God is scary

Tfw you realize God is real and that has massive implications for your life but you don't want all the responsibility and wish you could go back to simple atheism but can't because there obviously is a personal God

Tfw the idea of an afterlife scares you and all you really want is to die in the secular sense

This is too much for me to deal with bros. Any literature on this?

>idea of an afterlife scares
>become a protestant
>go to heaven
AfterLifeHacks

Heaven sounds awful. Have you really thought of eternity? Maybe my fear of eternity would be gone in heaven, but living forever and ever and ever is a very unsettling thought.

Especially because over the past year before I found God I came to terms with my death. I not only made peace with the Idea, but was suicidal at times and was comforted by it. Now I have to live knowing I'll never have that comfort. Maybe in heaven I won't need it?

This is just my own interpretation of the afterlife, so take from this what you will, but I genuinely believe concepts such as "boredom" or "waiting" don't exist in the afterlife, or at least not in heaven.

Yeah maybe. I figure it could be an Evangelion type thing where we don't really exist the way we do now at all. Thanks for the response.

Wait until you realize this Calvinism is true. That will be fun.

what convinced you? was it a jordan peterson lecture, and if so which one?

>that* Calvinism
>tfw predestined typo

It sounds awful because you're thinking of eternity or heaven as being "in time" where you would experience day after day. If you're a Christian you would believe that God is outside of time, and that when you die you're united with him so it would follow that we would also go "outside of time" when we die.

Pagans were also afraid of eternity, which is why they believed in circular life rather than linear.

>Maybe my fear of eternity would be gone in heaven, but living forever and ever and ever is a very unsettling thought.
user, you're a Hindu or Buddhist in denial.

Reading Nietzsche ironically. Peterson was part of it but he even explicitly denies the evidence for Christ in one of his lectures.

Nietzsche made me much more interested in religion and morality so I started reading. Then I read some apologetics, got into Aquinas, read some Tolstoy, kierkegaard, etc. Still had big doubts about the Jesus thing but the idea of God is pretty much obvious once you reject materialism.

The argument for God from morality is pretty good for getting to a personal God. Although there's other ideas, like arguing from Soliphism, that seem pretty convincing. I see no point to living without faith. I've read a lot of philosophy trying to overcome nihilism. While I think you can do it and be secular, it's hard to justify. If you're going to be a hedonist the logical thing to do is heroin or suicide. The golden rule with no enforcement makes sense from an Evolutionary perspective/game theory perspective. The idea is its in your best intrest to be moral, but there's nothing to enforce that. I don't have much empathy. Nothing is to stop me from doing bad things for selfish gain without God. The morality just wouldn't work for me.

From there you have to get from personal God to Jesus and not some other religion or none of the above. So you look into the historical evidence where everything is pretty well documented for those ancient events. The near universal agreement on the broad claims of Jesus by secular scholars. Then you're left with 2 possibilities. 1. A vast conspiracy with no historical evidence 2. Christ is who he said he was

I'm over simplifying the Jesus part, and that's shakyer than the first 2 claims. It might just be cultural. However I'm comforted by Christian ideals being the basis of western civilization. It's so successful, it's such a good meme, there must be some truth to it. I find Islam abhorrent, and there's no eye witnesses to backup the divine claims. Christianity makes pretty specific verifiable claims.

Besides some crazy protestants, the church seems pretty reasonable. It just seems irrational if you haven't studied it. They're fairly committed to reason and critically examining beliefs. Worst case scenario I'm wrong and never find out I was, because I lack the awareness while dead, and I lived a happier more meaningful life.

I wrote this on my phone in the middle of a conversation, sorry about the spelling. I'm still new to this, and probably have some misconceptions. If anyone has any holes in my reasoning or book recommendations I'd love to hear them. Books I've seen arguing for secularism are almost all terrible.

>The golden rule with no enforcement makes sense from an Evolutionary perspective/game theory perspective. The idea is its in your best intrest to be moral, but there's nothing to enforce that.

That's one thing that I don't think a lot of utilitarian's understand. They'll admit that good and evil exists, but they say that morality is based on some variant of 'ensuring the safety of the greatest number of people.' The problem is that without some sort of transcendent standard like God there's no reason that I should be concerned with the safety of the greatest number of people. Utilitarianism by itself doesn't provide sufficient reason not to steal or murder because that stuff can be useful on an individual level.

Read "On the Incarnation of the Word of God" by Athanasius.

