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I converted to Catholicism after many years deep in the drug culture, AMA

The Christian God, Yahweh, is just one god among many, all of which are in the foreground of an unspeakable unified whole. Yahweh is pretty capricious, vain and cruel. Everything you ask of him has to be on his terms and has to play into his image or he will issue various retributions on you. His attitudes are demonstrated by his followers throughout time, how they have destroyed and assimilated cultures. Most of the other deities hate Yahweh and you can't even utter his name in their temples.

I don't buy the idea of original sin. We are born with certain things we individually must take care of, one might call it past karma. But it's not punishment, it's just your growth trajectory in this life. A priest can neither declare your sin for you or absolve you of it. The inner work is yours and yours alone. It's between you and the divine. The only real sin is living a life that runs contrary to the way god created you. As long as you are true to yourself you can live a pretty blissful life. It doesn't mean you won't be challenged but your true nature will always be something you can count on.

I see the seed of truth in the Bible but it is so heavily distorted that you can't extract precise truth from it anymore, not without rigorous study and a lot of inward reflection; but the Church does not want you to reflect that deeply. You should bring your thoughts and confessions to them, so they can tell you what they mean, and what god is telling you. Middle men, basically.

Jesus is real, he is an enlightened being. I don't know if the stories about him are exactly true. He's also not the only enlightened being out there. He's in a sea of many. It's possible to experience liberation through working with him. But to do really do so, you have to decouple yourself from Christianity and its codified systems. You could also choose to work with others, or none. There are many possibilities.
 
SKL, I hope you're well; my question is about hell.

Do you believe in hell? If so, what do you think it is like? Im starting to believe hell is real though its not literally a lake of fire and brimstone, the earth looks identical to the pre-hell earth but now almost everyone is either an enemy or indifferent. I think this is what Sartre meant when he said "hell is other people"

The main question I have is do you believe there's any way out?

I was reading this

3. Are the "Flames" of Hell Literal?

It should be understood that both the joy of heaven and the pains of Hell are indescribable this side of eternity. And just as the Church warns against seeing heaven as a “worldly” sort of extension of life on this earth, so it is with Hell. The inspired authors cannot describe Hell adequately using human language; thus, the “flames of fire” are simply the most painful things we can imagine on this earth used to attempt to describe the indescribable to some degree.

So, are the “flames of fire” of Hell literal? No, they are not. In fact, it should be obvious that they are not literal right now because the souls in Hell do not presently have bodies. You can't "light up" a soul with a match.

If this is true, then, what is the nature of "the pains of Hell?"

CCC 1472 answers this question succinctly:

These two punishments [the Catechism is here speaking of both Purgatory and Hell] must not be conceived of as a kind of vengeance inflicted by God from without, but as following from the very nature of sin.

Again, the Catechism emphasizes the fact that Hell is primarily eternal separation from God. As CCC 1033 says,

“The state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed.” It is absolute emptiness and isolation beyond anything we can fathom. The "pains" that are quite real, quite literal, and consist of both the pain of loss, and the pain of sense, i.e., they involve the body after the resurrection of the body, "follow from the very nature of sin," or, they arise from the inside out, not from the outside in.

What is mortal sin but the rejection of the love of God and neighbor? It is ultimate selfishness. Ultimately, the damned will simply get what they wanted—themselves for all eternity!

It is said that a man will go insane if he is kept in isolation for too long because human beings are so ordered toward communion with God and others. Hell will be that isolation that would lead anyone to insanity, but the condemned will never be able to lose their faculties. They will be fully cognizant of the pain of their isolation.
Click to expand...


sounds about right.. :(
 
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So, what made you think that this vengeful pschyopath described in Bible (OT) is the Creator of the World?
 
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