Will you make it to Heaven?

[Vincitveritas]

Take the quiz and see!

jesusplusnothing.com/the-heaven-test

Sorry I didn’t think you were referencing thousands of years ago around the abe time God told Abraham to sacrifice his son I guess.

Nope, but thanks for the insult.

Do you have any actual data to prove that the world is a worse place and that is due to the decline in Christianity? Or even examples of the ways in which it is worse?

@ShodanLives I haven't conducted any scientific studies into the matter, no.
Are you honestly telling me you haven't noticed a change for the worse? Either you don't keep up with current affairs, are choosing to ignore it (hence, head in sand) or you're very young - just in the last 20 years or so there's been a dramatic difference.

Well that's made me Google the origin of 'going to hell in a handbasket' so that's quite interesting.

I'm going to say loud and clear that the fact there are places in the world where people can comfortably express love for and marry their partner of the same sex is one of many things that indicates the world is getting better in lots of ways. And I don't think anyone could possibly look at most of human history and think 'oh I'd MUCH rather have lived a few hundred years ago'.

I know plenty of religious people that I respect and I don't think one of them would think like this tbh.

I keep up with current affairs, am not particularly young (although not old enough to remember 100 years ago) and despite daring to disagree with you don't have my head in the sand.

Do you have any actual examples? Any particular changes in society or law? Are you a member of any group who have historically been oppressed in this country?

Why should humans bow to a Being that cannot or will not confirm what he wants humans to believe, and instead uses other humans to interpret his beliefs for humanity ?

@ShodanLives Please feel free to disagree with me. I do however think you're being deliberately obtuse and know exactly where you're trying to steer the conversation.

@Hawkins003 Thanks for quoting my mega post! 😆If God was to appear in the clouds right now, waving a huge banner with the 10 commandments emblazoned across it in neon writing, would you listen then?

I'm not trying to steer the conversation anywhere. You keep claiming things are more terrible than they've ever been but have yet to explain how.

@ShodanLives Because that should be obvious - violent crime, suicide, mental health decline, drink and drug dependence, antisocial behaviour, poverty, riots - the list goes on.

Only in person, otherwise it could be a holographic projection

I am very glad we are moving towards a faithless society.

The 10 commandments are a waste of words.
The first 5 relate to god's fragile and hostile ego.
One lumps women into the same catagory as belongings and cattle.
One suggests that we should respect our parents- no, that is not always good advice, parents can be nasty people= respect is earned not automatic.

It would have been a perfect opportunity to advise against slavery. for instance, but instead god thinks it more important that we dont have a few statues in our home.

But with the possible exception of mental health decline all of those things have been just, if not more so present at different times in history.

You might have a point about mental illness, its prone not so much to do with a particular god though, more the lack of shared understandings that comes with any religion, a belief in a higher purpose, a belief in something bigger than the individual- all of these things are easily provided by religion (and arguably is one of its purposes) but can also be found in other systems of shared morality. I’m not a psychologist though so just guessing.

Ive been thinking about human sacrifice some more (now I be less cocktails in hand😀). If we take human sacrifice as being the killing of another to appease a god, or killing of another in an attempt to evoke supernatural positive intervention of a god, surely Christianity, together with Islam is winning hands down there.

I mean you only have to take snap shots across history.

“kill them all, god will know his own” apparently uttered before the sack of Beziers in 1209 where it was estimated. Between 7-20 thousand Christian men women and children were slaughter by- yes a crusade by other Christian’s who on the orders of pope innocent III (I know the irony) want the wrong type of Christian’s sacrificed to protect the power of the right type of Christian’s.

the last Christian on Christian burning at the stake for heresy - a sacrifice to protect the true Christianity was in 1612 in England.

in 1727 Britain saw the last burning of a witch at the stake (seemingly for having a daughter with deformed limbs) as a sacrifice by Christian’s to their God to show how faithful they were to him.

Of course the big sacrifice on Gods say so was God setting up a system whereby his son had to be sacrificed as part of his game. In fact the whole of Christianity is based on the concept of Child sacrifice for gods plan being the ultimate show of love.