Are you baptized?

I was baptized Lutheran when I was young, although I'm leaning towards not protestant at the moment. Still learning more about denominations.

Either of you care to elaborate? I don't know much about Calvinism but from what I looked up it sounds dumb, no offense. What makes it true?

In case you'd like to know, the only orthodox (speaking broadly) Christians who would want to rebaptize you would be Baptists and some Eastern Orthodox. Everyone else would consider you baptized.

Romans 9:9 For this is the word of promise, At this time will I come, and Sarah shall have a son.
10 And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac;
11 (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;)
12 It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger.
13 As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.
14 What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid.
15 For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.
16 So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.
17 For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth.
18 Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.
19 Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?
20 Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?
21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?
22 What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:
23 And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory,
24 Even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?

Don't you just hate when you ask somebody why they believe the things they do and they just start spitting bible verses at you? Maybe it's just me.

The Bible, of course.

>Heaven sounds awful. Have you really thought of eternity? Maybe my fear of eternity would be gone in heaven, but living forever and ever and ever is a very unsettling thought.
Have you ever confessed your feelings to a grill? It's scary at first. Then it's not.
Well, eternal life won't be easy and it won't be too repetitive. God made pi, fi etc.

>Especially because over the past year before I found God I came to terms with my death. I not only made peace with the Idea, but was suicidal at times and was comforted by it. Now I have to live knowing I'll never have that comfort. Maybe in heaven I won't need it?
Are you me?

Ahem.
Where does the Bible begin?
Where does it end?

I don't even know where the linear time meme comes from; the prophesies are always in a layered format for the very reason that they happen if you get the pieces together.

Yeah and it backfired horribly and now I'm closed off and vague with every girl and have much better results. Girls don't want to see your feelings, they want a strong stoic man they can rely on.

>Are you me?
Probably not. These are very universal human dilemas that people have been wondering about for thousands of years. Of course we're mostly going to have the same conclusions and experiences.

Here's a book on the subject then.

What about it did you find to be dumb? Easiest to go from there.

1. Prodestantism in general seems silly. Coming in from Atheism it makes sense to go into the original Church

2. The idea of the covenant, from what I skimmed, implies taking genesis literally, which is absurd. I might be way off base.

So you genuinely feel like you need a divine parent figure dictating right and wrong arbitrarily in order to prevent you from acting destructively to society?

>1. Prodestantism in general seems silly. Coming in from Atheism it makes sense to go into the original Church

Which is what exactly? Is it determined by institutional continuation or continuation of belief? If institutional, which institution? The Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Church both have continuity from the apostolic age. Within those churches, do their beliefs have continuity to the apostolic age? Which one? What if they don't? Is there something you can check them against? etc. It sounds like you have read some simplistic Catholic apologetics and haven't thought through this issue, which is expected. Whatever you end up doing, it is more complex than saying, "Well I'll join the original church."

2. The idea of the covenant, from what I skimmed, implies taking genesis literally, which is absurd. I might be way off base.

The New Testament takes it as a literal event and there is nothing in Genesis which would render it non-literal. It takes place in the context of a description of the physical lineage of Adam, which is repeated in Luke. Christian soteriology is predicated upon it being true, that there was a literal Fall which brought death and suffering into the world.

The Calvinist understanding of predestination did not bother you then?

>original Church

I mean... the early Christians had very little in common with Catholicism.

I'm not saying I need God to tell me not to murder or steal, I'm saying that without God there's no good reason not to murder or steal. The difference is the explanation because no matter what I'm not going to murder or steal.

The way you put it is very snarky. It's not a divine parent figure, it's being itself. It's a perfection in all things that's nessecary for them to exist in the first place.

What enforces morality? Why shouldn't I steal if no one finds out? Why shouldn't I kill or torture or do anything wrong if it suits my ends? You're telling me just to be good arbitrarily. That's ridiculous, and assuming there's no God a weak mentality. Suppose I am perfectly good and want to do good things, as enforced by secular morality. Wouldn't it be better to do bad things to serve some greater good? For example, why not steal from the rich and give to the poor? Why not torture terrorists?

We don't do those things because life is sacred, and to some extent so are property rights. Okay, why? You end up moving the goalposts. It doesn't solve anything. Most arguments do this. God neately solves all problems with moral foundation.

>Within those churches, do their beliefs have continuity to the apostolic age?

Catholicism doesn't even have continuity with itself from 100 years ago.

