking about it will put you in Narnia), and that's why I think the Bible is fiction too. They're such random rules of cause and effect (not to mention some of the random rules of sin itself) that they can only lead to disaster and disappointment... unless they're just plot devices that lead to a bunch of awesome fantasy stories. And that's what I currently believe.

People are not sent to hell for doubting the love of God. They are sent to hell for their sins. ... God doesn't want to send anyone to hell. He created it for the devil and his angels, not human beings. He loves us, which is why God sent His only Son to bear the punishment for our sins, in our place, so we wouldn't have to go to hell. He took all of our sins upon Himself on the cross, and died in our place.

If God doesn't want to send us to Hell, why did he invent rules so that he would? Can't God just change or break his own rules and stop sending us to Hell?

God is Holy and just.

By who's definition? What can those human words of judgement possibly mean when applied to a god? And if we are following the human meaning of "just", how is it just to create the concept of sin, create death, create rules where if you sin you die, create hell as the punishment for sin, and then create humans such that we would definitely sin? That's not just in the least. And yes, you say that you and I have the chance to redeem ourselves, but what about those of us who lived and died before we had that chance? Why should they all have to suffer? They will never have the chance to accept Jesus as saviour.

We will experience life as God had originally designed it, here on Earth, before the fall.

That's a new one for me. Can you give me a quote? I was pretty sure heaven was up in the sky somewhere, even according to the Bible. Didn't Jesus "rise" into heaven?

Now, because of Jesus, we can be forgiven and go free. Jesus paid our fine in full. This is the good news, that through Jesus our sins are forgiven, and that He grants us eternal life. Pray to Jesus Christ and ask Him to come into your life as Lord and Savior, and you will be saved.

If my fine is paid in full and I've been given eternal life, why am I praying for anything?