Just to point out that suicide rates at least in the UK have fallen significantly in recent years. The rate among women has halved since 1981, the rate among men is down 17% in the same period. Very recent years since 2013 or so have seen an increase, which I sadly have a personal experience of like so many, but things are better in that regard because we no longer regard suicide as a sin and take practical action to reduce it.

I'm not an expert in violent crime but it doesn't take long to find statements such as 'In Britain the incidence of homicide has fallen by a factor of at least ten to one since the thirteenth century and the recent tripling of the rate is small by comparison'. Violence of many types was considered normal in the past (the Bible is certainly full of violent people) and we are much more sensitive to it now.

Things that have always existed and always will. And the idea that lack of Christianity causes any of those things is purely hopeful speculation on your part.

I agree with all those who have pointed out that rates of violence are far lower now than they have been in the distant past, and rates of suicide too, other than post pandemic. Mental ill health increases have their causes, but I very much doubt that lack of religion is a main driver here - and in any case much of that is about good diagnosis, awareness and the ongoing easing of stigma.

Use of drugs and alcohol is massively falling among the current generation of young people.

Meanwhile we have equality for the LGBT community on the rise, rights of women far better than 50 years ago (though being eroded by (ironically) the religious right in many places, and improvements in levels of poverty in many places too. Where poverty is on the rise, this is again often caused by the right, and in the US explicitly by the religious right.

So not quite the simplistic picture of doom you are painting, @Vincitveritas .

I rest my case dear Hawkins! .

@ShodanLives & @PermanentTemporary I'm not sure where you're getting your data from:

@OMG12 I hope you enjoyed the cocktails 🍸

@speakout I'll have to get back to you later.

Where poverty is on the rise, this is again often caused by the right, and in the US explicitly by the religious right.

@pointythings How so?

Apologies, not sure what happened to the links...

I'm not sure where you're getting your data from:

So you can claim that society is on a downward spiral because of the decline of Christianity and that anyone who disagrees has their head in the sand without a shred of data but as soon as I point out that violence and poverty and mental illness have always existed then suddenly it's required?

@Vincitveritas do you live in the UK? If you do, can you not see how the policies of our current right wing government make poverty worse for so many people?

It's no different in the US; you have but to do a bit of Googling to see Republican politicians voting against the provision of free school meals for children whose parents can't afford them. It's also worth looking at the religious right's crackdown on abortion, which forces people to have children they cannot feed.

I notice you carefully not responding to the many improvements highlighted by myself and other posters.

A very good point. If you are the first to make a claim, then it's on you to back it up - so let's have it, @Vincitveritas .

@Vincitveritas

Do you think poverty was better or worse back when workhouses were a thing, children had to work many people in the UK couldn't afford clean water or basic healthcare?

If the religious right wing nutters in the US hadn’t got involved, American women would still have the protection from Roe v Wade. What a woman does with her body is between her and her doctor and 100% nothing to do with the church. Those church members should be going to hell asap. Their actions are unforgivable

Erm, I suppose I have an interest in suicide since dh's death. I read a range of information about it. If you're saying that suicide rates are racking up because of lack of belief in God, that's an extremely large statement to make and one that you made without any evidence at all. As I said, there has been a bit of a reversal of the fall in suicides just in the most recent years, and I think we don't know yet why that is. Given that it's only literally the last 5 years or so, it seems unlikely to have much to do with religion or lack of it.

I had a look at suicide rates in the Netherlands just because it's such a secular country and yes, rates have risen since 2000. Looking at the numbers, pretty much all of the rise is accounted for by the legalisation of assisted dying, which internationally is classed as suicide but really belongs in a different category. Now of course @Vincitveritas would say this was a terrible thing, but my grandmother availed herself of this option in 2006 - entirely of her own volition, no pressure re inheritance involved because she hadn't a bean, just a lady of 82 wanting her own way out rather than another 6-8 weeks in ever increasing and unmanageable pain.

My cousin took his own life in the 80s - he had schizophrenia and this was before the advent of modern antipsychotics. Nothing to do with religion either.