I'm actually leaning towards orthodoxy, I like the emphasis on mysticism. I actually don't know much about the subject. If you know of any good resources for learning more about Prodestantism I'd check them out. As it stands it just doesn't seem convincing. Although I would say it doesn't seem to matter much as far as salvation goes.

>The New Testament takes it as a literal event and there is nothing in Genesis which would render it non-literal.

It contradicts cosmology and evolution. The story can't be literal. I have a physics degree, I know a lot about cosmology, there's extremely good evidence for its claims. That's not to say God can't be involved, there's a lot we don't understand. But it clearly contradicts much of Genesis. Why would an ancient manuscript be literal?

??
No changes in dogma = continuity.

I had a moment two years ago when I realized that I would likely spend eternity in Hell because I am an unrepentant sinner and even if I did confess I would likely continue to sin because I am weak. I was a wreck.

>It contradicts cosmology and evolution. The story can't be literal.

Whether it intends to communicate an event literally is different from whether it is true. You're confounding two different things here.

>I have a physics degree, I know a lot about cosmology, there's extremely good evidence for its claims. That's not to say God can't be involved, there's a lot we don't understand. But it clearly contradicts much of Genesis.

I think the best defense is the patristic understanding of catastrophism. Essentially, that due to cosmic changes occurring due to the introduction of decay and death into the world, humans are incapable of discerning anything about the pre-fall (and in some cases pre-flood) world by observing the present state of reality. We are epistemologically severed from this time, unless we are given information about it by God. It's looking at the current decayed, unnatural state of the world and reading that back into a period where nature behaved quite differently. Modern science is predicated on this uniformitarianism, that the way things are today, they were such always. This is of course an unprovable assumption.

>Why would an ancient manuscript be literal?

Because it's intending to communicate a historical event. Is Herodotus literal?

Okay, apologies, I know it was glib, sorry if it came across snarky. I guess I'm just trying to get across my incomprehension.

I guess there are a couple of points here: one is that it is, to my mind, no more ridiculous (and in fact rather less) to root morality in social contract and reciprocity than it is to root it in theism. To act (mostly) like a good citizen isn't weakness, it's a principled choice.

More importantly, I don't think it's true that religion elegantly solves all moral questions, any more than any secular philosophy. I know of no Christians at all (and I believe very few can exist) who accept all the bible's moral precepts literally and wholeheartedly. And if you don't do that, you're still making moral judgements, still not submitting your moral agency entirely to a pre-existing system, so you still have dilemmas and quandaries.

Some of your examples even highlight that quite nicely; you mention things like stealing from the rich to give to the poor, but plenty of Christians would see that as justifiable to a greater or lesser extent. And plenty of Christians are in favour of torturing terrorists, too (I'm reasonably sure that more Christians than atheists support that in the US).

The Buddha was a real person as well, but you don't have a Buddhist mindset because you live in the West.

Realistically, for me, eternal reccurence as Nietzsche described for ubermensch philosophy is the actual reality of the universe and religions like Christianity and Buddhism are deep understandings and justifications of them. Both of them place extreme importance on becoming divine in before you die in order to live in eternal peace. But the teaching of it is the actual peace.

I'm a pseudo though, and this is just a little rant.

Pope Boniface VIII: Unam Sanctam (1302)
>Furthermore, we declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.

Catechism of the Catholic Church:
>874. ... Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation.
>841. ... The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day

??

Genesis has very deep symbolism, it's fantastic literature. That doesn't mean that we started off with 2 humans who were tempted to eat an apple by a talking snake. That story says some pretty profound things about the human condition. It's denser in meaning than almost any story we know of. It's profound. That doesn't mean it's literally true. It was written by men, we can trace the ideas back thousands of years.

To say we can't know anything before some time period because some book that was written by multiple authors thousands of years ago multiple times contradicts it is absurd. The theology you're inserting in has no basis in scripture anyways. It's holding onto an unfounded theological theory over easily verifiable claims. It makes much more sense to hold on to most of the claims of your religion and change the way you interpret the scripture in light of obvious scientific truth.

Is there a difference between a story that is deeply symbolic, profound and dense in meaning at the point of its conception and one that starts off as a literal incorrect explanation for human genesis that simply acquires symbolism, profundity and meaning simply through being around so long and so heavily re-interpreted and referred back to so many times?

>The theology you're inserting in has no basis in scripture anyways.

You do not know what you are talking about, but you think that you do. Try reading the Hexaemeron by Basil the Great. I'll leave it at that.

I was a Buddhist before this, in the secular sense. On Nietzsche I think he's naive and too optimistic about the human condition. We can't create our own values, they always come from somewhere. Eternal Recurrence is an interesting idea but it's just a thought experiment. The ubermensch is very interesting, but none of us qualify as one. If you accept the idea then you should dedicate your life to trying to produce an ubermensch or serving one because you're probably not one.

You are literally me, even down to the Nietzsche bit.

I mean, it contradicts relativity, photons are timeless. You can't prove the epistemology, you're correct about that. But there's good reasons for believing that our laws are consistent. Namely that we observe them to be. Youre Implying the whole universe, which is very ordered and looks the same across billions of years of space and time, is a vast conspiracy by God. And the actual truth lies in Genesis. We should believe Genesis over what God has allowed us to see of the cosmos.

god is for faggots fuck off. go belive in the easter bunny.

>But there's good reasons for believing that our laws are consistent. Namely that we observe them to be.

We observe that they are currently consistent, yes.

>Youre Implying the whole universe, which is very ordered and looks the same across billions of years of space and time,

Begging the question. You can only "prove" this if you assume it beforehand. That's the point.

>is a vast conspiracy by God. And the actual truth lies in Genesis. We should believe Genesis over what God has allowed us to see of the cosmos.

The fact that you don't believe it doesn't mean that it's been hidden from you. If you've been given the correct answer but choose to try to find it on your own anyway, that isn't God's fault.

Since you stated you were interested in Eastern Orthodoxy, an authoritative text on this issue is "Genesis, Creation, and Early Man" by Fr. Seraphim Rose.

intellectual plebeian confusing his own narrow minded misconceptions about religion for insight spotted

>root morality in social contract and reciprocity
What do you mean by root? I can agree intelectualy with social contract theory and reciprocity, that doesn't mean I'm going to do it. It's in my best interest to pretend to abide by it and then deny it behind closed doors. What stops me from doing that. That makes me a bad person, why? What's a bad person? What is bad? Why can't I be bad?

You can keep going with the questions, eventually you have to take some kind of moral axiom on faith. Either it's arbitrary, or God backs it up.

Your arguments about 'plenty' of Christians don't make any sense. Firstly the moral argument doesn't suppose a Christian God, just a God. Secondly it's anecdotal. Third just because one Christian does something doesn't mean anything.

Of course there are still dilemmas and quandries. I'm not saying God solves every moral issue. God solves the foundation of morality. Where does morality come from? That says nothing about what the morality is. The claims of secular ethics are the same as the basic claims of Jesus. It's just the golden rule. Religion has some more things to say than that, (teleologically suspending the ethical) but that's the gist of it. The issue isn't morality itself, it's the foundation of it.

I agree you can't prove the epistemology, but you can't 'prove' much of anything in the strictest sense. There's plenty of theories involving the laws of physics changing. It's a pretty common assumption to make certain theories work. We just haven't found any evidence of it. It's simpler to believe that they're constant. It's a good assumption even if it can't be proved. I'll check the book out, thanks

You're just confusing the issue by bringing the bible into it. When we say a" transcendent standard like God" it doesn't have to mean a Christian God.

God is not real you fucking faggot. JUST THINK ABOUT THE ABSURDITIES THAT ARISE IF YOU ASSUME A GOD EXISTS.

cool while you're at it say waddup to Santa Claus and El chupacabra

I believe in God because I've thought about the things that logically follow if we live in a universe without God, like moral relativism.

the assumption that there is no god is infinitely more absurd than the assumption that there is one

there is literally nothing conceivably more absurd than an inexplicable, meaningless extant reality

>I don't like this conclusion, therefore God is real

What caused the universe? What caused that? You need some first cause. Something that wasn't caused by anything else. Otherwise you can just say what caused that. What has those properties?

It can't be caused by anything, so it must be eternal. It caused everything so it must encompass everything so it has to be infinitely powerful and affect everything. It also has to be immaterial since it caused everything material. What's the only immaterial thing we know of? (conciousness)

What does that sound like?

Those are fairy tales, kind of like materialism.

>eternal reccurence is a thought experiment

No it's not. How do people not get this on this board? Yes Nietzsche used it to describe his ubermensch, but there is serious scientific possibility that it's true.

If time is eternal (I don't think it is in Physics, instead it collapses on itself and repeats like the universe), then all physical possibilities would have to happen eternally.

No, I believe God exists because I recognize that actual good and evil exists. A philosophically consistent moral relativist can't even tell you that torturing small children is wrong, and that is truly absurd.

A existence of a God wouldn't answer those questions. You would have the same things about him.

Why do you say that, Satan?

*would have to ask

>ape instincts to ensure a continuation of its own biomatter proves spirituality

ITT: how strange it is to be anything at all

>Putting scientific claims before moral ones not realizing that science is a moral enterprise
>Being this retarded

No you wouldn't. Read the argument again. Ask 'what properties would something have to have so you can't ask the question again?' Those properties happen to be the ones traditionally ascribed to God.

Not only that, but the idea eternal recurrence far outlives Nietzsche. It's found in a majority of religions around the world. The Mayans believed it, the Indians believed it, the Egyptians believed it. You could say Christianity is an exception in its belief of reaching an eternal heaven post-mortem.

Totes, but the way he uses it, at least in his later work, is as a thought experiment. It's also not backed up by modern cosmology, at best its a maybe. It's a powerful thought experiment, that doesn't make it true.

>Then you're left with 2 possibilities. 1. A vast conspiracy with no historical evidence 2. Christ is who he said he was
I'm probably going to get called a pseud for this, but this line (and your struggles in general) remind me a lot of C S Lewis. He went from basically agnostic atheist to dedicated Christian during his early adulthood and grappled with many of the same fears and questions you seem to be dealing with. I highly recommend you read some of his essays, maybe get a collection of them.

I can definitely relate to you, OP. I'm struggling with existential dread too. Find a body of believers strong in the faith and well-educated/intellectual. Also, speaking of intellectual, consider doing some reading and introspection on the emotional side of religion as well - it's easy to discount emotions because muh rationality, but it may help with the fear you're experiencing.

No matter what you decide, I hope to meet you some day in the afterlife. To quote Veeky Forums, we're all gonna make it.

>it's not backed up by modern cosmology

I can't see how that's possible. For the universe to have an end (as in complete non existence) it would've had to have started at some point. You can't create something from nothing.

Why do self-proclaimed atheists always look at the cosmological argument backwards? You assume that the conclusion is special pleading and the premises are made up to justify that. Is it controversial to assume that everything has an explanation? Is it controversial to then say that something must exist that explains itself, otherwise nothing could exist? No. But as soon as you say "we call that thing God" Dawkins et al fly completely off the chain.

It did start at some point, obviously. That doesn't mean it can't continue infinitely or collapse and re-emerge in a different configuration. Why must it be the same one again? And who's to say you would experience it. Say there's eternal recurrence in a cosmic scale, you wouldn't nessecarily be concious of it. It would be a different you. Rendering the Nietzschean conception of it bunk.

This?
AGAIN?!
These are not in conflict, as any $4 book on apologetics can tell you.
The catechism refers to the concept of 'invincible ignorance' which means if you have no way of knowing the truth but strive for it anyway have a chance, albeit small, of heaven.
>Kid born in a North Korean concentration camp. Never hears anything about Christ
>Spends his entire life helping and loving others, being just, honest, and brave. Despises selfishness, evil, and all sin.
>He might have a chance at Heaven
.............
Unam Sanctam is a repetition of 'extra ecclesiam nulla salus' but this does NOT mean, and was never taught as meaning, that people not visibly Catholic are extra ecclesiam! The doctrine of invincible ignorance was part and parcel of the original formulation of extra ecclesiam nulla salus in the 3rd and 4th Centuries, a millennia before Unam Santam was written!
Protip: Pope Boniface was familiar witht he details, as were those who read Unam Sanctam.
What you are doing is thinking Unam Sanctam was about extra ecclesiam nulla salus when its focus was *actually* plenitudo potestatis!

I think it's amazing that for that thing to make sense it just happens to have all the same properties of God. The whole proof just seems too good to be true, but the logic is sound. Atheists base their whole worldview as a negation to theism. They have an egoic bias to reject the argument. God's existence has major implications, which is why I started this thread.

>it did start at some point
The definition of eternity says not.
>It would be a different you
No it wouldn't. You're thinking under the interpretation that "me" right now is a soul. If I view myself as a completely material product of the universe i.e. "The universe experiencing itself", then my existence isn't based on a relative time but the result of all the material objects which I consist of.
If the universe is eternal, then all physical possibilities would have to repeat forever, including "my" existence.

Sometimes I wonder if there's something wrong with the emotional side of my brain because I've never had any sort of existential dread, fear of death, any of that. I figure I must have some sort of "hermit gene" because I don't feel loneliness like normal people do either and that might explain it. I became religious purely for rational and philosophical reasons, God is the best explanation for the existence of the universe and moral truths.

I didn't fear death until I attempted suicide and got a warning from God.

You've basically hit the nail on the head
>it just happens to have all the same properties of God
It's a bit less of a coincidence than you seem to imply here. But yes, despite the solid logic it's a difficult pill to swallow. It doesn't help that humans are very irrational creatures by nature, which predisposes many to reject all theistic arguments out of hand (our egoic bias, as you say).

I'm pretty sure I'm severely depressed because it runs in the family. If you have good brain chemistry then existential dread is more of a philosophical issue than anything. When I'm in a good mood nothing bothers me; I can't imagine being unhappy, it's illogical. But even in that state I couldn't intelectualy justify living for no reason. In fact suicides are most common as depression lifts. The happiness gives you the strength of will to do it.

200% spooked

The only person who wasn't spooked was Jesus

The idea of eternal heaven and eternal novelty is just as scary as the idea of eternal recurrence.

Well said. This can be further elaborated on as well, but it is the correct strain of thought.

I don't understand why people keep thinking a disembodied paradise made by a divine and ineffable God is capable of being 'boring'.

I think your mind is strictly in the Christian God. Christianity was a morality constructed by slaves at the time under the pharaoh as a way to justify their shit pleb lifestyle. Sexlessness = Purity
Weakness = Goodness
Submission to people one hates = Obedience
Not being able to take revenge = Forgiveness

Consider other less dogmatic religions, or even ask if religion is necessary at all.

>the idea of God is pretty much obvious once you reject materialism

I feel good for you. I think it's a good thing to feel remorse and your own worthlessness before God. It's a way to grow beyond your limitations and potentially become enlightened.

Don't apologize to these morons, user. Holy shit. As if there is a single fucking thing supposedly forbidden by Christianity that people don't do in the name of God all the time, or just because they're lazy or ignorant. As if what God supposedly finds acceptable isn't constantly debated and redefined every generation by hundreds of sects trying to make their fairy tales palatable to the society they live in. Anyone who can deny that morals are relative with a straight face is too hopelessly stupid to bother talking to further, let alone debating. This thread is a laughable disgrace, even by Veeky Forums theist standards.

This life of aimlessly trudging through rot will feel like a stereotypically empty temporal eternity compared to what's coming.

The fear of eternity is in fact fear of our current experience of time. The horrific length of childhood alone qualifies as a proper prison sentence in and of itself. It's traumatizing even for ignorant Materialists and such. It usually cannot be addressed for various reasons - blind spot, Stockholm syndrome, taboo - so it's projected on the idea of eternity, which is in fact not infinite time, but freedom from time.

But I mean yeah...God IS scary.

this, though it does raise the question of why an angel would rebel if heaven's so nice

Good question, but I feel like a discussion of the Fall deserves its own thread.

Fuck off John you murdering dickhead

I mean they were being polite to me so I thought I'd reciprocate rather than go straight to spitting standard Veeky Forums bile.

Fair enough, maybe I overestimated the number of levels at which we disagree.

But at bottom it seems whilst you think morality is a natural law, you still think self-interest is the only adequate argument for adhering to it. Whilst I think morality is a social construct, but nevertheless feel that contributing to the social good and maintaining one's self respect is sufficient argument.

>Is it controversial to then say that something must exist that explains itself, otherwise nothing could exist?

Of course it is, it's begging the whole question. There's no reason to believe that any anything prior to homo sapiens ever explained itself or required an explanation in the sense that you mean it. An explanation is something constructed by an observer; even when we explain our own actions we do so as an observer, an interpreter of cause and effect.

That everything must have a cause, I can accept. But the idea that a first cause is in itself an argument for theism, which I sense is coming, is a leap of logic that will never make sense to anyone but theists.

>There's no reason to believe that any anything prior to homo sapiens

There's no reason to believe the sun existed before humans walked the planet? The worst thing about you atheists is that you'll never realize how retarded you are.

Why is there "obviously" a personal God?

Are you illiterate?